When the Truth is Inconvenient...

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny


The left ignores it...

New York Post - While in Israel, Mitt Romney said something every sane person knows to be true: There is great cultural and political meaning in the fact that Israel has prospered while the Palestinians have festered.

“Culture,” Romney said, “makes all the difference . . . you notice a dramatic, stark difference in economic vitality.”

He didn’t specify what he meant by “culture,” but you can take your pick.

You want a political culture that works to create conditions under which an economy can thrive? Since signing the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, Israel has spent two decades working to unshackle its economy from its socialist roots, with remarkable results.

The Palestinians? They’ve created what the House Foreign Affairs Committee has called a “chronic kleptocracy,” with foreign aid and investment shamelessly stolen and diverted to the bank accounts of the leaders of the Palestinian Authority and its gangsterish local strongmen.

According to Jim Zanotti of the Congressional Research Service, Uncle Sam has given the Palestinians $5 billion since 1994. We might as well have lit a match to most of it. It hasn’t gotten to the people who might’ve used it best; it’s simply served as personal financial lubricant for the folks in power.

You want a healthy social culture? The Middle East Media Research Institute has spent decades detailing the diseased messages emanating from Palestinian TV and textbooks, instructing children in the glories of suicide terrorism against innocent Israelis.

You want a culture where citizens are free to express themselves and so live in the openness necessary to the functioning of a successful economy? Israel has a free press, much of it openly hostile to the parties in power. The Palestinian Authority has arrested and tortured critical journalists, as well as conducted denial-of-service attacks against Web sites reporting on corruption.

And this doesn’t even take into account Hamas, the radical terror group in charge of Gaza. It, too, has lived parasitically, sucking the life out of the Palestinian economy.

In 1993, pre-Oslo, the GDP in the territories was $2.9 billion, according to the World Bank. In 2011, it was something like $10.5 billion — a small increase when you consider population growth.

In Israel, the GDP has risen from $66 billion in 1993 to a stunning $243 billion in 2011 — per capita, from $12,500 to $31,000.

One reason Palestinian economic growth has been so disastrously slow is the terror war that Yasser Arafat launched against Israel in 2000 — the “second Intifada.”

It shattered Israeli hopes for peaceful concert with a new neighboring country, and led to an economic estrangement that proved horribly costly to Palestinians. Israelis stopped employing Palestinian workers and stopped buying Palestinian goods. Transit and trade between the two became difficult and painful.

And whose fault was it? Israel, which agreed in principle to a deal at Camp David in 2000 granting Palestinians a state with sovereign dominion over nearly 94 percent of the West Bank? No, it was exclusively the doing of Arafat, who served as a reverse George Washington — rejecting nationhood for the violence he understood better.

So Romney said Israel has done better than the areas under Palestinian control because Israeli culture is healthier. That’s not only true, it’s a necessary thing to say — because the refusal to say it and accept it contributes to the continuing immiseration and unfreedom of the Palestinians themselves. {Read More}

Via: Memeorandum

Comments

  1. So the fact that the Palestinians have virtually been held prisoners for decades, has nothing to do with their anemic growth?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anon: No, it's the rampant corruption.

    And I have a question for you: What parts of Palestine are currently occupied?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What Bibby said, and I'll add; Israel has been building settlements on that land, which both Republican and Democratic administrations have condemned.

      Delete
  3. Let's see, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip and Israel took over other parts since the Oslo Agreement. Israel continues to displace Palestinians from their homesteads that they have held for generations.

    ReplyDelete
  4. How the hell would any sane, rational, sensible, honest person just ignore the the decades of state-less, no-mans-land, occupation?

    What a sleazy argument.

    Romney is a sleazy lowlife punk, little rich white racist !@#$bag.

    If it were truly a cultural problem, then why are there so many successful Palestinian professionals around the rest of the world, included hundreds of thousands here in the States?

    Truth?

    My @$$.

    JMJ

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

RN USA is a No Judgement Zone (to steal from Planet Fitness), so please, No Judgement of others. We reserve the right to delete any such comment immediately upon detection.

All views are welcome. As long as the comment is on topic and respectful of others.



Top Posts

As the Obama Administration and a Compliant Lame Stream Media Continue the Benghazi Spin...

It's Going To Be Close, Brace Yourself For Continued Polarization of America, Especially if Obama Loses...

Another Republican Accused Of Sexual Misconduct...

Illinois Democrats Move To Tighten Firearm Regulation/Restrictions...

The "Scandal" That Won't Go Away...

Our Biggest Creditor {China} Tells Us "The good old days of borrowing are over"

Democrats Bought By Special Interest Money, and They Say It's All Republicans...

The Public's Trust In Government on the Decline...