Obama Funds Terrorism

  FrontPageMagazine.com

By Rachel Ehrenfeld

The Obama administration militarizes the Palestinians.

The May 28 meeting between President Barak Obama and Palestinian Authority 
leader, Mahmoud Abbas, confirms that this Administration, like its 
predecessors, refuses to learn from the past.

In yet another dj-vu, the U.S. unconditional support to the Palestinians is 
persisting despite the fact that the Palestinians have never upheld any 
agreement to stop the violence against Israel.

Not even the economic downturn and financial instability in the U.S. have 
curtailed the Obama Administrations financing of Palestinian terrorism.

A day after the Obama  Netanyahu meeting, U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary 
Rodham Clinton, reassured Al Jazeera viewers, that the Obama Administration is 
not waiting.

In addition to the $900 million the Administration offered the Palestinians on 
March 2, it is working to speed the establishment of regular Palestinian 
military and security forces. The U.S. has already trained 1,500 Palestinian 
soldiers costing the recession gripped American taxpayer $161 million. These 
newly trained forces says Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, U.S. security coordinator for 
Israel and the PA, are new men, unlike the thousands trained by the U.S. since 
the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994.

The scheme behind the U.S. military initiative to organize and train the PA 
military forces is that these new men would help Abbas defeat Hamas. However, 
Abbas had already indicated that he has agreed in principle to form a joint 
security force with Hamas. This does not seem to phase Dayton, who insists that 
the new men are on a mission to "create a Palestinian state."

Abu Yusef, a member of the PA Chairmans own security unit - Force 17, has an 
unambiguous view of the American military training of the Palestinians: The 
operations of the Palestinian resistance would [not] have been so successful 
and "would not have killed more than 1,000 Israelis since 2000 and defeated the 
Israelis in Gaza without [American military] trainings, he boasted in an 
interview in August 2007. "All the methods and techniques that we studied in 
these trainings, we applied them against the Israelis," he said.

Abu Yusef explained that the American training helped the Palestinian forces to 
better snipe at Israeli settlers and soldiers. The special intelligence 
training they received from the U.S. instructors helped them collect 
information on the movements of soldiers and settlers the best timing to 
infiltrate our bombers inside Israel. Abu Yusef specified: We used weapons and 
we produced explosives, and of course the trainings we received from the 
Americans and the Europeans were a great help to the resistance."

If the past is any indication, then the new men would join thousands of already 
well-trained and well-equipped Palestinians whose main goal remained to fight 
Israel. Yet, the U.S. is determined to expedite the training.

Furthermore, on May 27, a day before Obamas meeting with Abbas, in a move to 
protect Hamas terrorists, the U.S. blocked Israels request for the AH-64D 
Apache Longbow attack helicopter, worried that the helicopters would threaten 
Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

While Mrs. Clinton assured the House Appropriations Committee: "No aid will 
flow to Hamas or any entity controlled by Hamas," PA Prime Minister and Finance 
Minister Salem Fayyad acknowledged many times that controlling Palestinian 
finances "is virtually impossible."

Furthermore, last February, despite Fatah-Hamas bloody disagreements, Fayyad 
diverted $21.5 million sent from Israel to pay PA employees salaries, to Hamas 
controlled Gaza, supposedly to rebuild buildings destroyed during Operation 
Cast Lead. This and millions of dollars Fayyad receives from Israel to pay the 
rapidly growing numbers of alleged PA employees in Gaza, pays Hamas loyalists 
instead. In addition, Hamas taxes the PA salaries and keeps the money in Gaza. 
All this amounts to extra millions of dollars each month to Hamas.

In December 2007, soon after Hamas takeover of Gaza, international donors 
pledged $7.4 billion to the PA to help it fight Hamas. This did not stop Fayyad 
who declared the PA would give Hamas 40% ($3.1 billion) of the funds. The PA 
did not get all that money, because most donors refused to send money to Hamas.

The $4.5 billion - $5.2 billion pledged in March 2009 to rebuild Gaza is held 
up for similar reason. But Mrs. Clinton insists the U.S. has worked with the 
Palestinian Authority to install safeguards that will ensure our funding is 
only used where and for whom it is intended and does not end up in the wrong 
hands."

It seems that Mrs. Clinton is impressed with the PAs much touted anti money 
laundering programs, while ignoring the PAs actions of sending clean money into 
the hands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

The newly pledged international aid to the Palestinians would amount to $1,125- 
$1,300 dollars to each of the 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. 
This is on top of hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid sent by 
Israel, the U.S., European Union (EU), Saudi Arabia, Iran and other 
international organizations to Hamas controlled Gaza, since December 2008.

In comparison, from 2003 to 2006 each of 2.5 million Darfur refugees received 
only $100 per person annually from the U.S. Agency for International 
Development (USAID).

As not to leave Obama in the dark for his meeting with Abbas on Thursday, May 
28, the PA representative to the negotiations with Israel, Ahmed Qureia (Abu 
Ala), told the Israeli Daily Haaretz on May 26: It's not fair to demand that we 
recognize you [Israel] as the state of the Jewish peopleOur refusal is 
adamant."

Instead of demanding the Palestinians officially recognize Israel, Obama placed 
the burden of the progress of Middle East peace on Israel.

Alas, such persistent statements and increasing violence against Israel since 
the creation of the PA in 1994 never stopped any American Administration from 
investing billions of dollars into the creation of a well armed and trained 
radical Muslim Palestinian state. As with other failed entities, the Obama 
Administration seems resolute to bail out yet another losing venture - the 
Palestinian terrorist state.

Dr. Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is director of the American Center for Democracy 
(http://www.acdemocracy.org) and author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is 
Financed and How to Stop It 
(http://www.amazon.com/Funding-Evil-Updated-Terrorism-Financed/dp/1566252318, 
and a member of The Committee on the Present Danger 
(http://www.committeeonthepresentdanger.org/)