The decision by Stephen Schwartz and Walid Phares to appear on FoxBusiness on June 11th to challenge the legality of the White House announcement of $400 million in assistance to the Palestinian people was remarkable on multiple levels. True, a number of valid questions swirl around UN advocacy and NGO activity in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip; however, the call for congressional oversight and investigations, while warranted, may not be all that necessary in terms of the war of ideas. Outrage is not a substitute for clarity, at this stage of the game, even if completely justified. Americans, coming to grips with the new international order, must remain clear-eyed while digesting this twisted “world as it is.”
On May 27th, Economist Magazine telegraphed the Obama Administration’s decision to increase assistance to the Palestinians in a story entitled “Hamas Versus the United Nations.” The piece describes the battle for scarce resources in Gaza, in which UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) local director, John Ging, is reaching out to ply the hearts and minds of an increasingly Taliban-like, one-party regime. According to the piece, John is on thin ice with the hard core elements of Hamas, due to the UN’s summer beach camps of 2009 which drew some 200,000 students away from their Koran studies to swim in “moral corruption.” The sensational story describes 30 armed Hamas thugs in masks, torching a UN beach camp before leaving Mr. Ging a memento of three unfired bullets as a warning – an intimidation for allowing young boys and girls to frolic together on the beach.
In retrospect, while the story is more than believable, it is all theatre – it paints a picture of a modern day underground railroad, in which the UN is forced to smuggle $500 million into Gaza every year without allowing any of the cash to fall into Hamas hands. Propaganda enters stage left as the article relates that the “UNRWA has introduced human-rights courses into its school syllabus, seemingly elevating the UN Charter over Islamic law” and even places a picture of Yasser Arafat at the Ann Frank Museum in one of its textbooks to “describe the Holocaust and Jewish suffering,” all…to satisfy Western aid-givers.
To dramatize the rift between the terrorists and the UN, an unnamed UNRWA staffer feigns, “Any hint of co-operation with Hamas[,] and half our funding would go up in smoke.” The goal of the NGOs in Gaza, after all, is to keep the flame of pluralism alive.
The alarmed can rest assured; Reason, itself, is in complete agreement with Walid Phares and Stephen Schwartz. But, the fact is, deception is the primary methodology of a jihadist enterprise.
In all probability, the story happened exactly as written. But, a staged episode is not outside the deceits of Hamas leaders, the self-same Islamist comprachicos of the mind that have made manipulating Western media outlets into an art form.
All is perception in the war of ideas; and, in this long-frame, the intimidation serves as a win-win. Both the UN and Hamas rise to their full moral heights in the public eye…all while the money train gathers steam in D.C. and slides into a Memorial Weekend tunnel.
Intriguingly, the very day this anonymous* story was released, President Obama was fielding questions about the Gulf oil spill in his first press conference since July of 2009. At the same time, Hillary Clinton was announcing the release of the 2010 National Security Strategy, which institutionalized the softening of U.S. rhetoric in its confrontation with al Qaeda-styled terrorists, officially removing the term “jihadists” from its lexicon and nixing the “Global War on Terror,” while boldly sallying forth to reclaim America’s lead role in shaping the “international order.”
Deaf, dumb and blind, the American people had no idea that a punishing juggernaut of engagement would soon scream into view.
For, alone and despairing in the smoldering remains of innocence, the fallen Mr. Ging “called on the outside world to send boats to break the siege and to preserve his beachhead of foreign influence.”
A hate-filled ideology wasn’t to blame for Hamas’ decision to pursue gangland violence and intimidation, no – the Israeli blockade, in the cracked rationale of Mr. Ging, was the villainous source of all fear and loathing in Gaza.
*All Economist Magazine stories are anonymously written, so as not to allow a writer’s name or reputation to color the perception of the audience as the content of the stories are consumed.
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Gary H. Johnson, Jr. is the Senior Advisor for International Security Affairs at the Victory Institute
