Recently the EU and the US have cut aid to Palestine because the new governement elected there is Hamas. They are in such a financial state that they can’t afford to pay their civil servants (one can only surmise this is the fault of the previous government)
If they had been any other party. this wouldn’t have happened.
Particpating EU states and the US have been bleating on that a succesful Iraq would mean democracy would take hold in the Arab region. But then they show that they only like ‘their-type’ of democracy by deliberately undermining one of the few other democratic nations in the region So does the EU and US actually believe in democracy, or do they just believe in having a pliant governement installed, democratic or not? Or are they trying to nip in the bud a collapse of a democracy into a fascist state (1930s Germanyesque) by starving it of oxygen?
p.s. No arguments about whether Palestine is a nation please, keep that to another thread.
We do not economically support regimes sworn to annihilate our allies. The Arabs elected Hamas and now are facing huge economic problems. Israeli aid in the form of taxes is now cut, US and EU aid is cut. I knew this would happen. Here is the Hamas Charter. Carefully read it and then decide if the US is justified in cutting aid:
Please Note - MidEastWeb provides this document and introduction for your information. MidEastWeb does not support Hamas!!
Introduction
In 1987, the Arabs living in the territories occupied by Israeli in the 6-Day war began a series of riots and violent confrontations known as the Intifadeh, a movement quite independent from PLO leadership. Soon after, Islamic militants founded the Hamas movement. The movement was formed from the Mujama movement, which had been a political party with no military ambitions that was given some encouragement by Israel earlier in the decade, as a means of countering the influence of the PLO, and perhaps because the opposition of the Hamas to an international conference that would adjudicate the problem of Palestine, coincided with the policies of the Begin and Shamir governments.
The Hamas has a ‘military’ wing or wings that engages in terrorist acts and a ‘civilian’ wing that supposedly confines itself to education and ‘good works,’ Israel successively assassinated its leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Sheikh Ahmed Rantissi, forcing the leadership underground. However, in January of 2006, candidates representing the Hamas swept to victory in Palestinian elections, overcoming the traditional leadership of the Fateh and PLO.
Click here for details of Hamas history.
The principles of the Hamas are stated in their Covenant or Charter, given in full below. Following are highlights.
[size=200]“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
Good. I think we need to cut more foreign aid. I mean we need that money in our country. If no money comes back in there’s no reason to put the money out. Of coarse there may be exceptions, but we give out too much money as it is. I mean the people of Iraq have free US sanctioned health care yet the number one cause for bankrupcy in America is health care.
Outside is not where our financial priorities need to be. We’re already in enough debt as it is.
This statement is grounded on the feeble foundation that ‘what it has to do’ is cater to (what Future Man would call) illogical greed. To achieve this end the corporations must (and have) rise higher than the governments in order to control them. With groups like The Carlyle Group putting fucking shitheads like Bush into office you see how this goal is already being met.
The problem is within ourselves, because we just sit by watching ‘Sex and the City’ and forgetting about shit like Enron. The solution -could- lie in the corporations. The ones who have probably just been alerted by some peice of code somewhere because I dropped the C word. They could start a radical paradigm shift, one of intelligence and liberation, of freedom and a new self defined spirituality.
But they won’t. Why?
Cause they’re a bunch of scared old geezers. It’s so fucking sad it makes me want to cry.
Okay admittedly there are two sides to every story and sometimes large companies do things that we may not agree with but serve the greater importance of that company. But that doesn’t excuse everything.
Politics can’t regulate a multi-national corperation. All we can do is regulate bussiness being done in our country. We can’t regulate inconcevably low pay rates in third world countries, nor can our government regulate the amount of pollution and poison we pump into other countries.
Despite what you or anyone else might think one country cannot police the world. And because of the laws concerning corperations when something does happen there is no one person to be held accountable. When no one is held accoutable no is to blame and when no one feels responsible all morals go out the window and the sole interest becomes greed.
Completely unintentional, though I should pretend otherwise for the kudos
Who’s the ‘we’ here? Are you a policy maker in the American government?
Anyway, you miss the entire point and muddle party politics and government. The Hamas party may be sworn to do that, but the Palestinian NATION isn’t. There’s a big difference.
The point is, just because the Palestinians elected a party whom they believed would be more effective at acheiving their needs, they have subsequently been punished for exercising their rare ability in the region to have a democratic vote.
This is hypocritical in my eyes, if, as a nation, you commit to spreading democracy and freedom, but on the otherhand punish a democracy you help setup because they didn’t choose your preferred candidate. It shows that your belief in democracy is shallow and I could speculate what they really want is anyone who just agrees with them, democratic or not.
Furthermore, by alienating this particular government, they may cause it to hold onto power in Palestine for a long while if persecuted as they can blame their failure on conspiracy instead of ineptitude.
Finally, as demonstrated by the Nortern Ireland peace process, engaging the participients is better than alienating them.
So this move, on the very basic level of ‘you hate my mate, so I don’t like you’, seems to make sense. However, on the far more mature level of diplomacy and healing the rifts in the region it sends out entirely the wrong signals of ‘we only care about Israel, if you don’t do what we say, you’re screwed’. A policy which the US has been happily persuing for many years, apart from a brief change in the Clinton era which never had a chance to get off the ground, and which has been shown, particularly by the Sept 11 attacks, to be wrong.
What worries me most is that somehow the EU has got involved in this crazy move.
