On Monday the European Union
released €120 million ($143 million) in aid to the Palestinian Authority before a Hamas-led government officially takes over. Tell me, oh great European humanitarians: how will you keep this money going into Hamas hands as soon as they are in charge? How can you assure that the funds won't be used to kill innocent Israelis in terrorist attacks? You cannot give any such assurances, of course. The European Union has simply found a way to keep supporting the Palestinians, including Palestinian terrorism, while maintaining some form of plausible deniability that they are, in fact, supporting Hamas and really don't care which terrorist faction is running the Palestinian Authority.
I
reported last June that the
E.U. was renewing contacts with Hamas at that time. If it was OK to deal with Hamas then it clearly is OK, as far as the Europeans are concerned, to deal with them now despite recent statements to the contrary.
Ilka Schröder, a former Green Party member of the European Parliament from Germany, wrote
an open letter to the "Working Group" of the E.U. Parliament asking for an end to the funding of and complicity in Palestinian terrorism by the European Union. In 2003
she accused Europe of siding with the Palestinians in their terror war on Israel as a proxy war against the United States. Some excerpts from her lecture follow:
It is an open secret within the European Parliament and the Commission that European Union aid to the PA has not been spent correctly. Everyone knows that the PA created a black budget. After entering and searching the Headquarters of Arafat, the IDF presented a vast amount of material found there. It shows how the PA as an Institution and Arafat as a person are involved in ideological preparation, financial and political support and planning of terrorist acts against Israeli citizens. The government of Israel officially informed the European Commission that the PA misused EU money. The reaction of the Commission to the material that the Israelis presented was - to put it diplomatically - not very convincing.
[...]
The European Parliament does not intend to verify whether European taxpayers' money could have been used to finance anti-Semitic murderous attacks. Unfortunately, this fits well with European policy in this area.
[...]
The need for a solution only exists as long as the war continues. This is why the EU does not want the conflict to end before it gains a major role. And this is why the EU does not wish the PA to give up too early and why the EU is strengthening the PA. The EU is getting up to the cynicism of stirring up a conflict that it supposedly wants to see resolved by financing one side. This is the inherently inhuman purpose of EU humanitarian aid in the region. The Palestinians are playing the ugly role of being the cannon fodder for Europe's hidden war against the US.What has changed in Europe and in European support for the Palestinians since 2003? In my view absolutely nothing has changed.
The Bush Administration, whose policy towards Israel and the Palestinians has been schizophrenic at best,
praised the European decision. In the words of State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli:
It is a sign that we are all working together. We are all working together to prevent a collapse of the interim PA government and to support the Palestinian people. Obviously, when there is a new government, we'll need to reasses our positions, based on the formation of that government and the composition of that government.This after President Bush has said that the United States would have no dealings with Hamas and not support the Hamas-led government in any way. As I have noted before the only real difference between Hamas and Fatah in any case is that Fatah pays lip service to a peace process while Hamas does not. How can the Bush administration claim to fight terror on the one hand when they cheer the funding of terrorism on the other? If Ms. Schröder is correct the Bush administration is cheering a policy that is designed specifically to undermine American interests in the region. Does this make sense to anyone?
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