February 11, 2003
Here and There, Feb. 11

Let them eat Semtex The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is responsible for feeding and housing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in "refugee camps" is about to run out of money. You know, if the Palys had accepted the UN Partition Plan of 1947, or the various other plans for peace and statehood that have been offered to them in the 55 subsequent years, or if their Arab "brothers" treated them like human beings, they would not be festering in "refugee camps". Similarly, if they had invested their efforts in creating a civil society and a functioning economy instead of making bombs and murdering Jews, they would all have homes and lives and they wouldn't need the United Nations to give them food and shelter for their entire lives as if they were a bunch of zoo animals. Of course the people who live in these miserable camps deserve to have decent lives. But until there is a Palestinian leadership that can put an end to the terrorism and guide the people toward a realistic future (i.e. Israel will continue to exist and the "refugees" may get homes in Jericho, but not Jaffa), a lot of Palestinians will stay hungry and miserable, unfortunately.

You know, if it really was only about the oil, it would be a hell of a lot easier to invade Alberta, Mexico or Norway instead of Iraq. Just thought I'd mention it.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 11, 2003 05:51 PM
Comments

Or we could become Saddam's best friend, since he obviously wants to sell his oil. It wouldn't be much of a stretch for the "it's all about oil" brigade to realize that if they were thinking clearly (ha!), since they're invariably the ones who claim that the US, acting out of pure self-interest, "gave" Saddam his WMD in the first place.

Posted by: Haggai on February 11, 2003 07:19 AM

I'm still wondering what happened to that oil we took in 1991. Did we use it all up?

Posted by: Xrlq on February 11, 2003 09:04 AM

Claire Berlinski wrote a satire about that some time last year. We say to Saddam "Oil at nine dollars a barrel for us and lay off Israel. Other than that you can do anything you please." If we were like the French that is exactly what we would do. The actual French would skip the lay off Israel part.

Posted by: Michael Lonie on February 16, 2003 07:00 PM
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