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December 5, 2023

At this time of year, we look for charities to support. Before we pick them, we look into how those charities spend the money they receive. Which is the worthiest cause; which charities carefully spend their income on the purposes we want them to? As individuals, we can research those charities before we write a single check.

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Does our government do the same?

Our government spends an enormous amount of our money on “causes” big and small all over the world.

Before they decide to spend billions of dollars in aid and provide favorable public relations to a foreign country or organization, does our establishment take anywhere near the same level of care in these choices that we do in our personal charitable giving?

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For example, the above representatives have long given billions of their dollars — and that means our dollars — to Hamas, as the administrators of the Gaza Strip.

Since the world was shocked on October 7 by Hamas’ surprise attacks on Israel — murdering over 1200 innocents, kidnapping over 200, injuring thousands more — the world has begun to learn things about Hamas that it never suspected.

For many Westerners — not just Americans — Hamas has been thought of as two different things: a political activist group happy to use terror, and simultaneously the legitimate, elected government of the Gaza Strip, a section of Israel given home rule powers in 2006.

The world has known that Hamas never really stopped being terrorist in inclination and method. But the world still felt an obligation to “the people of the Gaza Strip” (they call themselves “Palestinians”), so the public accepted the fiction that Hamas wears these two hats, and they would just speak to Hamas, and view Hamas on matters of public policy, as if it were only wearing the hat of the legitimate government of the Gaza Strip.

“We have to send money and aid to Gaza, for the people. We have to send in food and medical equipment. We have to give them irrigation pipes and fertilizer for their nascent farming efforts. We have to give them plumbing and electrical systems so they can develop the infrastructure for a manufacturing community. Hamas is the legitimate government, so we’ll give it to them to distribute.”

The world has imagined that Hamas respected these two distinct hats, and would wear the terrorist hat when receiving guns and bombs from Iran and Lebanon, but would wear the government hat when receiving humanitarian aid from us, and of course Hamas would honor a clear line of demarcation between the two.