Cash Short EU Gives Greece Ultimatum, While Donating Liberally to the PLO/PA

REVISED, LINKs ADDED 2-20&3-19&20-2012

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

On February 7, this year, the EU announced a grant of funds to the Palestinian Authority, as reported by the PLO/PA's press agency, WAFA:

The European Union and Sweden Tuesday contributed €24.7 million to the payment of the January salaries and pensions of around 84,300 Palestinian civil servants and pensioners in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to an EU press release.

The European Commission made €22.5 million contribution and Sweden made €2.2 million. [here]

The next day Luxembourg, an EU member state, announced a donation of 15 million euros to the UNRWA, also for the benefit of Palestinian Arabs:

". . . in order to bring aid to the Palestinian people. . . The UNRWA which carries out remarkable and still indispensable work on behalf of 5 million [sic!] Palestinian refugees, is Luxembourg's principal partner in matters of aid to the Palestinian people,"

quoth the Luxembourg development minister.

A significant point about this aid was made by UNRWA's commissioner-general, Filippo Grandi:

In these times of political and economic uncertainty, both in this region [the ME] and worldwide, Luxembourg's increasing commitment in favor of our work is welcome. [original below]

Le Luxembourg donne 15 millions d'euros à l'UNRWA pour "porter assistance au peuple palestinien" Le Luxembourg a annoncé mercredi qu'il faisait un don de 15 millions d'euros à l'Office de secours et de travaux des Nations Unies pour les "réfugiés de Palestine" au Proche-Orient (UNRWA). L'accord a été signé par la ministre luxembourgeoise du Développement Marie-Josée Jacobs et le commissaire général de l'UNRWA, Filippo Grandi. "En ces temps d'incertitude politique et économique tant dans cette région que globalement, l'engagement croissant du Luxembourg en faveur de notre travail est le bienvenu", a déclaré Grandi. "L'UNRWA, qui poursuit son travail remarquable et encore indispensable au service de 5 millions de Palestiniens réfugiés, est le principal partenaire du Luxembourg lorsqu'il s'agit deporter assistance au peuple palestinien", a affirmé la ministre Jacobs. [Guysen News, 2-8-2012]

These are times of political and economic uncertainty indeed. Greece, a fellow member of the EU, is on the verge of bankruptcy, partly of its own doing and partly due to very mistaken policies of the EU [led by Germany] since 2010 and of the International Monetary Fund [since Christine Lagarde took over] to force a severe austerity program on Greece as a supposed remedy for its economic ills, while not providing Greece with a facility for borrowing funds at reasonable rates of interest, particularly without implementing the eurobonds idea, and thereby ensuring that Greece would not be able to pay off its ever increasing sovereign debt. That is, without growth and without a way to borrow at reasonable rates Greece could neither grow economically nor pay its debts. Failure of the "rescue plan" was foreseen by some economists back in 2010.

Nevertheless, all the while, economic experts from the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF [since Lagarde's takeover] have been making all sorts of demands on Greece. Among them Greece must cut the minimum wage by 22% [according to Natalie Savaricas, France24], cut 150,000 public sector jobs by 2015 [in a country of ca. 9 million pop.], accept a commissioner from abroad for the tax administration, and reduce public health service reimbursements for purchases of medicine, etc. Germany moreover, wanted an outside commissioner to veto Greek government policies, which the EU Commission has not yet agreed to.

Meanwhile, the PA is faring much differently.

The European Commission's contribution comes from the €155 million package of financial assistance to the recurrent expenditures of the Palestinian Authority committed for 2012, said the release.

The European Commission agreed to a request by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to frontload €116.2 million of this package in the first five months of 2012 in order to help the Palestinian Authority meet its urgent financial needs.

The €2.2 million contribution by the Swedish Government is part of its continuous support to the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people.

Most of the European Union's assistance to the Palestinian Authority is channeled through PEGASE, the financial mechanism launched in 2008 to support the PA Reform and Development Plan (2008-2010) and the subsequent PA Palestinian National Plan (2011-2013).

Since February 2008, €1.23 billion have been disbursed through the PEGASE Direct Financial Support programs. [here]

No mention here of austerity. No demands to reduce expenditures, let's say, on the PA's print & broadcast media which regularly spread genocidal hatred of Jews. No talk of a special commissioner to oversee tax collection. No demand by Germany for a commissioner with power to veto Palestinian Authority policies. If there is accountability to the EU for funds spent or if there is EU supervision of fund disbursement, then why are there Nazi-like propaganda and genocide incitement in Palestinian Authority institutions: TV, radio, official PA newspapers, schools, mosques, etc.?? Yet, the Greeks are held to standards and demands are made of them. But no ultimatums for Arabs. It doesn't bother anybody at the EU that many if not most of the PA's civil servants are superfluous and indeed some of them are involved in creating and spreading hate propaganda against Jews or in terrorism now or in the past. Yet Greece is to fire 150,000 civil servants.

Furthermore, after the Greek parliament followed the government in accepting the demands of the EU, ECB, and IMF, new obstacles were raised to Greece getting the needed and promised funds. And one of those holding up the funds was very conspicuously Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the Euro Zone, the EuroGroup, who also just so happens to be prime minister of Luxembourg, which was so happy to be helpful and accommodating with the Palestinian Authority by supplying additional funds to UNRWA.

Indeed, helping the PA/PLO seems to be a paramount, supreme policy of the EU. It may also be EU policy to make propaganda against Israel, considering the many millions in subsidies by the EU and member states to Arab and pro-Arab/pro-PLO/anti-Israel NGOs that carry out propaganda and agitate against Israel. We don't hear of reductions in funds for the PA and the pro-PA NGOs despite the Euro debt crisis.

Meanwhile, Greece is treated differently. Moreover, it is not the only EU country in financial trouble. Ireland and Portugal too have received EU bail out funds, while Spain and Italy are under watch for fear of financial collapse, while Belgium, France and even Germany are seen as not entirely healthy financially, as under potential threat. The EU & its member states need money. Lots of it. But there is room for funding for the Palestinian Authority --cheerfully and helpfully with few or no questions asked.

So what explains the differential treatment of the Palestinian Authority and of Greece by the EU? The PA produces little, its economy is mainly based on donations from the EU, USA, wealthy Arab states and Japan. Much of its employed work force works for the PA administration and "security" services. Its corruption is notorious. It spreads hatred and incites war and genocide through its press, TV, radio, schools, and govt-supervised mosques. Meanwhile, Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign affairs commissioner, is eager to see a PLO/PA state created, whether or not it makes peace with Israel. Why are the PA and Greece treated differently?

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Bernard-Henri Levy BHL on the Greek debt crisis.
Executive of the German firm Bosch wants Greece out of the EU [or only out of the eurozone?]
Paul Krugman thinks the EU failed to solve the crisis, partly due to their arrogance.
Charles Wyplosz points out six mistakes of Germany's finance minister.
Sarkozy & Merkel make demands on Greece [here--see video]

Qui links are in Italian, Ici links in French:
Wolfgang Schaeuble, German finance minister, speaks out against Athens [qui]
Jacques Attali on the Eurocrisis & Germany's role [ici]
The Troika's demands on Greece as of 30 January 2012 [qui]
Athens accepts cuts [qui]
Krugman's solution, print money, among other things [qui]
Economist Charles Wyplosz criticizes German dictates to the EU & Greece [qui]
The EU wants guarantees from Greece[qui]
Economist Jose Antonio Ocampo finds fault with Schaeuble and German policy [qui]
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3-19-2012 Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission, displays --in her shallow & pedestrian manner-- her warm sympathies for the Arab cause and for the notion of an Arab state in the Land of Israel, while drawing an absurd parallel between youth in Gaza and the Jewish victims of the massacre today in Toulouse, France.
The EU & Catherine Ashton unblock another 35 million euros for the palestinian authority in an agreement with PA prime minister Salem Fayyad.
3-20-2012 Jonathan Tobin comments on Catherine Ashton's fatuous comparison of children deliberately murdered in Toulouse & Norway [by Breivik last year] with Belgian children killed in a bus accident and with Gazan children who may have died as a byproduct of wars and battles started by the Islamists in Gaza in their endeavors to murder Israeli civilians, including children.
Jonathan Neumann sees Ashton's fatuousness as allowing us a peek at the EU's real anti-Israel agenda and proving once again that the EU cannot be an "honest broker" between Jews and Arabs.
Elliott Abrams points out that despite Ashton's claim to have been misunderstood, "her remarks quite obviously drew a parallel." She did not explicitly deny --in her response to criticism-- that she sees a parallel between the accidental deaths of the Belgian children, unquestionably tragic, with the deliberate murder of Jewish children in Toulouse and Arab children in Gaza who are often used as human shields. For Abrams, this failure to explicitly deny a parallel confirms that she indeed wanted to draw a parallel, however false it may have been. She may be too stupid to understand this.
Walter Z Laqueur demonstrates the foolish illusions of the admirers of the EU and the "Arab Spring."