Posted on 01/21/2018 7:56:26 AM PST by Signalman
When President Donald Trump suggested on Twitter earlier this month that he might cut off aid to the terror-affiliated Palestinians, whom former President Barack Obama had coddled like children, he meant every word of it — and more.
This week the State Department announced it intends to not only withhold $45 million in aid to the Palestinians, but also an additional “$65 million it had planned to pay the U.N. agency that serves the Palestinians,” according to Reuters.
That agency is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
Below is Trump’s original tweet:
It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018
As a reminder, in 2015 alone the Obama administration gave UNRWA a whopping $380 million, $20 million of which went toward “Gaza Recovery & Reconstruction,” according to its own financial records.
“At this time, we will not be providing that, but that does not mean — I want to make it clear — that does not mean that it will not be provided in the future,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this week, referencing the $45 million originally meant for the Palestinians.
She appeared to be hinting that President Donald Trump might reconsider if and when the Palestinians stop behaving like spoiled children.
It would help too were the Palestinian Authority to stop treating convicted terrorists as martyrs. For instance, The Jerusalem Post notes that the PA “paid terrorists and their families over $347 million last year.”
“The PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to 20 years or more in prison — in other words, those who committed more severe crimes, and likely were involved in killing Israelis — five times that each month for the rest of their lives.”
Regarding the $65 million originally planned for UNRWA, Nauert demanded the agency be reformed and further called on other countries to help out as well.
“So we’re asking countries to do more,” she said. “Fundamentally, we just don’t believe that we have to be the chief donor to every organization around the world.”
Interestingly, other countries that were previously hesitant about pitching in have already begun sending money to UNRWA because of the Trump administration’s willingness to stand up for itself.
“Belgium on Wednesday pledged to allocate $23 million to UNRWA, the UN agency for ‘Palestinian refugees’, following the U.S. decision to cut by half the funding it provides to the agency,” Arutz Sheva revealed this week.
That said, some maintain that both the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA should be permanently defunded. UNRWA has previously been caught promoting antisemitism to impressionable children, while the Palestinians have likewise been busted engaging in every form of terrorism imaginable against the Israeli people.
These are neither our friends nor our allies, so why treat them otherwise, especially now that Barack Obama is out of office?
Great going, DJT!
Defunding countries that do not support America should be common sense.
Even fairy tale countries like Palestine
I was thinking the same thing!
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