PrintFebruary 13, 2008
Palestinian Chutzpah
Reading about the Palestinian Authority asking the State Department to intervene on the PA's side in lawsuits brought against it by U.S. victims of Palestinian terrorism - on grounds that it makes no sense for the U.S. to provide millions of dollars of aid to the PA while U.S. courts might bankrupt the PA - I was reminded of the famous joke defining chutzpah as the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy as an orphan.
What do you call a political body that has used its money for terrorism and then pleads it cannot pay damages to those it has harmed because it needs the money?
What do you call a political body that has been promised $7.4 billion in international aid to fight terrorism and then pleads poverty to meet its legal obligations relating to terrorism?
What do you call a political body receiving hundreds of millions of dollars of aid from the United States -- in this year alone -- who then asks the U. S. government to help it avoid paying damages it owes to U.S. victims of that political body's terrorism?
What do you call a political body whose voters elect their premier terrorist group to control their government and then "recommit" at Annapolis to a plan in which they promise to dismantle their terrorist groups?
What do you call a political body who has (at last count) approximately 80,000 "security forces," whose training was overseen by a U.S. general and his staff for more than two years, who could not hold on to Gaza for more than a week against Palestinian terrorists, but who thinks it should be given the right to try again in the West Bank?
What do you call a political body whose people were formally offered a state in 1937 (by the Peel Commission), 1947 (by the United Nations), 2000 (by Israel at Camp David) and 2001 (by the Clinton Parameters), and who rejected the offer each time in favor of war, but who promise peace if they are just given a state?
What do you call a political body who, like the orphan in the old joke, has only itself to blame for its present predicament, but uses its present predicament to seek mercy and money?
You call it the Palestinian Authority. Israel's Peace Partner Since 1993TM
Rick Richman is the proprietor of Jewish Current Issues
