USAID; It’s our Money
In 2002, USAID began to require a pledge from recipients of American aid not to “provide material support or resources to any individual or entity that advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in or has engaged in terrorist activity.”
If you want American tax dollars, you can’t use it to engage in terrorism. “You are with us or you are with the terrorists,” the President said. If you are “with us” you can have aid money. If you are “with the terrorists” you can’t. That seems reasonable.
In 2002, USAID began to require a pledge from recipients of American aid not to “provide material support or resources to any individual or entity that advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in or has engaged in terrorist activity.”
If you want American tax dollars, you can’t use it to engage in terrorism. “You are with us or you are with the terrorists,” the President said. If you are “with us” you can have aid money. If you are “with the terrorists” you can’t. That seems reasonable.
Unless you are Palestinian. Over the past decade, USAID has provided Palestinian groups with $1.3 billion in aid courtesy of American taxpayers, but an umbrella group that includes 89 Palestinian aid groups is refusing to sign. They have two ostensible concerns: they don’t want to “unwittingly” fund projects of any of the 25 groups that USAID identifies as “terrorist” (including Hamas and Islamic Jihad); and they don’t accept that the U.S. gets to decide what groups constitute terrorist organizations. According to a news report, Siam Rashid of the NGO network said, “Identifying most of the Palestinian factions as terrorist groups is unacceptable.”
No it isn’t. It’s what we do. It’s our money and we don’t want to spend it on people who as a matter of policy blow up children in buses and pregnant women in cafes.
The Palestinian Red Crescent refused to sign and gave up about $300,000 in annual funding. “We would like to take funds from them, but without any conditions,” said deputy director Faiq Hussein. We bet he would – but less American money for phony ambulances ferrying explosives and operatives through checkpoints is good thing.
Frankly, we aren’t surprised at the Palestinians. They have been nothing if not clear about what they want. They do not separate themselves into terrorists and civilized people and they don’t want us to do it either. They do not separate themselves from the people who harbor, support, train, direct, pay and manage terrorists and they don’t want us to do it either. They want our government to consider the PA a legitimate interlocutor. They want to use our money to maintain a terrorist infrastructure, schools and medical services dripping with hatred for the United States, Israel and our values.
What surprised us is the American response. According to the Associated Press, USAID spokeswoman “Monica Pataki said the organization has not decided how to deal with the Palestinian refusal.”
We hope that means USAID hasn’t decided whether to explain why Americans are tired of people who want our money while they decide how to kill our friends and us BEFORE we cut off their funds or AFTER we cut off their funds.
But we don’t think so.