In a special report to Congress last month, the rules governing the exclusion of terrorists from the United States were set forth.
I have to tell you, they made pretty good sense.
I might have gone a little further. But it was a good start – 10 common-sense rules for turning away aliens trying to enter the United States. They include:
- anyone who has engaged in a terrorist activity;
- anyone who is believed to be engaged in or likely to engage in a terrorist activity;
- anyone who has expressed an intention to incite terrorist activity;
- anyone who is a representative of a designated or non-designated terrorist organization or anyone who is a member of a group that espouses terrorism;
- anyone who has received military-type training from a terrorist organization;
And then there was one that caught my eye. It got my attention because it is the only organization specifically named in the Dec. 20, 2005, Congressional Research Service report. There is no mention, for instance, of al-Qaida. There is no mention of Hezbollah. There is no mention of Hamas.
But, anyone who "is an officer, official, representative, or spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization" is expressly prohibited from entering the United States as an alien.
Now, I don't have a problem with that. In fact, I think it is absolutely the right thing to do. Yet, it is surprising for a number of reasons:
- The United States has aided the PLO directly, through its new name, the Palestinian Authority, with hundreds of millions of dollars.
- The United States, more than any other nation on Earth, has given the PLO legitimacy as a "partner for peace" in the Middle East.
- I can only imagine how the United States might react if Israel should decide to ban entry of aliens who are members of the PLO – people who generally represent a far greater threat to the Jewish state than they do to the U.S.
Bravo, I say, to the Congress for specifically mentioning the granddaddy of all Islamic terrorist groups in the world – the one that invented the airline hijacking, the one that invented suicide missions, the one that has undoubtedly killed more people worldwide than al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas.
But do you see the contradiction?
It is also the Congress of the United States that sends hundreds of millions of dollars in direct financial aid to the very people for whom we want no part ourselves. They aren't welcome in this country, yet they are welcome to our money – and they are welcome to create as much havoc, death and destruction for the state of Israel as they like.
Even this week, the United States was quietly aiding Fatah, the founding party within the PLO with financial support to boost its image in today's legislative elections in the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. Agency for International Development rushed another $2 million in taxpayer funds to the rogues and killers in the terrorist organization to fend off the political threat by other rival terrorists in Hamas.
Israel, too, plays this game of favoring one terrorist murderer over another. Also concerned about the specter of Hamas making big legislative gains in today's elections, the Jewish state did all it could to boost the fortunes of Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, an imprisoned mass murderer.
Israel even permitted Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya reporters to interview Barghouti in his prison cell, where he continued to exhort new terrorist acts, explained that terrorism must accompany negotiations and promised that the ultimate goal remains the destruction of the Jewish state.
As Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post noted:
It is hard to know which move is dumber: Israel's facilitating the participation in the elections of Hamas – a terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of Israel – or the government's pinning its hopes for a future peace process on the victory of Fatah, an even larger terrorist organization similarly dedicated to Israel's annihilation.
To which I would add, it is hard to know which is dumber: Israel backing groups and individuals sworn to its destruction, or the United States supporting with taxpayer dollars and international legitimacy people and organizations it knows are unrepentant terrorists – those we would never allow into our own country.