by: Sarah Stern and Kyle Shideler

Earlier this month we watched as the high seas had become the theater for staging yet another hate-infested anti-Israel drama, costumed in heart-rendering, humanitarian language.  This premeditated performance had been cynically calculated to pirate the international sympathy for the people who in open and democratic elections, freely elected the terrorist group Hamas to lead them.

It is nothing short of an outrage to see how pieces of footage regarding the Flotilla incident had been selectively edited by the media. To see the real story, please click here.

In the wake of the Flotilla incident, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ met with president Obama. As someone who showed he is not capable of stemming the rising wave of “group think”, President Obama left the meeting, and made an address in which he promised $400 million in taxpayers’ money for the people of “Gaza, as well as the West Bank”.

“Gaza as well as the West Bank”? This was a lovely piece of syntax, with dramatic emphasis in the auditory delivery clearly intended to focus on the” West Bank” segment of the sentence.

Put aside for a moment the fact that every day Israel sends approximately 15,000 tons of humanitarian supplies into Gaza. Put aside the fact that the cargo that was not intended for military usage would have gotten through after inspection in the port of Ashdod. Put aside the fact that when that offer was made the leaders in Gaza said, “We don’t want the aid if the Israelis have touched it.”

Put aside for a moment even, the fact that Hamas is a terrorist entity sworn to the destruction of Israel, and according to article 51 of the United Nations Carter, every nation has the primary responsibility to protect the lives of its civilians.

Focus for a moment, on the fact that we have statutes on the books that clearly state that it is illegal to send money to terrorist entities or to the states that harbor them.

In a move which would baffle the great military minds of the past from Clausewitz to Macarthur and Patton, The United States’ response to its ally Israel’s successful enforcement of a legal blockade is to think that we should just “loosen up a little”.

Of course, the Obama administration squares this circle, by denying that money sent to support the infrastructure of the terrorist-held enclave that is the Gaza Strip, will not, in fact, be aiding the party that governs it, namely Hamas, because, as someone close to the administration assured us, that the money, “will go to the UN or other internationally-recognized NGOs.”

We were afraid you’d say that.

According to a fact sheet issued by the White House Press Secretary, $40 million dollars will go directly to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA)’s Emergency Appeal for Gaza and the West Bank. $10 million dollars will go to UNRWA in order to build 5 new schools in Gaza, with somewhere around $104.5 Million will be administered by USAID for a variety of school, economic, sewer, housing, and related infrastructure projects. The remaining $240 million will be used to increase homeownership by offering long-term mortgages.

So drastic and repressive is the Israeli blockade, so urgent is the need for humanitarian assistance, that the bulk of funds will be used to make home loans?

Let us focus a moment, on the $50 million that will be turned over to UNRWA. If the involvement of the United Nations is meant to belay the concern of skeptics, it’s a weak effort. As those who have followed the situation in the West Bank and Gaza are well aware, UNRWA’s relationship with the ruling Hamas regime in Gaza is a cozy one.  UNRWA directors in the past have publicly stated that Hamas members were on the UNRWA payroll.  This is not surprising, since UNRWA refuses to even ask prospective employees if they are members of foreign terrorist organizations (Except Al-Qaeda or the Taliban), and does not screen for membership in Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. And while having UNRWA build 5 schools in Gaza seems like a worthy project, it becomes substantially less worthy when one recognizes that as of 2009, Hamas dominated the UNRWA Teacher’s Union.  UNRWA schools have been used as mortar launching grounds and sniper posts, and UNRWA ambulances as terrorist troop carriers, in Hamas’s continued war against Israel which has seen 10,000 rocket and mortar attacks against Israel in the past years.

And while the Israeli blockade can turn back arms smuggling ships intent on delivering rockets and small arms to Hamas, it can do nothing to prevent the flow of hatred that is generated by the incitement to hate and fight the Jews, that are encouraged by Hamas and its allies, often utilizing the classrooms of the very UNRWA schools American taxpayer funds go to fund.

For too long UNRWA and the terrorists in their midst have been able to play a wink and nod game. On the one hand, UNRWA proclaims itself innocent of responsibility for the incitement found in classrooms and textbooks, pointing out that,

“UNRWA, like any other refugee organization, uses the textbooks and curriculum of the local authorities that play host to its refugees. This policy is based on long-standing agreements made with host governments that ensure that the arrival of a population of refugees does not infringe on the sovereignty of the host government or nation. Given these agreements UNRWA is in no position to unilaterally replace or amend the textbooks used in its schools…”

At the same time incitement to hate and kill Israelis and to destroy the Israeli state continues, even as defenders reject the claims of critics, since these are “UN” schools and programs, where no such incitement could possibly take place, despite the repeated reports and videos to the contrary.

For anyone who may doubt this, we ask you to this please view an excellent film produced by the Center for Near East Policy entitled, “For the Sake of the Nakba”. This film clearly documents multiple interviews of teachers in UNRWA schools who have been interviewed and the overwhelming emphasis given there is to replace Israel with one state: Palestine, and that the method of doing this is through martyrdom and jihad.

Throughout the schools are maps of Palestine, always the identical one to that you might recognize as Israel. The teaching constantly emphasizes that the greatest thing one can do for one’s country is to wage  jihad  and to die as a shaheed.

Above and beyond the moral question of American aid being used to support such activities, the transfer of funds to UNRWA may very well be against U.S law as well. Section 301 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended states:

“No contributions by the United States shall be made to [UNRWA] except on the condition that [UNRWA] take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United State’s contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Organization or any other guerrilla type organization or has engaged in any act of terrorism.”

And indeed, given the certain knowledge by this (and previous administrations) that UNRWA has members of Hamas and other terrorist organizations on its payroll (as UNRWA has admitted it has), that UNRWA facilities have in the past served as training centers for terrorist actions, and UNRWA employees have themselves conducted terror attacks, one could make the moral, if not the legal, argument that the administration is essentially engaged in “material support for terrorism.”

The fact that the administration’s intent is a humanitarian one, does not absolve them of the knowledge that funds and materials provided to UNRWA have in the past, and likely will in the future reach Hamas. That such assistance is intended for “humanitarian” aims does not absolve the U.S government of its responsibility, any more than it resolves the responsibility of organizations like the Holy Land Foundation, whose founders were criminally convicted of providing funds to Hamas.

Related to the Holy Land Foundation, is the land mark decision by 7^th Circuit court of appeals, in Boim v. Holy Land Foundation, where the court opined:

“But if you give money to an organization that you know to be engaged in terrorism, the fact that you earmark it for the organization’s nonterrorist activities does not get you off the liability hook….The reasons are twofold. The first is the fungibility of money. If Hamas budgets $2 million for terrorism and $2 million for social services and receives a donation of $100,000 for those services, there is nothing to prevent its using that money for them while at the same time taking $100,000 out of its social services “account” and depositing it in its terrorism ‘account’….Second, Hamas’s social welfare activities reinforce its terrorist activities both directly by providing economic assistance to the families of killed, wounded, and captured Hamas fighters and making it more costly for them to defect (they would lose the material benefits that Hamas provides them), and indirectly by enhancing Hamas’s popularity among the Palestinian population and providing funds for indoctrinating schoolchildren.”

We mention this, not to seriously suggest that the United States government could be legally held liable for its decision to contribute services and materials to UNRWA, some of which it must know or suspect will reach Hamas, but rather to establish that if the average citizen were to contribute funds to an organization, knowing with certainty that some of those funds or materials would go on to support a terrorist organization’s criminal or political activities, the outcome would be very different indeed.

One of the great ironies here, is that in the same week that the President announces the transfer of $400 million dollars to Gaza and the West Bank, the news broke big that the Department of Homeland Security intends to deport Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas Founder, and former Israeli counter-terrorism asset who used his position close to those in the Hamas top ranks to break up suicide bombings, prevent terror, and save lives. Why is he to be deported? Because during his time as an Israeli spy he had “provided material support to a [Tier I] terrorist organization…” according to the government.

While Hamas remains the ruler of the Gaza strip, there can be no doubt that the economic or financial aid to the area ultimately benefits them as the ruling party. While our consciences may dictate the distribution of basic humanitarian goods (such as the kind which Israel oversees the delivery of every day), they should likewise also prohibit us from supporting the infrastructure, finances, and economy of the territory from which Hamas wages its war to kill Jews. Our doing so makes no more sense than if during World War II, we announced a $50 million dollar fund to help repave the Autobahn.

While the situation in Gaza, and Hamas’ ongoing conflict with Israel make it the natural focus point for opposition to this funding,  President Mahmoud Abbas’ bold-faced lie that there is no incitement in the West Bank, ought to be addressed as well. The very fact that the man who said it heads a party which named a city square after a terrorist responsible for the bloodiest terror attack in Israeli history ought to have led to a field day for reporters, anxious to show up the statement for what it was.

It’s also worth asking whether the United States ought to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help improve the economy of the West Bank, when the Palestinian Authority just the previous month, announced a $50 million dollar fund to pay Palestinians to quit their jobs, if those jobs are in Jewish settlements.

The terrorism and violence generated by the incitement spread in Palestinian society by both Hamas, and Fatah, is not a problem which can be solved by throwing money at it. Indeed, to the contrary, it makes the problem that much worse. It convinces the Palestinian people that they should continue to assert the all or nothing approach to conquest of Israel that their school textbooks and religious sermons demand of them. All the while, the West seems glad to sit in the sidelines and not be moved by the abundance of evidence that many NGOs’ such as IMPACT, MEMRI and PMW have been providing for decades now, that the text books of the Palestinian schools have been replete with steady incitement to hate and to kill and to conquer all of Palestine.

Why is it that they are so moved by the staging of the Flotilla incident, yet blind itself to the real root cause of the conflict?

If this charade continues, our children and theirs will be condemned to live in a perpetual state of violence for generations to come.

As President John F. Kennedy once said, “Peace does not depend on signed documents and charters alone. But on what is in the hearts and minds of the people”

Tags: Hamas, Islamism, Israel, Sarah Stern, Terrorism, Turkey, U.N, U.S Policy