On June 30, 2021, I published an essay for this blog to ask a question: who oppresses Palestinians, Israeli Jews or the world's "Progressives"? (here). App 18 hours later, Palestinian-born Bassam Eid published his own version of this topic (here). The title of his essay was, "It's time Illhan Omar and "the Squad" learned the truth about Israel and Hamas".
Mr Eid was born in a Palestinian refuge camp. He reads, writes and speaks Arabic, English and Hebrew. He knows how Palestinians live. He knows how--and why-they suffe
I want to tell you about his essay because, while I feel I can comfortably write about the human rights violations--and lies--of the Palestinian Authority (PA), it is quite another thing to hear the same thing from a native-born Palestinian
After a brief introduction, Mr Eid turns his attention to his essay's real subject. He begins with,
"Politicians like Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spend a considerable amount of time attacking Israel for the supposed harm it inflicts on Palestinian Arabs. If they truly care about the wellbeing (sic) of Palestinians, they ought to focus their attention elsewhere. These days, the vast majority of suffering Palestinians experience is the direct result of the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and the influence of the terrorist group Hamas" (ibid).
While this was my own focus in the June 30, essay, Mr Eid elaborates on it. He speaks of PA corruption as one who has seen it from the inside. It is quite a story.
Where does corruption reveal itself in the PA? In a word, everywhere. It affects every aspect of Palestinian life (ibid). It cripples the economy, mostly, he suggests, by keeping jobs within the control of PA bureaucrats: you cannot get a job without PA approval.
Jobs, you see, are hard to come by in the PA. The PA has no true modern 'economy'. Instead, most jobs are not created by the marketplace. Jobs are based on connections, not qualifications (or education).
Eid cites as one recent example of corruption in the PA the fact that corona vaccinations were cornered first by bureaucrats, not medical workers or the elderly. He asserts that the PA has finally admitted this to be the case. Who vaccinated these bureacrats? Unvaccinated medical workers. Nice.
Turning to human rights violations, he describes how Hamas uses child soldiers (here). Hamas recruits and trains children in organized 'summer camps' to teach them how to kill and kidnap Israelis (ibid).
Teaching children these particular skills is a human rights crime. Doesn't matter. The world's "Progressive" news outlets apparently saw nothing wrong with this behavior. Not one of them condemned it (ibid).
Eid says that calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (through the BDS movement) against Israel simply does not create positive change for Palestinians. It has the reverse effect.
The real anti-Palestinian culprits in the region, it would seem, is not Israel. Israel helps Palestinians. It hires some 100,000+ Palestinians each day.
Boycotting Israeli companies for political reasons does and has hurt Palestinian workers, not helped them (here). For example, the company called, Sodastream, once had its main factory in what is called, the West Bank. It employed dozens, if not hundreds, of Palestinian workers--paying Israeli wages to them.
Compared to PA wages, these were excellent jobs for Palestinians. But the company was placed under intense pressure from the BDS movement --because the factory was located in the West Bank; an Israeli company in the West Bank is anathema to the Palestinian Cause.
So pressured, Sodastream closed the factory. It moved to another, less controversial part of Israel.
The result? Dozens, perhaps hundreds of Palestinians, lost their jobs. No "Progressive" company anywhere in the world offered to open a similarly-paying factory for the displaced employees. Not one.
These Palestinian employees were out of luck. They were hurt by their "Progressive" friends, not helped.
To borrow a phrase from someone else (writing about another topic), I can confidently--if indiscreetly--suggest to you that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas has "a long history of incompetence, nepotism, mismanagement and corruption" (here). In fact (in my opinion), Abbas's political behavior vis-a-vis Israel has for years demonstrated that he is nothing more than a diplomatic version of a (proverbial) bomb-throwing, feces-flinging, Jew-hating hysteric (paraphrased and borrowed from here).
This truth about Mahmoud Abbas is no secret. We even saw yet another example of this recently (here).
When things in the PA get too quiet, or when anti-Abbas sentiment rises too high, Abbas can be counted upon to stir his Israel-hate 'pot'. He smears Israel--and expects the chatter he creates to change the political atmosphere in the PA from an anti-Abbas climate to an anti-Israel climate. His anti-Israelism seems at times such as these more cynical than real.
For anyone in the West to support such a political monster suggests either a kind of willful political blindness that comes from an inbred Jew-hate--or, perhaps, from plain stupidity instead. In either case, any suggestion that Abbas is a leader qualified to lead anybody to help his own people should be disregarded out-of-hand. Bassam Eid's essays simply opens the door a little wider to this horrific revelation.
You can see more of Mr Eid's views on the truth about both the PA and Hamas here, here, here and here.
Mahmoud Abbas receives billions of US dollars and Euros from donors in the EU and elsewhere, to do what? To line his own pockets as the PA itself turns into a living hell for his people (here)? Or, to buy his own 50-million dollar 737 (or equivalent) private jet while Palestinian children threaten to starve (here)?
Abbas cries to the world about those "Apartheid Israelis", and attracts billions in annual donations so he can 'help' his people. But he uses these donations first to pay Jew-killers a life-time monthly income (his pay-to-slay program)--and then splurges on some 50 million-dollar private jet?
Abbas validates the dirty, corrupt truth about himself each and every year with some outrageous action or other. How do the "Progressives" of the world react? They react by gathering at his door with smiles, cheers and accolades--while a neglected PA economy collapses into an economic sh**hole.
Bassam Eid is correct. People like Omar Illhan, Rashida Tlaib, et al ("Progressives" all) don't know a single thing about Palestinian life under Abbas. Here's a question: is calling out these "Progressives" for their ignorance the same thing as calling them 'cruel liars who hurt the very people they say they want to help'?
I think so. What do you think?
More important, if these "Progressives" actually hurt the people they say they want to help, what do you think is their real purpose--to help Palestinians, or to destroy them?
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