The Palestinian Outcasts of Poker Flats!
February 20, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Among the Arab nations the group called Palestinians has always been looked upon as the riff-raff from the wrong side of the railroad tracks. They have been a financial and social burden in all the countries where they scattered after the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel.
The articles by Michael Freund and Yashiko Sagamori give a good insight to their history and relationship among the Arab community.
Begin Israel News Net Article
Do Arab states really care about the Palestinians?
1 Adar 5767, 19 February 07 10:25
By “Fundamentally Freund” – Michael Freund
(IsraelNN.com) For all their talk of standing by the Palestinians, Arab regimes sure have a funny way of showing it.
I did a bit of research and discovered an interesting, yet largely unknown, little fact: Arab states provide less than 3 percent of the annual budget of UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East.
By contrast, Western countries cover some 95 percent of the organization’s finances each year.
Now, if they really truly cared about the fate of their Palestinian brethren, would oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain be so miserly and cheap when it comes to improving their living conditions?
Read below and see for yourself.
UN pressing Arab states for more aid to Palestinian refugees
By Michael Freund
Despite their rhetorical pledges of support for the Palestinians, the Arab states are providing an increasingly smaller amount of aid to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), prompting the UN agency to step up efforts to solicit more funds from Arab regimes throughout the region.
At a press conference held Wednesday in Manama, the Bahraini capital, UNRWA representative Peter Ford issued a plea to Arab countries to increase their donations on behalf of Palestinian refugees, asserting that UNRWA is facing “a financial crisis.”
Over the past two decades, Ford noted, Arab states have provided a steadily decreasing percentage of UNRWA’s funding. In the 1980s, he said, their donations amounted to 8% of the group’s annual budget, whereas now, “Arab donors currently contribute less than three percent of UNRWA’s overall spending.”
“The objective,” he said, “is to return to that level of support at a time when the innocent refugees, as always the victims of political problems, are suffering more than ever.”
Ford added that while funds from major donor countries have been “regular and steady,” the agency is now looking to tap into other sources, in particular the Arab states, in light of growing demand for UNRWA’s services among Palestinian refugees.
“The situation for the refugees is ominously deteriorating because of Israeli attitudes and Palestinian in-fighting,” he said. “There is an increasing need for funds from several sources, mainly Arab states.”
Ford was in Bahrain to meet with government officials in an effort to drum up additional pledges of support.
He plans to visit several Gulf Arab states in the near future as well.
According to UNRWA’s Web site,
the largest pledge received from an Arab country in 2006 was $1.5 million from Kuwait, with Saudi Arabia promising just $1.2 million. By contrast, Sweden pledged more than $41 million, the UK $27 million, and Denmark over $12 million.
Other Arab states were even less generous, with oil-rich Bahrain offering $30,000 and Lebanon a mere $10,000.
The US was the largest supporter of UNRWA’s activities, with more than $137 million of the group’s budgeted expenditures of $462 million coming from Washington.
As of October 31, the latest date for which figures are available, UNRWA was expecting a funding shortfall in 2006 of $117 million, with total pledges amounting to $345 million.
Nearly all of UNRWA’s operations are financed by voluntary contributions from governments and the European Union. In total, Western countries provide more than 95% of the agency’s finances.
Begin Prophecy Update Archive 102B, January 15, 2003
SPECIAL PROPHECY UPDATE NUMBER 102B
January 15, 2003
Who Are Palestinians?
By Yashiko Sagamori
The Palestinians and the Islamic world claim that the Palestinians have been the occu
pants of all the land “from Dan to Beersheba” through most of recorded history. I have received numerous queries via e-mail asking me “who are the Palestinians?” I have answered each query giving much the same information supplied in this Update. I came across this article on an internet site today, and it provides a very complete answer to this question. Since you may well be asked this same question, I decided to make it into Update 102B, in order to refer back to it if I receive more queries concerning the origin of the Palestinians.
ARTICLE BY YASHIKO SAGAMORI BEGINS
If you are so sure that “Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history”, I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:
When was it founded and by whom?
What were its borders?
What was its capital
?
What were its major cities?
What constituted the basis of its economy
?
What was its form of government?
Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation
?
What was the language of the country of Palestine?
What was the prevalent religion of
the country of Palestine?
What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.
Have they left any artifacts behind?
Do you know of a library where one could find a work of Palestinian literature produced before 1967?
And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?
You are lamenting the “low sinking” of “once proud” nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that “nation” proud and what was it so proud of
?
And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call “Palestinians” are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over — or thrown out of — the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?
I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day “Palestinians” to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won’t work here.
The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it.
Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it “Palestinian people” and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the “West Bank” and Gaza, respectively?
The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so called “Palestinians” have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a “nation” — or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.
In fact, there is only one way to achieve piece in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel’s ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.
That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?
You are absolutely correct in your understanding of the “Palestinians'” murderous motives. I am afraid however that you, along with 99% of the population of this planet have missed the beginning of WWIII (the enemy call it Jihad) quite a few ye
ars ago. The siege of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, an event to which the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner had so miserably failed to respond, can be very well used as the day WWIII stepped out of the pages of the Koran and into the current events. I pray the United States and Israel lead the world to victory in this war. Come to think of it, there is no choice, be you a Christian, a Jew, or even, believe it or not, a Muslim.
ARTICLE BY YASHIKO SAGAMORI ENDS
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