Biden to Palestinians: ‘Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another?’
It seems that no matter what the Palestinian Authority says or does—no matter how viciously its representatives denounce America—the money to it keeps flowing
by Stephen M. Flatow
JNS
US
President Joe Biden with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2016. It
seems no amount of Palestinian animosity can compel Biden to stop
transferring money to Ramallah
In the classic hazing scene in the film “Animal House,” a student whacks another from behind with a large wooden paddle, with the victim wincing in pain and then declaring after each blow: “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
I was reminded of that scene when I read this week that a senior Palestinian Authority official called for the expulsion of the United States from a prominent United Nations agency.
Ibrahim Khraishi, the PA’s ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, launched his anti-American tirade after the US representative to the council dared to disagree with the council’s latest anti-Israel report.
That laughably absurd report was unveiled by Navi Pillay, one of the heads of an “investigation” conducted by the UN Human Rights Council concerning Israel’s 11-day conflict with Hamas in Gaza last May. Barely even mentioning the more than 4,000 Palestinian rockets fired into population centers in Israel, Pillay announced that Jerusalem—not the massive Hamas rocket attack—was to blame for “acts of violence that serve to further fuel endless cycles of conflict on both sides.”
The US delegate to the council had the temerity to disagree with the council’s blame-the-victim approach. That’s what infuriated the PA and its ambassador, Ibrahim Khraishi. To be clear, Khraishi, like every other representative of the PA around the world, is not an independent actor. Whatever he says in public is scripted by the Palestinian leadership, which he represents.
So, when we hear that Khraishi is demanding the expulsion of the United States from the UN Human Rights Council for the “crime” of disagreeing with the council’s Israel-bashing, let’s be clear: This is the PA, the elected leaders of the Palestinian Arabs, demanding the expulsion of America.
Yes, the same Palestinian Arabs who are currently receiving $360 million annually in aid from America’s taxpayers.
It seems that no matter what the PA says or does—no matter how viciously its representatives denounce America—the money to it keeps flowing. And the response of the Biden administration is, in effect: “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
In his tirade, Khraishi singled out US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accusing him of (get this) “not saying a word about the continued suffering of the Palestinian people over so many years as well as the illegal occupation which has continued over 55 years.”
Yes, the same Secretary Blinken who has repeatedly expressed support for the Palestinian Arab cause; who demands the creation of a sovereign Palestinian-Arab state along Israel’s nine-mile-wide border; who has pressured Israel to stop construction of housing for Jews in many Jerusalem neighborhoods; and who is pushing for the Biden administration to reopen in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, a de facto embassy of the United States to the Palestinians.
Despite having received a total of more than $10 billion in American aid since 1994, the PA has a long and ugly history of attacking American secretaries of state. And each time, the United States turned the other cheek, signed another check, and said, in effect, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”
An article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida in 2013 claimed that “time will reveal” that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was the one who “planned” the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Hafez Barghouti, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, once called Secretary of State Madeleine Albright “vulgar and insolent,” and wrote that she had “reached the stage of immorality” because she “spat like a snake in the face of Arab statesmen.”
PA cabinet minister Hassan Asfour denounced Secretary of State Colin Powell as “a neo-Nazi agent, who can be expected to bring with him some of the new poison which President [George W.] Bush has started to spread in his speeches.”
Those are just three examples in a very long list of such outbursts.
Of course, the problem of the PA’s hatred for America goes far beyond libeling secretaries of state. Last year, for example, its Ministry of Culture released a music video that featured Palestinian Arabs stomping on American and Israeli flags. They do that sort of thing all the time.
Only a week after that video was posted, Blinken announced the first installment of the $360 million aid package. It was the very definition of the Biden administration’s “Thank you, sir, may I have another” policy towards the Palestinian Arabs.
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