Compare and contrast, part one: Syrian civilians are fleeing across the border with Israel, only to be met with–help–for fighters and civilians. Blast victims are being treated in Israeli hospitals. This is coming out of the Israeli taxpayers’ pockets. The UN is doing nothing as far as I know. Well, they are hitting up the private sector for funds. And, as per usual, most of the money seems to come from non-Arab nations.
Compare and contrast, part two: Israelis are helping Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey–and Syria.
Compare and contrast, part three: Palestinian Syrian refugees are begging for food in Jordan. And they’re not doing well in Lebanon, either.
The Palestinian community in Lebanon has made it through numerous conflicts, and camp residents have grown accustomed to hosting the newer waves of displaced Palestinians.
But only 7 percent of Palestinian refugees from Syria have regular income, and almost all of them are living with host families whose employment prospects are equally dismal because Palestinians in Lebanon are banned from working in the public sector and in many professional fields, says Yasser Daoud, executive director of the child advocacy nonprofit Naba’a, which works in eight Palestinian refugee camps, including Ain al-Halwah.
The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon now exceeds 1 million, according to Lebanese officials. Some 65,000 of them are Syrians of Palestinian origin, who are often only welcome or able to find housing in the camps that have housed Palestinians in Lebanon since they arrived following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The humanitarian disaster of the Middle East is a self-inflicted wound. The surrounding nations refused to absorb the refugees, choosing instead to focus on destroying Israel. Sixty-five years later, Israel is still here and the refugees are still refused basic rights in most countries. And the UN encourages this, by making UNRWA front and center and by designating Palestinian refugees, and only Palestinian refugees in all of history, as an inherited refugee problem. Third and fourth generation “refugees” live on government handouts.
That horrible, awful Israel. Israeli taxpayers are helping wounded Syrians and Palestinians. Israeli private citizens are raising funds and risking their lives for Syrians and Palestinians. But yeah, go ahead, talk about how Israel oppresses the Palestinians and is the real problem in the Middle East. Because when you do, we will know that you don’t really care about helping Palestinians or fixing the Middle East’s problems. All you care about is demonizing Israel.
I can’t really understand why they do this. All that results is hate, scorn and boycotts from the very people they are helping and their hangers on in the west. There is absolutely no upside to this at all. It’s the EU, UN’s and other Arab states’ problem to deal with or ignore.
Tikkun olam, Trudy. They’re Jews, so they’re not indifferent to suffering even of non-Jews. You’re right that the good deeds of the Israelis will be met only by hostility and scorn by the Arabs and their toadies in the West. It will be like that woman from Gaza who was burned in a kitchen accident, rushed to a hospital in Beersheba, and given excellent care. Two weeks after she was released cured, she came back to the same emergency room that had treated her with a bomb strapped on, ready to become jihadized.
I often say that the best way to bring about peace would be to cut off the Palestinian Arabs from all the international welfare that has kept them going for six and a half decades. If they have to work for a living, instead of living off the dole paid by the Western countries through the UN (their “Arab Brothers” are notoriously skinflint when it comes to actually delivering money to them), they’d not have time for terrorism. It might not work, but I think it’s worth trying. Damn sight better than John F. Kerry acting like Mr. Bigshot putting the arm on Israel, which will accomplish nothing worthwhile.