(Council on Foreign Relations) Elliott Abrams - Employees of leading charitable and development agencies like World Vision and the UN Development Program (UNDP) may be diverting funds to Hamas. Those accused are said to have confessed. The larger question is the culture of foreign aid to the Palestinians, much of which falls under what President George W. Bush once called "the soft bigotry of low expectations." The "soft bigotry" is the failure to hold the Palestinians to global standards. We see this, for example, when it comes to the toleration of the way the Palestinian Authority glorifies terrorism and terrorists, naming parks and schools after murderers and broadcasting on official stations all kinds of anti-Semitic hate. The only way to solve this problem is for donors to withhold funding unless and until the independence of their programs can be assured. Yes, the people of Gaza would suffer, but they would know why: because Hamas is more interested in its own terrorist actions than in the welfare of Gazans. The writer, a senior fellow at CFR, handled Middle East affairs at the U.S. National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.
2016-08-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive