The Christian Science Monitor is reporting on the U.S. ending years of Gaza civic work. The article is clearly biased toward the conclusion that cutting off funding after Palestinians democratically elected Hamas is a bad idea.
“It’s not just a frustration – the money can be replaced. With the help of American money, we were proud to help develop the concept of democracy in Palestine so that elections could take place and could be fair and free,” Mr. Arafeh says.
“I understand the political complications, but democracy is democracy. Maybe it happens I am one of those who is against Hamas, but it’s our government now and we have to accept it. With the American and European attitude, we feel as if someone is deciding on our behalf who our government should be, so why have democracy? The first ones not to respect the outcome of our elections are the Americans and the Europeans.
I am in complete disagreement. First of all, I personally don’t believe in democracy. I believe in a minarchist representative republic, not mob rule. I don’t think anyone should be born with the right to vote. I think they should have to earn it.
Furthermore, I think that people who make bad decisions should understand that bad decisions almost always have bad consequences. This applies whether you live in Gaza or downtown Washington, D.C. Palestinians elected a terrorist organization to represent them. It should be of little surprise then, that other world governments do not want to send any more funds. I haven’t seen much in the news to make me think the Palestinians deserved U.S. taxpayer help prior to electing Hamas to office either.
Will Palestinians learn anything from their bad decision? That depends whether or not the rest of the world stands firm in the decision to cut off the flow of aid.
The only thing I am fairly certain of is that Palestine will remain a troublesome pimple of the face of the world until they can collectively act like adults. When Palestinians decide that they are willing to live peacefully next to Isrealis, then maybe their homeland will become something other than parasitic wellspring of corruption, fanaticism and inexhaustible turmoil.