Gifts for the Mullahs

Gifts for the Mullahs
by Joel Hilliker
March 11, 2009
Iran should send America a giant thank you card.

The United States is beyond broke. It is borrowing and printing hundreds of billions of dollars in a mad scramble to escape economic quicksand.

Why, then, is it offering $300 million to reconstruct the Gaza Strip? And another $600 million to help the Palestinian Authority pay its bills? That’s $900 million of other people’s money—for a cause that is profoundly flawed.

Besides putting America deeper in debt, what will the money achieve? It won’t promote peace. In fact, history shows a sickening correlation: More aid to Palestinians results in more Palestinian terrorism.

At the donors’ conference where the U.S. pledged this gaudy sum, Hillary Clinton said Hamas won’t touch a cent of it. That is impossible. How can you drop $300 million into Gaza—that’s $2.2 million on each of its scant 139 square miles—without benefiting the entity that governs it? Even the $600 million: Past aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)—including weapons—ended up in Hamas’s hands when the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group mutinied and seized Gaza. A repeat in the West Bank is realistic.

If we could follow those $900 million as they make their way from America’s printing presses into Palestinian pockets, we would likely find them, in a best-case scenario, padding PA bank accounts. At worst, those dollars will reach terrorists and fund Israeli deaths. That will provoke retaliation from the new Israeli government, which will mean Palestinian deaths. And Hamas perversely views Palestinian deaths not as tragedies, but as victories in the propaganda war against Israel.

That is ultimately what those 900 million borrowed greenbacks will likely purchase.

Iran’s mullahs really should send Washington a giant thank you card...

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