You Get More Of What You Subsidize And Less Of What You Don’t Fund

On Tuesday, The Gatestone Institute posted an article about the European funding of Hamas.

Here are some of the highlights of the article:

    • Israel had not even buried its dead from the horrifying jihadist pogrom that Hamas terrorists unleashed on Israeli civilians in south Israel — beheading babies, burning them alive, torturing, raping, kidnapping, murdering — before the European Union decided to reward the terrorists by tripling its assistance to Gaza.
    • “The Commission will immediately increase the current humanitarian aid envelope foreseen for Gaza by 50 million euros,” European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen said. “This will bring the total to over 75 million euros. We will continue our close cooperation with the UN and its agencies to ensure that this aid reaches those in need in the Gaza strip.”
    • Oh really? How? The terrorist group Hamas, a proxy of Iran, the “worst state sponsor of terrorism,” is wholly in control of Gaza and will take what shows up and dribble it out slowly to a chosen few, mainly in their military. The idea that any of it will reach the million displaced souls who were urged by the Israelis to flee to southern Gaza to save their lives is charming, but woefully starry-eyed. Food and water — if that is really what is in the uninspected trucks, rather than weapons — will go to the Hamas foot soldiers to make sure they stay fit and loyal.
    • “Hamas are trying to prevent people leaving northern Gaza. And that is the point… Of course we want to minimize Palestinian casualties. We want to minimize Israeli casualties. We want everybody to respect civilians. But the real clear distinction is Israel are trying to get civilians out of danger; Hamas are trying to put civilians into danger, and that is a fundamental difference between the two.” — UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, October 15, 2023.
    • Sadly, massive injustices were done by the international media which, without checking, wrongly blamed Israel for firing at a hospital in Gaza, supposedly killing hundreds. Video evidence and a voice recording revealed that the real cause of the explosion at the hospital was a rocket, launched toward Israel by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that landed in the hospital parking lot. The media, it seems, could not wait to stick it to the Jews.

The European Commission will be working with the UN to make sure that the aid reaches only those in need in the Gaza Strip. Really, how? When it was suggested that the aid be stopped because of the terrorist attack on Israel, the Commission claimed, “The suspension of the payments – punishing all the Palestinian people – would have damaged the EU interests in the region and would have only further emboldened terrorists.”

Common sense is obviously on vacation.

The Potential Consequences Of An Open Border

On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article about one of the people that has been released into the United States as a result of President Biden’s immigration policies.

The article reports:

An illegal alien, now wanted for allegedly funding terrorism, is among an estimated 1.4 million border crossers and illegal aliens who have been released into the United States through President Joe Biden’s parole pipeline.

In April 2021, the Venezuelan illegal alien crossed the United States–Mexico border near San Luis, Arizona. He was briefly detained by Border Patrol agents, deemed inadmissible, and given a Notice to Appear (NTA) in federal immigration court.

…Only a few months later, in August 2021, a criminal court in Valencia, Venezuela, issued an arrest warrant for the illegal alien for charges related to fraud, money laundering, association with organized crime, and funding terrorism.

The article concludes:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested the illegal alien on August 8 and he will remain in federal custody pending deportation proceedings.

The illegal alien is among an estimated 1.4 million border crossers and illegal aliens, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, who have been released into American communities specifically through Biden’s parole pipeline. This is a foreign population the size of the population of Hawaii.

Hundreds of thousands of others, as well as known got-aways, have entered the United States interior since Biden took office.

In February 2023, NBC News reported:

Nearly 600,000 migrants who crossed the U.S. border since March 2021 have been released into the U.S. without being charged or given a date to appear in court, according to data obtained by NBC News, and thousands have even been dropped from the program that was supposed to track them.

When immigrants are given a notice to appear in court, how long do they have to wait for their court date and what is the likelihood that they will show up? Our entire immigration system is a mess. We need to make it easy for people to come here legally if they are willing to work and more difficult for people who want to take advantage of our social safety net. People who immigrate to America should be denied any government assistance for the first five years or so that they are here. That would make it clear that coming to America means becoming part of the workforce and assimilating into the culture.

Funding Terrorism Because You Don’t Think You Will Get Caught

Iran is known to be one of the major suppliers for weapons and terrorists around the world. The IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) American troops encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan generally originated in Iran. This is not a country that we want to give a lot of money to–the  money doesn’t go to the people–it goes to the military and to fund terrorism. So what in the world was President Obama thinking when he made a deal with Iran that gave them a boatload of money? It gets worse.

The Washington Times posted an article today about an attempt by President Obama to give Tehran access to American banks to convert the large amount of money Iran received after the nuclear agreement into American dollars.

The article reports:

The Obama administration — despite repeatedly assuring Congress that Iran would remain barred from the U.S. financial system — secretly mobilized to give Tehran access to American banks to convert the windfall of cash it received from sanctions relief under the 2015 nuclear deal into dollars, an investigative report by the Senate has revealed.

A copy of the report, obtained by The Washington Times, outlines how Obama-era State and Treasury Department officials discreetly issued a special license for the conversion to a major Omani bank and unsuccessfully pressured two U.S. banks to partake in the transaction, all while misleading lawmakers about the activities.

The document, compiled by the Senate’s Republican-led chief investigative subcommittee, began circulating Tuesday, just as the Trump administration issued its harshest warnings to date to foreign governments and companies to avoid doing business with Iran or find themselves in the crosshairs of Washington’s reimposition of sanctions as part of Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

The article explains that Congress was not informed of what was going on–in fact they were lied to:

The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigations probe contends that the Obama administration went out of its way to keep U.S. lawmakers in the dark about calculated and secretive efforts to give Tehran a back channel to the international financial system and to U.S. banks, facilitating a massive U.S. currency conversion worth billions of dollars.

“Senior U.S. government officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal,” according to a draft copy of the document obtained by The Times. “Despite these claims, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, at the direction of the U.S. State Department, granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system.

“Even after the specific license was issued, U.S. government officials maintained in congressional testimony that Iran would not be granted access to the U.S. financial system,” the report said.

The article concludes:

Mr. Portman said in a statement Tuesday night that “the Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran.”

“Despite claims both before and after the Iran deal was completed that the U.S. financial system would remain off limits, the Obama administration issued a specific license allowing Iran to convert billions of dollars in assets using the U.S. financial system,” Mr. Portman said. “The only reason this transaction wasn’t executed was because two U.S. banks refused, even though the administration asked them to help convert the money.”

Such sanctions, he added, “are a vital foreign policy tool, and the U.S. government should never work to actively undermine their enforcement or effectiveness.”

Thank God our banks had more integrity than President Obama.

Using Our Courts To Support Terrorism

Yesterday Scott Johnson at Power Line posted a story about a trial that is currently going on in Minnesota.

The article reports:

We have been following the terror trial involving the two Minnesota Somali women who were raising money for Al-Shabab in Rochester, Minnesota. The case against them was submitted to the jury late yesterday in federal district court in Minneapolis.

I don’t think I have seen a lot about this trial reported in the major media. Reporter Allie Shah at the Star Tribune has stated, “if the Somali women are not acquitted, Somalis in Minnesota and elsewhere will think ill of us.” Wow. If they are guilty, it doesn’t matter, we just want to make sure they like us.

The article concludes:

The ringleader and her codefendant stand accused of providing material support to a designated terrorist organization, Al-Shabab, an al Qaeda affiliate. The ringleader has a helluva defense. She wasn’t supporting Al-Shabab or terrorism, she was supporting Islam! Any resemblance to the crimes charged is just a coincidence, or something.

Just as tithing is a part of Biblical Christianity, “Zakat” is a part of Islam. There is a difference, however. When the defendant stated that she was simply supporting Islam, she was correct. The Zakat is supposed to support the spread of Islam. She was simply following the dictates of Islam (Zakat is one of the Five Pillars of Islam).

It will be interesting to see how this case turns out. Under Sharia Law, the women are innocent. Under American Law, the women are guilty. It will be interesting to see which legal system prevails.