Robert, this story comes as no surprise....unless you regularly read the mainstream media.

Blogs like Seraphic Secret and others have brought the attention this important story deserves.

The mainstreamers and the bleeding hearts would have us belive the Palis are these downtrodden people forever being kept down by the evil Israelis.

When, in truth, there own leaders have kept their people down for years, and have the convenient "boogeyman" of Israel to keep the heat and attention away from their corruption.

**Sigh** Sometimes I despair for my country. I see no way ever to get this spending under control. Once a program, any program, is in place there seems no way to get it stopped. I understand foreign policy calls for us to spend money in places which are incomprehensible to the uninformed, but to the Palestinians? I see no purpose, perhaps you can help me, Robert. Surely there are other reasons than the raging anti-Semitism which pervades much of our congresspersons.

Lance:

The Palis have ingested enough money to finance the establishment of several viable states. That they are bankrupt at the end of every week is really, a sick joke by now.

The only solution is to cease all financial aide immediately. These people have to grow up sometime. Let's see if Hamas can do anything more than maim and murder.

BTW, The answer is self-evident: Hamas can do little but indoctrinate children for murder and then organize death squads.

But the Palis have elected them.

And we must elect not to enable them.

This is not complicated.

Unfortunately, I don't think U.S. is ever planning to withhold aid from them. We will make bold, loud statements... but when push comes to shove, politicians will chicken out and write out nice fat little checks. Forget terrorist attacks, the whining of those guys makes us shake!

Oh this is just great. You mean to tell me the "Save the Palestinian Children" charity commercial that promises me "a good feeling for helping the needy for just $3 billion a year" is bogus?!?

"Little Ahmed wants to go to school, where he'll learn the ancient art of Anti-Semitism and the new technology of plastic explosives... but he can't, because he needs to spend his entire day looking for a few meager rocks to throw at Israeli soldiers. Won't you help?"

I knew I should have given to the United Way.

"I understand foreign policy calls for us to spend money in places which are incomprehensible to the uninformed, but to the Palestinians? Surely there are other reasons than the raging anti-Semitism which pervades much of our congresspersons."

Suz, ours is a country that gives billions more in aid to Israel than to the Palestinians. This is hardly raging anti-Semitisim.

The only solution is to cease all financial aide immediately. To both entities.

We - as AMERICANS - should be more concerned about the fate of our financial well-being than the fate of Country X. Excessive foreign aid is a handy and egregious way to rob the American people of the fruit of their labor. It is not out of order to suggest that those with conflicting loyalties should depart these fair shores.

Arnold:

Hold on to your seat.

I happen to agree with you. I do not believe in sending foreign aide to anyone: Not to Palis not to Israel.

However:

Your notion that those with conflicting loyalties depart these fair shores: You know, I have a lot of Irish friends who just love Ireland. They have Irish flags, sings Irish tunes; would you consign them to the far shores of County Cork because they love their ancestral home?

Thanks so much for writing, Arnold, it's not often we get the Governor of California here on Seraphic Secret.

Robert,

You might be intersted in reading this. It is a good commentary about the situation. I learned of it at Allison's blog.

Anyway, just to whet your appetite I'll grab the same paragraph Allison quoted:
"Did the unlimited international aid provide backing for mistaken, fatal and destructive Palestinian political decisions? Would the Palestinians have acted differently at critical junctures of decision could they not always rely on the donor countries? This can be assumed to be the case. It is reasonable to assume that under the protection of the donor nations' money extremist and "revolutionary" elements in the PA allowed themselves to lead an irresponsible national policy that brought a series of disasters down on them.

In the absence of responsibility for the Palestinian economy, Arafat's administration could forego fighting the terror organizations (in the name of "national unity"), and even encourage and incentivize the intifada, without considering its heavy economic price. After all, Arafat knew he could go to the international community and cry on its shoulders bitterly and receive the aid. After all, the responsibility was not his.

Because of the huge and readily available aid a strong middle class did not emerge in Palestine, but a rotten and corrupt class of nomenclature did: government officials appointed to their offices by the ruling party – Fatah in this case. Because of the foreign aid private investors avoided coming to Palestine even when times were calm. It is a known choice: either you have foreign aid or you have foreign investment. Foreign investors discovered India only when India stopped starring on the list of countries begging for economic aid.

Because of the aid, almost all of which was public, the Palestinian business sector was stifled and its voice was not heard. Only one industry functioned well since the PA was established: the financial-banking sector. Even during the years of terror and intifada Palestinian banking maintained business almost as usual. How did such a miracle occur? It's very simple: that is the sector where the Palestinian administration did not have access, a sector that did not receive one penny of foreign aid, and that was completely run by the private sector. Had the donor countries restrained themselves in the amount of aid they gave the Palestinians, Palestinian per capita income today would be twice what it is."

Arnold:

I think the U.S. should send aid abroad when we can clearly see how that aid either directly or indirectly helps us. The sad thing is we throw money at so many silly and outright fraudulent programs that the good aid we send is either threatened by the resulting bad publicity or the lack of overall funding.

But you know, most of our domestic spending is just as screwed up. Everyone, especially the rich and the politically partisan, have their hands out for government money care of the taxpayers. I believe that and I'm basically a liberal!

I don't think there's a quick fix for this problem. The day we cut off mosty foreign aid is the day the government will find dozens of bogus new domestic programs to blow those savings on.

Arnold, you may know there is often a disconnect between the current administration's foreign policy stance, the State Dept's foreign policy stance, and our congressperson's individual and collective foreign policy stance. There is money going helter-skelter around the world and most of it should remain right here. But then you run right up against Jake's point that new domestic programs would be started up to absorb those $$$$. So I return to my original point that sometimes I despair of the spending done by our government and the way/ability of the people to put a stop to it. Our tax system is a mess so let me put a plug right her for the Fair Tax, but that's another post for another thread.

Suz:

I do not believe that our congressmeen and women are anti Jewish. I just think that there is an entrenched way of doing business. It's just like welfare. And the Palis are the ultimate welfare witches.

We simply need to say, "No, enough, you're not getting one more penny. Go to work, build something instead of bombs. Grow the hell up. You people are responsible for your own destiny."

It's that simple.

Irina:

I fear you might be right. But perhaps with Hamas in power even Congress will balk at sending money to real live honest-to-goodness self-proclaimed Jew-hating terrorists.

Jake:

You will find that The United Way has had its share of financial scandals too.

Jack:

Thanks so much for posting such illuminating information.

Absent a missle class, there is no one to negotiate with.

Middle classes instinctively know how to compromise. They know this from everyday commerce. It becomes part of everyday discourse. By denying itself a middleclass, the Palis have insured themselves a fanatical majority who know not the meaning of compromise; hence cling to the medieval imperial Caliphate dreams of their maddest leaders.

In the final analysis, it is the Palis and their homicide killers who have built the wall that separates them from Israel.

I knew it was bad, but this is outrageous. The buzzword for advocates of the Palestinian "narrative" (a lit crit staple which appears in the "Munich" screenplay) is "disposession". As in: "The Palestinians were dispossessed of their land in 1948."

This substantive entry and the discussion give new meaning to "dispossession." Can it be that instead of the alleged evil hierarchy of who treats Palestinians like dirt (Jews, followed by the West, the Arab nations, and then their own kind) , the true hierarchy of who treats Palestinians is exactly the opposite?

Jeremiah:

Like the Algerian FLN who first and foremost terrorized the Muslim population of Algeria, the Palis have always been their own worst enemies.

I have said it a hundred times: The Palis are luckiest people on the face of the earth in that their enemies are Jews.

If their mortal enemies were say, Saddam, or Sudan, or any other Arab country--they would not even be a memory.

Robert, perhaps you are correct. Certainly you would be more aware than I. However, for years the dems, and particularly in the persons of Jimmah Carter and Bill Clinton have attempted to equate any retaliation by the Israelis with the horrific attacks by the Palistinian homicide bombers. It is evil to hold up Arafat as a man who should be "negotiated" with. It is time we allowed Israel to do what Israel does best.

Thanks for the re-emphasis. This is a point that has to be hammered home so hard against hard leftists' and soft mainstreamers' numbskulls - so hard till sparks of thought fly. It's as simple as "follow the money" ... and as complicated as those cold conflicts in the hot human heart - cowardice and bravery, loyalty and betrayal, etc.

Suz:

For the moment, it appears that a combination of the security wall and targeted assasinations will be Israel's policy.

This could change at any moment if Hamas pulls of an horrific terrorist attack that claims the lives of many civilians -- and then all bets are off.

While all this is going on, Israel and America must deal uncompromisingly and ruthlessly with Iran's nuclear threat.

The Mullahs of Iran have made their intentions towards Israel crystal clear. It's either them or us, and I for one prefer them.

Jeremiah:

These are facts that the left and the Arabs conveniently ignore. For if they were to acknowledge these simple truths, the ground beneath them would shift so abruptly, that all delusions would fall away and there would be nothing left but terrible truths and that would be unbearable.

Sounds good to me.

Thanks to those who responded intelligently to my original post. Had I not been holding on to my seat, I would have replied in a more expedient manner. Earning Robert's agreement does that to a fellow.. :)

The issue of foreign aid is no doubt a very complicated matter, as several of you ably observe. I am sorely aware of the need to establish and maintain strategic alliances. It is when those alliances become entangling and especially embarassing ((ex.: Jack Abramoff funneling $$ (originally earmarked for poor U.S. children) to Israel)) that I raise the black flag.

Whilst the lesser of two evils is still an evil, spending the surplus on domestic programs created to absorb said surplus is probably better than tossing it helter skelter to overseas recipients.

Thanks again.

BTW - When is the next installment of Seraphic University? I'm eager to learn more about the Professorships, and see what the esteemed faculty has to offer in way of witty observations.

Arnold:

You will always get a fair hearing here at Seraphic Secret–– and some pretty nifty surprises.

As for Seraphic U. I'm going to ask you to put together a course in, yup, you guess it: Foreign Aide. 101

Give you a chance to educate a whole new generation of kids on the evils of welfare on a global scale. Whaddaya say?

The case for sending foreign aid (to anyone) would be strong if it actually did any good. If we could make the poor world less poor by being slightly less rich ourselves, then it would be well worth it. It aid did actually work, I don't think you could morally justify not providing it.

The trouble is, it doesn't work. Giving people money just leads to corruption as everyone does everything they can to steal as much as possible. Palestine is an example of this, but so are many countries of Africa. In another sense, so are the oil rich countries of the Middle East. (Saudi Arabia is all about dividing up the spoils of the money that was essentially found in the ground). The only thing that matters in the modern world is economic self-sufficiency. Can you through your own labours and the efficient use of capital create wealth for yourself? Aid doesn't do this. Lowering of trade barriers does do this. Reducing regulation of financial markets does this. Establishing well enforced property rights does this. Eliminating corruption does this. (If foreign aid does anything, it increases corruption, and so makes things worse).

I am neither a Jew nor a Muslim. With respect to the situation in the Middle East, I am not going to choose sides due to what either the Torah or the Koran says. I am much more sympthetic to Israel that any other state in the region, but this is largely because Israel understands what I have discussed above. The Israelis have built a modern functioning state with modern functioning institutions and a modern economy. They have taken what was available to them and have built a country, whereas no other state in the region has done this, and most have developed a rather appalling sense of victimhood, which is terrible for the people of the states in question, and very dangerous for the rest of us. I wish this was not so. If the Muslim world was prosperous and economically successful then it would be a much smaller danger to the rest of us, not to mention that its own people would be much better off.

But an aid driven welfare state culture doesn't encourage this.

Michael:

Thanks so much. As always you are ferociously articulate.

Let me add in that in regard to aid to Africa it often ends up killing many more people than the government induced famines.

How?

Simple.

Well meaning idiots like Bono or Bob Geldof (is it an Irish thing?) send zillions in in food stuffs. Whatever genocidal government is in power hoards the food and withholds it from the starving people making sure that even more people die. Aid groups meanwhile gather more starving groups in refugee camps and the government now has them where they want them: centrally located in one camp, one nice killing ground. (Don't forget, these famines are always just tribal warfare.) It works really nicely in Sudan. It worked just great in Rawanda. So in the end, Bob Geldof. Bono, all these rock stars helped kill hundreds of thousands of Africans. Most aid to Africa ends up in the hands of government soldiers who then take it for themselves, use it to entice then rape women and children, or just use it to commit genocide.

You want to help Africans, kill their leaders.

Michael, I'd like to draw your attention to what Aushcwitz survivor Victor Frankel said: "There are two races of man: the decent and the indecent." You Michael belong the decent. Thanks so much for contributing to Seraphic Secret.

Michael:

Thanks so much. As always you are ferociously articulate.

Let me add in that in regard to aid to Africa it often ends up killing many more people than the government induced famines.

How?

Simple.

Well meaning idiots like Bono or Bob Geldof (is it an Irish thing?) send zillions in food stuffs. Whatever genocidal government is in power withholds it from the starving people making sure that even more people die. Aid groups meanwhile gather more starving groups in refugee camps and the government now has them where they want them: centrally located in one location, one nice killing ground. (Don't forget, these famines are always just tribal warfare.) It works really nicely in Sudan. It worked just great in Rawanda. So in the end, Bob Geldof. Bono, all these rock stars help kill hundreds of thousands of Africans. Most aid to Africa ends up in the hands of government soldiers who then take it for themselves, use it to entice then rape women and children, or just use it to commit genocide.

You want to help Africans, kill their leaders.

Michael, I'd like to draw your attention to what Auschwitz survivor Victor Frankel said: "There are two races of man: the decent and the indecent." You Michael belong the decent. Thanks so much for contributing to Seraphic Secret.

Actually, if we want to save Africans we should send them all guns. Seriously, the men with guns steal all the food and go on a rampage to get it. I'd like to see them rape women and kill children who were packing.

One of the less persuasive, but oft-repeated excuses for foreign aid is so that we have equal influence with other countries who give aid. I have not seen the good side of that only the down side. As Michael so articulately related, most countries requiring our aid are dominated by repressive governments. Over and over we give those governments the ability to mistreat and misrule those countries. We should be better than that.

Jake:

I agree. Problem is the distribution. The roads are so primitive that just getting the weapons into the hands of the right people is almost impossible. Invariably you end up with the same playbook as with the food: government distribution centers, governmet soldiers, you know the rest.

No, in the end, I vote for executing every African head of state for they are all monsters of one degree or another. And then dusting off the old British Colonial Office. Those guys were absolutely top notch. And look we can make all these great miniseries about doomed love affairs between naive colonial officers and tragic Nubian Princesses. I guarantee great ratings.

Suz:

I think that after Israel the country that receives the most foreign aid is, ta-da, Egypt!

Now, the Egyptians do have their uses.

They do, ahem, question terrorist suspects in ways we would not on American soil for do not forget that they are dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood. These are the whack jobs who assasinated Sadat, the guys who every once in a while hunt down and slaughter innocent tourists in The City of the Dead. They just love irony.

These guys are serious lunatics and in truth we need the Egyptians in this fight. But gosh, most of the money we send them goes right into the envelope marked graft. At least with Israel we get to see a tank or an F16. Their economy is transparent. We recognize Israeli society as being on the same planet as America. With the Arabs, it's like, don't even bother taking me to your leader because he's just a serial liar anyway.

Two comments:

On aid to Africa: There is a book out by William Easterly entitled "The White Man's Burden : Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good".

The blurb on Amazon says this about it:

>

I have read some reviews...and it is supposed to be a very good look at why global welfare as currently practiced is a waste of billions. There is also Hernando De Soto's "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else". In that book, De Soto shows how a country's law and business structure can make it easy to do business or near impossible, and it is both an attitude and a structure built into successful Western capitalist nations vs. impoverished nations.

How do either of these relate to the Pali problem? The Palis have no real rule-of-law..it is the rule of the jungle, of those with the guns, and in the case of the corrupt "Tunisians", those who have the power to terrorize their own people. As Robert points out, the Palis are far and away their own worst enemy, much more so than the demon Israelis!

Too, going back to the point of the first book's ideas, the massive welfare to the Palis, starting with the establishment of UNWRA, the UN relief org. dedicated to ONLY Palestinian refugees (and by implication, ignoring all other of the world's refugees that didn't rate their own separate relief organizations), and the enormous amount of monies thrown at the Palis by the US, EU and others is just an invitation for fraud, and for all the ills of any welfare state. The biggest ill is, of course, that of creating poor incentives among the recipients (and someone already pointed this out, I think, in the comments).

In the case of the Palis, they never HAVE had an incentive to make peace..they've been rewarded by MORE money and more publicity, often favorable, in spite of...or because of their terrorist campaigns, propaganda workings and the biases of the useless fools of the West (to say nothing of the "non-aligned" countries as they were called).
This is a continuing tragedy for the region, and the only way to stop it is to discontinue any and all aid to the Palis unless it is completely accountable and used for TRUE humanitarian relief (if that can be done).

Maurice:

Thanks so much. Foreign Aid to the Palis is like heroin or meth. It has to be stopped and stopped cold. There is no way to for there to be accountability, there is always corruption in these situations. As for humanitarian relief--well, they have had 60 years of it, and they are worse of than when they started. Enough is enough. The TRUE humanitarian relief is to stop the flow and let these people grow up and get jobs.

"If (foreign) aid did actually work, I don't think you could morally justify not providing it."

One man's poverty is not a claim on another man's prosperity, Mr. Jennings.

Foreign aid - or any other type of welfare* - will never be voluntary to the American taxpayer; ipso facto, such programs will be forever immoral.

Let me make CHOOSE to bless the less fortunate in a manner I see fit. Otherwise, stay the [bad word] away from my wallet.

-Arnold

*A society used to welfare, licenses and regulations, and prohibitions of every kind is a society where actions are not weighted against any moral virtue or sense of accomplishment or pride, but only whether it violates a law. If you are forced to behave in a certain way (under penalty of fine, jail or death), how can one's behavior be considered "responsible" or "virtuous"? It cannot.

Arnold: Who mentioned putting a hand in your wallet? I think that if this kind of aid genuinely was the solution to poverty in the world, then we in the west would have a moral obligation to provide it, because that there is as much poverty in the world as there is is a stain on humanity. But really, there is no "we", just a whole lot of people. To put it more bluntly, I think that you as an individual would have a moral obligation to contribute in such circumstances.

This is an entirely different thing from arguing that you should be coerced to contribute through taxation or any other way. Moral choices have no meaning unless they are made by you individually. The way modern states reduce the freedom of individuals by offering to make moral choices on their behalf is entirely pernicious.

But one shouldn't pretend that because you should have the freedom to make a choice, all choices are morally equal. If a little old lady requests your help crossing the road, then it is better to help her, however free you are and should be to not do so. Moral obligations and legal obligations are not and should not be the same. (Essentially, if western aid programs actually did work, I can't imagine there would be much trouble raising the necessary money privately from individuals).

However, back in the real world it doesn't actually matter, because aid doesn't work and the things that we could do to actually help alleviate poverty are actually in our own interests and would actually increase our freedom and wealth if we did them. The biggest one by far would be to eliminate all agricultural subsidies and create a completely free global market in agricultural products (and indeed in everything else as well, but the big problem is in agriculture). That European and American governments tax us heavily in order to prop up a few economic farmers to the cost of the entire world is simply a scandal.

All this said, the amount of poverty in the world has been dropping, both (fairly slowly) in absolute terms and (extremely rapidly) as a percentage of the world's population, which is an extremely good thing. It is easy to focus entirely on what is happening in Europe, America, Africa, and the Middle East, and foget about the fact that large amounts of Asia are ceasing to be poor. If the demographic rise of certain parts of the Muslim world is one big story in the world, then the economic rise of the other end of Asia is the other one. Countries are becoming ecomically functional countries in the way I described above. This doesn't necessarily have to end well (there are lots of nationalistic countries of dubious political sophistication in the parts of the world I am talking about, and the scenario in which east Asia decides it is 1914 is a perfectly real one), but the ultimate story here is that things are being built and not destroyed. The best case scenarios in India and China are magnificent ones, whereas there are no good scenarios in Saudi Arabia.

The only way to really eliminate foreign aid or egregious domestic aid is to eliminate taxes. With so much cash flowing into the government, there's no way a good portion of it won't be stolen, used for partisan reasons, and just lost. Each and every spending program is primarily crafted by incumbents and bureaucrats who believe it will get them re-elected or preserve their jobs. Any "good" it will possible do is the interest of the "useful idiots" Robert talks about a lot. Patronage does not end at the water's edge.