From Ian:
Ben Shapiro: Funding for Terror Supporters Supplements Terrorism
Ben Shapiro: Funding for Terror Supporters Supplements Terrorism
Jabarin’s family has received $3,350 from the Palestinian Authority; if he receives a life sentence, that number will increase to $1.7 million.Jerusalem police kill Palestinian attempting Yom Kippur stabbing attack
No wonder Republicans and the Trump administration have cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority. They should. Cash in the hands of terror supporters merely supplements terrorism rather than undermining it.
That simple truth, though, eludes the international Left.
We’ve been told for decades that American taxpayers ought to sign checks to Palestinian governmental groups in order to minimize violence. Underlying this argument is a simple theory: Terrorism is driven by poverty and despair. Alleviate that poverty and despair, and terrorism ought to disappear quietly. That’s been the prevailing view among left-wing Jewish thinkers for a century; that view has been adopted by the left-wing intelligentsia of the West as well. Simply hand over the cash, and violence will cease. Barack Obama put the idea well in his book Dreams From My Father: “I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi . . . how easily they slip into violence and despair.”
But that’s not what drives terrorism. As Jeff Victoroff of the department of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Southern California School of Medicine explained in a comprehensive 2005 Journal of Conflict Resolution study, “Middle Eastern terrorists in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century come from a wider demographic range, including university students, professionals, married men in their late forties, and young women.” A 2001 poll showed that among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, support for political violence was higher among professionals than laborers and more common among those with high-school educations than among the illiterate.
Terrorism is driven by ideology. And ideology determines how money is spent. That means that throwing money at the problem of terrorism doesn’t solve the problem — it actually exacerbates it. As former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin explained regarding the left-wing Jewish Zionist position on regional peace: “Their flight of fancy led them to the delusion that the Arabs would eventually come to terms with us for the sake of their economic progress. What utter nonsense! Ze’ev Jabotinsky [founder of the revisionist Zionist movement] had too much respect for the Arabs to believe they would come to the peace table for the sake of a mess of pottage.”
Signing checks to terrorist regimes simply means funneling cash to terrorists. That’s true of the government of Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other terrorist group masquerading as a pseudo-government. No amount of wishing can change the simple fact that terrorism is driven by ideas, not by the pocketbook. But that wishing can turn Westerners into the pocketbook for terrorists.
A Palestinian attempted to carry out a stabbing attack outside Jerusalem’s Old City on Tuesday evening, and was shot dead by Israeli police, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.
An Israeli police statement reported “an attempted stabbing attack” near Damascus Gate, saying “a police unit at the spot neutralized the suspect,” with the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry saying it was informed of the death of a civilian by gunshots.
According to police the attacker ran at Jewish man and knocked him over onto the ground, he then “continued running toward the police officers while waving a sharp object and trying to harm them.”
The Haaretz website said the man was a 26-year-old from the Qalandiya refugee camp outside Jerusalem, who had been in Israel illegally.
Police did not say if anyone else was harmed in the incident. It occurred just after sunset on Tuesday, as Jews began observing Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
“The widespread deployment of police in Jerusalem and their alertness prevented an attack that could have ended with harsh results.,” police said.



























