NEWSMAX 14 May 2021 03:51 PM
Israeli border police swing their batons at Muslim worshippers to prevent them from gathering for Friday prayers at the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
The Biden administration notified Congress this week that it will send millions of dollars in U.S. assistance to the Palestinians aimed at promoting peace with Israel even as violence between the two sides rages.
As the conflict intensifies despite U.S. calls for restraint, the administration notified Congress on Thursday that it will provide $10 million to Palestinian groups in the West Bank and Gaza to support exchange and reconciliation projects with Israelis. The recipients of the aid were not named.
The State Department said Friday that the money is part of more than $100 million that the administration allocated to the Palestinians earlier this year, reversing a near total cutoff in support under former President Donald Trump.
In a notice to lawmakers obtained by The Associated Press, the U.S. Agency for International Development said the $10 million would go to support “people-to-people efforts to bring together conflict-affected groups to address divisions that may be rooted in group differences such as ethnicity, religion, status, class, or political affiliation in areas affected by conflict and civil war.”
It said the money would be spent mainly on cross-border projects between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, but might also include programs for Jews and Arabs living in Israel.
The fighting between the two sides has been intensifying, with rocket attacks from Hamas militants in Gaza on Israel and increasing retaliation from the Israeli military. Violence between Arabs and Jews within Israel has also been increasing.
The Biden administration has made no secret of its belief that Trump’s approach to the Mideast, which alienated the Palestinians, was flawed and made prospects for peace less likely. The administration has announced $130 million in assistance to the Palestinians, which appears aimed at encouraging them to return to negotiations with Israel.
Biden is a jerk to promise or send money to combatants or foreign based NGOs that simple leak money to combatants during a conflict. It will simply prolong the conflicts. During war everyone takes a side. We’ve seen the ‘reconciliation’ nonsense before, all the Rev. Tutu South African phony trials. It’s all based on the SA apartheid model superimposed on this conflict and is irrelevant to the positions of the participants.
Al-Jazeera and other Arab newspapers say there have been hundreds of Palestinian “demonstrations” in the “West Bank,” in which the Palestinians hurled rocks at Israeli soldiers. It also claims that ten Palestinian “demonstrators” were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers responding to these attacks, and over a hundred wounded by both live ammunition and rubber bullets fired by the Israeli soldiers.
Al-Jazeera and othe Arab press sources claim that 15 Arab civilians, including 13 “children,” were killed in two Israeli bombings of buildings in a “refugee camp.” This report was also in yesterday’s AP-Google dispatch from Gaza, with all sorts of heart-rending details about the children’s toys and games, uneaten food, etc. found in the rubble. AP also made a point of the bombing was carried out on al-Fitr day, while the allegedly innocent families were gathered to celebrate with family feasts.
I have no idea how much of this is true. But if these events did happen, the IDF is much at fault for failing to provide explanations and context to the foreign and Israeli press. If these events or some of them are complete fabrications, which is possible, then the IDF should have issued indignant denials.
Israel’s failure to engage in vigorous counter-propaganda actually threatens it continued existence more than any terrorist or military efforts by the Arabs and Iranians. The international isolation that anti-Israel propaganda has inflicted on Israel is likely to only grow worse with the passage of time. At some point, unless vigorous efforts are made to oppose and discredit it, it will deprive Israel both of the weapons and the economic resources needed to defend itself.
The left compared Trump to hitler, yet what Biden and his malicious anti-Semitic administration is doing to Israel, makes BIDEN comparable to hitler. This treacherous administration is purposely causing things to unravel in the Middle East. And as a bonus for them they destroy Trump’s Abraham Accords legacy.