Setting Good Money on Fire After Setting Bad Money on Fire in Gaza

I was walking down the street yesterday, and suddenly, I heard honking from a bunch of cars. Not sure what it was, I looked over to see a cavalcade of cars driving by, waving big Palestinian flags out their windows. This went on for about five minutes until, eventually, they had all disappeared.

This comes on the heels of seeing the Palestinian flag painted on the sides of buildings or on overpasses or stickers stuck to signs and the windows of various McDonald’s –and not put there by the store’s owners! Thankfully, there was no real disturbance other than a bit of annoyance.

They are, of course, protesting the alleged “genocide” that’s being carried out in Gaza by the IDF. We’ve been told that, in the slightly over 100 days since the beginning of this war, there have been more than 24,000 civilian casualties at the hands of the IDF. Given that that information is coming from Palestinian “authorities” which, in Gaza is Hamas, that number is likely highly exaggerated. Even so, if the actual number is 10% of that total, it’s a tragedy. One civilian death, never mind 2,400 or 24,000, is a tragedy. It’s not genocide, but it’s a tragedy nonetheless.

Simply, it’s war, and most wars include civilian deaths, many of them.

And how did we get to this war? As everyone knows, it started on October 7th when Hamas sent terrorists (“freedom fighters”) into Israel who raped, tortured, and murdered some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, with victims ranging from 10-month-old babies to 80-plus-year-old men and women. And they kidnapped 200 more.

The depravity of the attacks was extraordinary, something along the lines of Dr. Mengele or the Rape of Nanking. We’re told, however, that while the events of Oct 7th were indeed despicable, the Israeli response has been disproportionate insofar as civilians have died. And as such, we’re also told that Israel needs to be stopped. And punished.

Solely for argument’s sake, let’s pretend that there is some moral equivalency here and agree that the terrorist attack by Hamas and the so-called disproportionate response from Israel are somehow equal.

Then the question becomes, how did we get to this place? In November, someone posted a TikTok video showcasing “Beautiful Gaza that you never saw before. Filmed just before Oct 7th, 2023.” The video shows bright Mediterranean colors, beautiful smiling faces, and everything from bustling stores to beach resorts to crowded restaurants and much more. It looks like a Madison Avenue marketing job seeking to induce the world to spend their next vacation in Gaza. (See also this tweet describing what soldiers saw: wealth and militarization.)

Nevertheless, we’ve repeatedly been told that Gaza is a modern concentration camp. That’s why, pro-Hamas factions insist, Hamas was forced to attack Israel in an attempt to break the Israeli chokehold on the Palestinians.

But, if indeed it is true that Israel was turning Gaza into a giant death camp, where was the rest of the world? Why weren’t they helping? Well, it turns out, the world was helping… A lot. And I mean a lot!

Over the decade-and-a-half since Hamas was elected, Gaza has received approximately $40 billion in support from around the world. That included $5 billion from the United Nations, almost $2 billion from Qatar, $20 billion from the Palestinian Authority (which itself receives billions annually from the world community), as well as over a billion dollars each from the US, Europe, and Iran.

The average works out to about $3 billion annually for a population of approximately 2.3 million people or about $1,300 per person living in Gaza. That $1,300 makes up a little less than half of the per capita income of the average citizen of Gaza. Other sources of income are primarily small businesses and agriculture.

We’re told that the citizens of Gaza live in poverty that Israel imposes upon them. The approximate $3,000 per capita income of the citizens of Gaza puts them at about 165 in the world rankings, ahead of 30 nations, most in Africa.

However, the reality is that, if Palestinians live in poverty, it’s the fault of Hamas. The leaders of Hamas have stolen at least $11 billion of the money that was supposed to go to the citizens of the Gaza Strip. They enjoy that fortune relaxing safely in their multimillion-dollar compounds in Qatar.

What’s more, and far more deadly, is that Hamas spends billions of dollars a year on things that have nothing to do with supporting Gazan citizens. Firstly, they have spent over $1 billion on a 350-mile-long network of tunnels under Gaza, a 141-square-mile strip of land. Every mile of those tunnels represents piping or concrete or steel that could have gone to building schools, shopping malls, hospitals or anything else that could have positively affected the lives of Gazans. But they didn’t.

Those tunnels had to be used for something, of course, and that something was and is preparing to attack and actually attacking Israel. Of course, to do that, they need weapons and Hamas has spent $5 billion on weapons over the last decade and a half. Everything from small arms to bombs to missiles.

Together, the total theft for the tunnels and the military spending equals $17 billion or 42% of the world’s contributions to Gaza over that 15-year period. But here’s the thing: As bad as it was that Hamas squandered at least 42% of Gaza’s donations, the reality is that the real damage isn’t the money. The real damage is that, instead of focusing the people on building a thriving, robust economy, Hamas instead focused on teaching children to hate Israel and launching tens of thousands of rockets into Israel.

So, Hamas pushed the hate narrative and launched missiles into Israel on a regular basis, actions that would, of course, prompt reprisals, which would, in turn, reinforce the hate. It was and is a never-ending cycle of victimization, hate, and poverty. Hamas, not the Gazans, profited from this. Yet, somehow, the money keeps coming... because most relevant actors don’t care about actual progress or peace.

Nonetheless, they say that hindsight is 20/20. That’s true, and so too is the reality that, had Hamas taken a different path and its leaders pushed for living in peace with Israel rather than cultivating a perpetual war footing, we wouldn’t be watching Gaza turned into a parking lot. But they didn’t, and we are.

This is simply another example of leaders using their citizens as cannon fodder so that they can accumulate fortune and power. When the dust settles, one can only hope the Gazan people look at the difference between their world and the luxury their leaders enjoy and decide to vote for a different path forward, one that doesn’t include perpetual war and tragedy. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath.