Follow
the Money
by Chuck Chriss
President, JIA
Anyone trying
to understand the long-term success of Yasser Arafat and his thugocracy
running the Palestinian Arab terror organizations, has to understand
the money trail.
On the Palestine
Facts website, JIA has a page titled “What
is known about the PLO’s finances?” The facts show that the
PLO, and the Palestinian Authority that evolved from it, have reaped
the rewards of terrorism in the form of literally billions of dollars
in assets plus a cash flow estimated to be 1.5 to 2 billion dollars
per year. This enormous financial empire provides ample resources
for Arafat’s continuing control of the Palestinian terror/security
forces and hence his unshakable grip on power. The money and the
absolute control it has bought for Arafat have also spawned corruption
on a vast scale, as documented on the page titled What
about corruption in the Palestinian Authority in the territories
they control?
While the world
is distracted by “massacres in Jenin” and “Israeli human rights
violations”, cash continues to flow to fund the corrupt Arafat terror
regime. Now, a new analysis is available, written by Dr. Rachel
Ehrenfeld, commissioned by B’nai B’rith Europe. Titled “Where does
the money go?” this October 2002 study goes into even more detail
on the criminal sources of Arafat’s money (drugs, money laundering,
smuggling, counterfeiting), the funds extorted from the Palestinian
economy (taxes, monopolies, bribes, protection money) as well as
the billions received from international agencies and donor countries
including the United States.
Not surprisingly,
little of this money reaches the lower levels of Palestinian society,
while at the same time Arafat’s henchmen have built lavish mansions
(complete with swimming pools in the desert), send their children
to private schools in Europe, and have huge slush funds in untouchable
private bank accounts. Much of this is documented on the public
record, but the flow of funds continues unabated.
The Internet
provides many sources to verify and expand this information. Here
are some places to start if you want to go into this more deeply:
- Dr. Ehrenfeld’s
paper “Where
does the money go? A study of the Palestinian Authority”,
sets forth the huge cash flows from legal and illegal sources
that have made Yasser Arafat’s terrorist empire possible and kept
him solidly in control for decades. Dr. Ehrenfeld has testified
before the US Congress on these matters, for example, this
House Armed Services Committee hearing.
- Documents
captured by the IDF during Operation Defensive Shield provide
evidence of the role of Arafat and Palestinian Authority in the
financing of the Fatah, Tanzim and Al Aqsa Brigades terrorist
infrastructures and activists. Details here
and here.
- A Kuwaiti
Daily Reports Arafat Deposited $5.1 Million from Arab Funds into
His Personal Account, MEMRI
Special Dispatch Series #390.
- “The
Palestinians’ Lost Marshall Plans” by Patrick Clawson, deputy
director of The
Washington Institute for Near East Policy is a revealing analysis
of the economic conditions in the territories and the wildly disproportionate
international aid received by the Palestinian Arabs. From 1968
until 1993, the years that Israel administered the territories
before the PA was given control, incomes steadily rose, exceeding
incomes in most Arab countries. Since the PA took over, per-capita
incomes have fallen, accelerating downward since the 2000 intifada
began, and now are lower than the more prosperous Arab states,
although still much higher than Syria and other poor Arab countries.
Although the Palestinian Arabs are still relatively prosperous,
they continue to receive many times the international aid of their
poorer Arab neighbors and continue to squander it without benefiting
their economy or people.
Will there come
a day when the international community will wake up to this travesty?
The past record is not encouraging. |