From an opinion by Lee Kaplan in Arutz Sheva Mar 15, '06 / 15 Adar 5766 . . . .
The Hamas win in the Palestinian elections really changed nothing in the so-called "peace process". All it really did was clarify in simple language what the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its leadership have sought through deception and forced America to face reality. The election results could be a boon for the American taxpayer, who has been fleeced unceasingly since 1993 to support a terrorist protection racket masquerading as a "nationalist movement".
... Hamas has been regarded as separate from Fatah and the PLO, but both terrorist organizations signed an agreement in 1996 agreeing to work together, making Hamas a de facto part of the PLO.
... Created in the mid-1950s by the late secular, pan-Arab nationalist Gamel Abdul-Nasser of Egypt, it solidified into a terrorist movement and protection racket .... The PLO's purpose was to work with the Arab League that herded Arab refugees from the 1948 war with Israel into camps, where they could fester until Israel's Jews were finally displaced for another Arab state in Israel's place. An umbrella group composed of different factions with the same goal - destroying Israel. (For example, the PFLP faction is composed of Christian Arabs and communists, Fatah is largely secular but mainly Islamic. The Muslim fundamentalists of Hamas are newer.)
The "right of return" is a non-negotiable theme that maintains these refugees can never be assimilated into the Arab world. Since 1948, Arabs who were forced to be "Palestinians" have left the camps, but had to tithe their income to Arafat. The tithes were collected by the governments of any Arab state where they were living only as alien residents.
Meanwhile, the United States and other Western nations' taxpayers helped support those in the refugee camps. The Arab League's donations were always minimal and PLO money usually spent on training and weapons.
From 1964 on, Palestinian terrorism became a protection racket, as Saudi billionaires and the Arab League paid the PLO to roil the conflict with Israel's Jews and keep their own impoverished populations distracted from their leaders' personal opulence.
The PLO became a big business during those years, renting itself out to the Soviet Union and KGB and allying itself to revolutionary causes from the IRA to the Basque Separatist Movement to Castro's Cuba by providing training by its military wing.
The PLO also went into legitimate businesses. By the 1970s, the PLO established SAMED, an Arabic acronym for Palestinian Martyr's Sons Enterprises. SAMED is actually a worldwide conglomerate swimming in money. Its portfolio includes farms, restaurants, retail stores, factories and even oil refineries. It holds real estate investments in France, Spain and England, and owns several newspapers. It even has controlling interest in a Monte Carlo radio station. The portfolio also includes large amounts of money invested in Wall Street and in stock exchanges in Tokyo, Paris and Frankfurt, including a large share of Mercedes Benz. Airlines in the Maldives, Caledonia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nicaragua, and duty free shops all over Africa are also in the portfolio, since they serve as covers for moving terrorists around and providing them travel documents - all while turning a profit.
Mandatory tithing to Arafat by Palestinians living in other Arab states generated some $50 million dollars a year, while the Saudis and Gulf States donated billions of dollars to the PLO. Intelligence agencies have estimated that the PLO added $5 million dollars per day to its coffers during the 1970s and '80s, and British National Criminal Intelligence Services in 1994 estimated the PLO's net worth at $10 billion dollars.
Besides SAMED, the Palestine Commercial Services Company today has a monopoly in flour, cement, cigarettes, oil and construction material in the Palestinian Authority. The Palestine Development and Investment Company (PADICO) controls 93% of all investments in the emerging "State of Palestine".The PLO even expanded its operations to the illicit drug trade. Sallagh Dabbagh, the PLO former treasurer, stated, "The entire future of the PLO operation for liberation may hinge on our exporting more drugs around the world." Other illegal enterprises included counterfeiting US currency, money laundering, arms smuggling, murders for hire and even bank robberies. The Guinness Book of World Records estimated PLO-organized bank robberies in Europe netted in excess of 100 million dollars. Despite all this, the PLO was still raking it in at the height of the "peace process".
Direct aid and funds through non-governmental organizations exceeding at least $125 million a month, for only 3.2 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, came from the US, the EU and the Arab League (that only gives nominally). PLO leaders, though, were buying and smuggling guns to destroy Israel, while rewarding Arafat's wife an annuity worthy of a potentate.
This doesn't include millions in UN funds for UNWRA, the United Nations Welfare Relief Agency, that is run not by the UN, but by the Palestinians themselves. UN aid estimates that Palestinians received $300 a year per person in handouts as "refugees", the highest figure given any refugees in the world.
.... President George Bush has yet to strongly censure Saudi aid to Hamas, and even walked hand in hand with Crown Prince Abdullah at Crawford.So, President Bush's announcement that the US will not give aid to Hamas may be good news, if it finally gives the US taxpayer a break. Condoleezza Rice, however, has discussed possibly giving foreign aid money to "non-governmental" organizations in the Palestinian Authority, instead of to the Hamas-led government.
It's time to turn off the spigot.
It is up to the American taxpayer to stand up for once and say to our own government, "Not one more dime!" for a terrorist protection movement that already is swimming in money, but prefers not to disburse it to its people. This year's projected US taxpayer handouts to the Palestinians are said to be 224 million dollars, considerably less than the 600 million dollars President Bush wanted to give them.
That's 224 million dollars for American schools, roads and infrastructure that should be withheld from the Palestinian Arabs for two reasons:
1) They don't really need it and can obtain funding from the caches of their leadership (or throw them out for good); and
2) The American taxpayer is tired of being ripped off by a terrorist racket that is not serious about peace.
Lee Kaplan is senior intelligence analyst with the Northeast Intelligence Network and a contributor to Front Page Magazine. He is also the national director of Dafka.org and heads Stop the ISM.
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