We hear a lot about the poor plight of Palestine.
However, there has likely not been a population of people in the world who have received more humanitarian aid but done less with it to advance humanity than Palestine.
Let's put that statement in some historical context.
After World War II, the United States developed an initiative called the Marshall Plan to provide economic support to help rebuild the European economies that had been devastated in the war. The funds were used to rebuild war-torn regions, modernize industry and make Europe prosperous again.
$13.3 billion was provided to the Europeans by the United States over fours years beginning in 1948. That would be around $173 billion in today's dollars.
18 European countries received the economic aid which was roughly divided on a per-capita basis but larger aid amounts were provided to the major economic powers of Western Europe (UK, France, West Germany) because it was believed that their revival was most crucial to the overall recovery of Europe.
At the time of the Marshall Plan, the populations of the European countries that received the aid was approximately 143.5 million.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, aid to Palestinians totaled over $40 billion between 1994 and 2020. Taking account of aid in the last three years and inflating the total amount to current dollars would equal about $50 billion.
This aid has flowed in from European and Arab countries in addition to Japan and the United States. One source puts the amount of aid from the United States to Palestine at over $5.2 billion since 1994. This aid was provided for a population that was about 2 million that lives in Gaza..
If you look at the money we have given the Palestinians since the mid-1990's, and compare it to the Marshall Plan, you really have to wonder where all the money went?
Did we get anything to advance the lives of Palestinians?
It seems that most of the money went for the tools of terrorism and to enrich the leadership of Hamas and the PLO
On a per capita basis, adjusted for inflation, Palestine has received 20 times more aid than the Europeans did to rebuild war-torn Western Europe under the Marshall Plan after World War II.
The Palestinians have received 20 times the money that was provided to rebuild Europe after World War II in per capita terms and the complaint is that Israel has been standing in the way of the progress of the Palestinian people?
Of course, despite all of this aid over the years, the average Palestinian continue to live in a state of poverty. New roads weren't built. Utilities are lacking. Economic infrastructure is non-existent. Much of the money seemingly was funneled to the tools of terror, to enrich the Hamas leadership and to teach the next generation of Palestinians to hate Israel and the Jews for their plight of poverty.
Timon Dias of the Gatestone Institute wrote an excellent article about all of this back in 2014 that provides some additional context on that question.
Dias quotes from a 2003 book by German sociologist Gunnar Heinshohn on a fundamental problem is the West's aid to Palestine through the United Nations Relief Fund for Palestine. (UNRWA).
Let me remind you that this was written 20 years ago.
Despite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year. By generously supporting UNRWA's budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in its own countries. Much is being said about Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza's untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war-by-proxy against the Jews of Israel.
If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.
If we make this urgently needed reform, then by at least 2025 many boys in Gaza -- as in Algeria -- would…be able to look forward to a more secure future in a less violent society.
We are in 2023 and absolutely nothing was done. 20 years of following the same failed policies and 20 years of growing more and more people who have been taught to hate Israel, Jews and the countries who have been funding all of this while Palestine's leaders built terror tunnels and enriched themselves.
To give you an idea of what it taught in those schools in Palestine that are funded by UNRWA take a look at this short video of interviews with Palestinian children.
This is what the United Nations is paying for and a lot of it has been with U.S. dollars?
I could not say it better than Dias did a decade ago..
If the entire Palestinian Authority leadership lives off an international welfare check that arrives only because the conflict still exists, there isn't much incentive for ending the conflict.
How much have those Hamas leaders siphoned off while their people live in poverty and they teach people to hate Israel?
The New York Post editorial board put some facts out there last week to consider.
The top three leaders of Hamas have $11 billion in combined net worth and don't even bother to live in Palestine.
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