By: Tashbih Sayyed
As the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, geared up to set a unique precedence of putting on trial the victim instead of the perpetrator of terror, a Palestinian terrorist murdered 8 more innocent Israelis. And the slowly fading lights out of the eyes of the victims of the latest bus bombing in Jerusalem tried to provide clearest possible, unequivocal and visual argument to convince the ICJ that it is the Palestinian terror that should be on trial and not the protective fence. There was a question in the terror stricken eyes; how many more lives have to be extinguished before the world will learn to call a spade a spade?
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade's claim of responsibility for the barbaric act underlined once again the vitality of a protective fence. But the concerned world watched with horror, the undying tendency of opportunists and apologists to find an excuse for either keeping their silence or for continuing their policy of appeasement of the terrorists. The ICJ represented this mentality. The neutral observers find it difficult to justify the actions of these appeasers who willingly elect to ignore the evil and vilify the victim.
By agreeing to even hear the illegitimate claim of the terrorists, the ICJ ignored the history that holocausts happen only when it becomes a fashion to side with the oppressor and calumniate the innocent. This submission to political correctness encourages Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Yasser Arafat's Fatah Movement, Hamas, Hezbollah and their ilk to continue with their frenzy. But it is not just the ICJ in The Hague that fails to make the distinction between the oppressed and the oppressor.
The European Union also symbolizes this blindness. That's why, fair and balanced minds believe that the EU. that funds the Palestinian Authority are in fact financing the homicide bombers and an education system that breeds hatred. They wonder as to why only the trigger pushers (Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade etc.) be blamed for the crime. Those who fund the terror should also be held responsible. The European Union should also be made to stand the trial.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Al-Fatah, Hamas are only the trigger pushers but the European Union provides the basic energy that makes it possible for them to go on. The EU. funding sustains and feed the demon. EU. cannot escape the responsibility. They are partners in crime against humanity. European Union ought to know that their money is nourishing Islamist radicalism and anti-Semitism. According to one expert, "Without the EU's reckless provision of financing to the Palestinians, hundreds of Israeli terror victims would still be alive and thousands of others would never have had to suffer their tragic injuries. The European taxpayers must now acknowledge that they are the ones who have been financing the Palestinian terror attacks and accept that they must pay compensation to the families of the victims."
The hard to scrape blood on the streets of Jerusalem is a testimony that European Union's funding of Palestinian Authority is responsible for this continuing holocaust. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords, the EU pledged to provide funding to the PA for civilian projects, primarily to pay the salaries of the PA's municipal workers. The EU donates approximately $10 million a month and more than $1.5 billion to the PA since 1994. It is not difficult to see where these "salaries" go. They go to support the future homicide bombers and the families of those who die in the process of killing the innocents. The "civilian projects" are the schools where a homicide bomber's mind is prepared.
The continuing poverty of the Palestinians is also an evidence that the EU donations are not being used to uplift the human conditions under the P.A. It is no secret that the salaries of members of the security forces are usually sent in bags to commanders (terrorists) who in turn distribute the money as they saw fit. Neutral observers believe that the murky Palestinian security services are involved in suicide bomb attacks and other violence by militant groups. They are confident that it is Arafat and his pack that is orchestrating "terrorism."
In May 2002, a NIS 100,000,000 civil action law suit was filed against the EU on behalf of the Blumberg family in the Tel Aviv District Court. According to the suit, on August 5, 2001, Palestinian police officers moonlighting as Fatah-Tanzim terrorists opened fire from another vehicle at the Blumberg's car, killing 35 year old Tehiya Blumberg, a mother of five children pregnant at the time of the attack. Her husband Steve and their daughter Zipporah were severely injured.
The Blumberg law suit alleges that the EU recklessly provided the PA with massive sums of financial aid, while knowing that the money was being diverted from its intended civilian purposes to Palestinian terrorist groups. The court papers assert that the EU was repeatedly warned that its aid was financing Palestinian terrorism. Experts assert that the EU being the biggest aid provider to the Palestinians, accounting for 60 percent of the international total, will have to share the burden of responsibility for the Palestinian terrorism.
What is surprising is that the EU continues to fund the Palestinians despite growing evidence that a bulk of its donations is diverted to Palestinian suicide bombers. According to the German daily Die Welt, European Commission's Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has concluded that tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, donated by the EU to the PA has been utilized for terrorist operations against Israel. OLAF findings confirmed what the experts were saying all along that Yasser Arafat had diverted millions of dollars in EU funding to the Fatah Tanzim and Hamas terrorist organizations. The OLAF findings are based upon documents recovered from the PA headquarters. The OLAF investigators said that the documents proved beyond any doubt Arafat's wide-spread diversion of the EU's humanitarian aid to Palestinian terrorist operations.
The documents include letters signed by Arafat ordering payments to eleven terrorist leaders for what he termed guerrilla operations. In addition, there are receipts for the payments of the mortgages of the families of Hamas suicide bombers, as well as a cash awards of several thousand dollars to the family members. Other documents detail how European funds were used by the PA's Preventative Security Forces to stage "spontaneous" demonstrations in support of imprisoned Fatah Tanzim Marwan Barghouti, who was placed on trial in Israel for masterminding terror attacks that killed 26 Israelis.
Experts point out that the EU has ignored the devastating consequences of misuse of aid funds by the Palestinian authority. The increasing poverty in P.A. controlled territories, because of the misappropriation of funds is has created a society where poor, unemployed and disenfranchised young men are falling prey to the designs of the terrorists. Amjad Zuul, the homicide bomber who killed 8 people in Jerusalem was unemployed for more than three years. He did not have money to feed his family. One of his relatives explained it very well, "too much pressure leads to an explosion, and this applies to all the Palestinian people," he said.
EU does not investigate as to why the common Palestinian is lacking in basic human facilities when so much money is being donated by EU and other sources. A little effort would have revealed that the poverty of the Palestinians is largely due to the misappropriation of International funds which were to have improved their quality of life. EU has also failed to realize that it's blind funding of terrorism has made it possible for the Intifada to go on for so long.
To many international observers, EU is guilty of feeding the Palestinian aspiration to destroy Israel. They emphasize that EU's continuing funding of the Palestinian terror will further encourage and hearten the terrorists and those who are continuing to resist any peaceful option. Such irresponsible attitude of European Union explains why the lot of the Palestinian people was not improved when they were under Palestinian Authority rule prior to 2000. This also explains why Jenin when administered by UNICEF was allowed to become a hotbed of terrorism, with bomb factories, arms stocks and terrorist havens. This also explains why the young Palestinian minds in their schools are still being kept on hate filled diet.
The world knows the outcome of the trial in Hague. A court that is controlled by judges representing anti-Semitic and Fascist regimes has only one objective in mind - to blame the victim and exonerate the criminal. A just court has no business to legitimize those who have made it their faith to deny a people their right to a homeland. A just court is duty bound to declare the fence a natural outcome of a human instinct to protect itself in the face of a deadly evil. It is high time for the International Court of Justice in The Hague to use this trial to establish protect the innocent and punish the criminal.
(The writer is editor-in-chief of Pakistan Today, a California-based weekly newspaper, president of Council for Democracy and Tolerance and adjunct fellow of Hudson Institute.)
