Obamunism and Other People’s Money

The president of the United States, meeting today with Mahmoud Abbas, the “president” of the Palestinian Authority, announced in his familiar Obamic jargon that the “situation in Gaza is unsustainable” and the U.S. will “move forward” with a $400 million aid package

. . . that will help increase access to clean drinking water, create jobs, build schools, expand the availability of affordable housing, and address critical health and infrastructure needs.  These initiatives result directly from the advocacy and guidance of President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, whose leadership is making a difference for the Palestinian people, in Gaza as well as the West Bank. 

Whence this hefty wad of cash to drop upon the unsustainable Gazans and the Israel-inimical West Bankers?  Will a Congress spooked by an increasingly disgusted mob of anti-incumbent voters approve it? Probably, because Mr. Obama and Nancy Pelosi still own enough Members—and after all, it’s “humanitarian.” But golly, that’s a hell of a lot of drinking water to set flowing, as it were, from the taps of recession-straitened American taxpayers into the cupped hands of the Hamas murderers who run Gaza. And speaking of Gaza, how will Abbas, who dares not show his face there (and for that matter rarely appears in the West Bank, either, preferring his home in Jordan to his “homeland” in “Palestine”), and Fayyad, who is occupying himself in the West Bank with building the foundation of a state (on the off chance his “Palestinian” brethren may someday give up their longing for a Judenrein land and statehood actually come to them)—how exactly will these two, one useless and the other engaged elsewhere, administer the Gaza end of this deal?

Here’s where some of our hard-won greenbacks will go:  $75 million “to support the Palestinian Authority’s work to improve infrastructure throughout the West Bank and Gaza.” Yeah, see above: Palestinian Authority not administering an outhouse in Gaza, let alone “infrastructure.” “$10 million in USAID-funded activities aimed at enhancing the Palestinian private sector’s competitiveness.” Which speaks for itself and says nothing. $14.5 million will go for “USAID projects for school rehabilitation, small-scale agriculture, the repair of a hospital facility and other community infrastructure in Gaza.” Remember those thriving greenhouses the Israelis left behind in Gaza after disengagement that the Arabs chose to destroy? “$10 million for the construction of five new UNRWA schools in Gaza.” Throw enough money at UNRWA and perhaps it will agree at last to include the Holocaust in the curriculum it offers Gazan schoolchildren. $240 million for a “mortgage finance program in the West Bank, which is designed to increase homeownership by offering long-term mortgages at fixed and variable rates.” Um . . . Fanny Mae, anyone? Franklin Raines? Chris Dodd?

Mr. Obama reserves his tears for the wholly undeserving: the anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Semitic citizens of the world. He sheds none—not even of the crocodile variety—for the strapped, foreclosed, persevering, marvelous, patriotic citizens of his own country.