The Bugman Strikes!

Tom Delay is making me hard to hate him 100%. Why is it that he decided to do this and not the Democrats?

Israelis and Palestinians alike owe a debt of gratitude to US House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Because of DeLay, last week Washington was forced, at least perfunctorily, to engage in a debate that in spite of the more than four-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian terror war, it had until now refused to countenance. It revolves around a single question: Does the Palestinian Authority need financial assistance?

Until now, it has been taken on faith that of course the PA needs money. After all, the Palestinian economy has failed. Unemployment among Palestinians reaches "all-time highs" every month. But will this economic disaster be mitigated by the infusion of billions of dollars of aid into the PA's budget as "everyone who is anyone" seems to think?[...]

Aside from the direct involvement of Abbas and his cronies in grand larceny for their personal enrichment is the fact that over the past 11 years, since the PA was formed as a repository of international aid dollars, millions of dollars in additional funds for the PA and relief institutions have been diverted from development programs to terrorism. Even today Fatah terrorists are paid salaries from the PA. Abbas now wants to extend the terrorist support program by putting Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists on the PA payroll as part of his much-vaunted "reform" program.

Given the PA's endemic corruption – from petty theft to grand larceny – and the fact that much of the stolen monies have gone to financing terrorism, both the Palestinian people and the Israeli people owe a debt of gratitude to DeLay for his efforts over the past several weeks which prevented the transfer of $200 million in direct American government payments to the PA.

DeLay bucked heads with the Bush administration, the Israeli Embassy, AIPAC and its new partner, Peace Now, and with Jewish members of Congress in order to make sure that none of the $200 million dollars that the Bush Administration promised to the Palestinians last month will be transferred to the PA budget. All these groups believed, as Labor Party Minister Matan Vilna'i told the Forward newspaper last week, that "Abbas should have some discretion over deciding which projects are funded. It is important that he is perceived as having control – at least of some of the funds – in order to strengthen his authority – to empower him."

That is, all those who attack DeLay believe that "in the interests of peace" the US should support the continuation of the PA's kleptocratic, terror-supporting tyranny over Palestinian society.

That the Israeli government has been pushing Congress to approve direct aid to the PA is made all the more ironic by the fact that the Foreign Ministry launched a strenuous protest of the EU's announcement last week that, in spite of mountains of documentary evidence Israel provided, Brussels could not conclusively determine if some of the billions of dollars it has transferred to the PA since 1994 have been used to finance terrorism.

It is reassuring to know that in this period during which Israeli policy has become near-schizophrenic and the Bush administration appears convinced – in spite of all evidence – that Abbas is a man who can be trusted, at least one powerful man in Washington is not buying into the current peace charade.

We shall see what comes of this situation.