Crime doesn’t pay? Someone forgot to tell Hamas

Crime doesn’t pay? Don’t tell that to the shell-shocked Israeli citizens who absorbed thousands of rockets from Hamastan, aka Gaza, this summer.

It looks to them like arch-terrorist Hamas is about to get its explosive hands on as much as $5 billion in international aid pledged at a donors conference in Cairo. Forget the promises from the U.S., which kicked in over $200 million, the European Union, terror-funder Qatar, along with dozens of other countries and 20 humanitarian NGOs, that the aid will be used exclusively to rebuild Palestinian houses. That’s what they said every time during the last decade when Israel was forced to take military measures to try stop Hamas’ terrorist onslaughts via rockets, kidnapping/murders and suicide terror. Since the terror rulers of Gaza brazenly intertwine their military hardware within Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, significant damage to civilian areas is guaranteed. A ceasefire is then arranged, followed by Gazans asking the world for money to rebuild. Which they have– again and again. And each time, a significant portion of those funds and donated building materials were siphoned off to replenish Hamas’ missile arsenals and rebuild their underground terror tunnels.

{mosads}After the latest ceasefire, the U.S. and EU had apparently agreed to Israel’s baseline demand that Hamas be disarmed— but that apparently is not going to happen. In addition, there seems to be no verifiable and transparent mechanism in place that would ensure that billions in cash and construction materials won’t again be diverted to terrorism central.

It gets worse. During the height of the Gaza war this summer the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish groups met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon who expressed sympathy for Israeli concerns. None of that was present in Cairo, where Ban repeated the politically correct mantra that,

“We must not lose sight of the root causes of the recent hostilities: a restrictive occupation that has lasted almost half a century, the continued denial of Palestinian rights and the lack of tangible progress in peace negotiations…”

That incensed the Israeli street. “Occupation”, in Gaza? Israel ended its occupation there, uprooting 9,000 Israelis from their homes, while handing the keys to Gaza to the Palestinians nine years ago—no strings attached. Israelis have been suffering from terror attacks, ever since. The Secretary General dialed back some of his criticism while in Israel this week. The damage had been done.

In reality, the root cause of the conflict in the Holy Land isn’t about Israeli occupation, but the unwillingness of much of the Arab world to acknowledge the 3,500-year presence of the Jewish people on a tiny sliver of the Middle East. Most politicians, pundits and Imams simply refuse to accept that Israel is here to stay. And the Palestinians themselves have some responsibility for the mess, especially those who squandered the good will of Israelis who left Gaza voluntarily by voting into power genocidal Hamas

Ban is currently in Israel, undoubtedly will try to push Israel to accept yet again an open door policy to help innocent Palestinians rebuild their homes. A goal all civilized people endorse. But if the same (non) rules are applied to the rebuilding process, only Hamas, led by very leaders who blatantly used UNWRA facilities, mosques and schools as staging areas for missile onslaughts against Jews, will turn out to be the big winners.

Lost again in all the tumult and rush to address Palestinian concerns are tens of thousands of innocent traumatized Israelis; of frontline communities like Sderot, where children suffer from ailments usually reserved for battle-scarred veterans. Not a word, not so much as an apology, of a kind word for Israeli victims—only demands that the Jewish state live up to an impossible standard applied to her and her only—on and off the battlefield.

With all the talk of taking down arch terrorist ISIS, it is truly mind-bending that the civilized world does nothing to bring down arch-terrorist Hamas. Quite the contrary—they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, already preparing to inflict the next round of destruction and suffering guaranteed upon Palestinians and Israelis alike and bury under the rubble any hopes for peace in the Holy Land.

Cooper is the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and founded its Digital Terrorism and Hate Project.