Money and Leadership...

It has been reported today the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh announced to attendees at a Gaza mosque for Friday prayers that he is willing to step down as Prime Minister to get International aide flowing back into Palestine. He said that the International Community (the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace brokers of the US, UN, EU and Russia) has put one condition on any new Palestinian Unity Government - that they replace Haniyeh as PM.

From CNN: "[They have] one condition, that the siege will not be lifted unless the prime minister is changed," Haniya said, according to Reuters. "When the issue is like this, the siege on one hand, the prime minister on the another ... I prefer the siege be lifted and the suffering ended."

It's amazing to me that the international community is so hypocritical. Let's go over a few facts and figures before I give you a recent article from the Globe and Mail about Avigdor Leiberman, the new Deputy Prime Minister of Israel...

According to a December 2002 report...

- Over 1/3 of total US aid to foreign countries goes to Israel.

- Between 1949 and 2002 US Aid to Israel: $134 Billion

- US Aid PER Israeli: $23,240

- Last year the US financed Israel to the tune of more than $7 Million A DAY.

- Israel ranks SECOND (after the US) in Economic inequality (between rich and poor) and guess who those poor Israelis are... Arab-Israelis and the non-Zionist Ultra Orthodox Jews.

And as for the Palestinians...

- HALF of the Palestinian population live on LESS than $2 a day.

- UN puts the poverty rate of Gazans at 80%.

So what does this have to do with Haniyeh? Why are we hypocrites?

We will have forced a democratically elected leader (in a region we want democracy to flourish in so badly that we started a war) out of office because we have suffocated the life out of the indigenous Palestinian population. At the same time that we starve Palestinian children we finance the construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall, we finance the use of chemical weapons against civilian populations (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1935945.ece) and we keep silent when a racist like Avigdor Lieberman is named Deputy Prime Minister in Israel... But we've been silent in the past over the same things. Menachem Begin, former Israeli Prime Minister once led a Terrorist group that, among other attacks, killed 91 people (British, Arab and Jewish civilians) in July 1946. Begin STEADFASTLY REFUSED TO RECOGNIZE PALESTINE'S RIGHT TO EXIST:

"The Jewish people have unchallengable, eternal, historic right to the Land of Israel including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the inheritance of their forefathers"

So we starve Palestinians because Haniyeh will not "recognize" Israel...

We shower Israel with money to buy weapons....

Haniyeh will be forced to step down to save his people...

And Lieberman becomes the new Deputy Prime Minister...

And Begin is given the Nobel Peace Prize...