Adonis Diaries

Wrong numbers, wrong reasons: What is the income of Palestinians under Israel occupation? 

At a morning fund-raising breakfast, largely populated by ultra-rich Jewish Americans, Mitt Romney (Republican Presidential candidate) blurted out that Palestinians are poor because their culture is inferior to that of Jews.

Is Romney faking Not to know the reason most Palestinians have low third-world income levels? Romney must know that:

1. Palestinians under occupation are born into impoverished towns or refugee camps inside the gerrymandered Bantustans of the Palestinian Authority,

2. where border crossings are controlled by Israeli military authorities checkpoints by the hundreds (over 600 checkpoints). The trip from Ramallah to the Jordanian borders should take less than 45 minutes, but the trip last 8 hours for the Palestinians.

3. water sources are tapped to feed Jewish settlements.  All the wells in the occupied territory have been depleted so that the settlers enjoy lush gardens. Every Jew in Israel enjoy ten times the amount of water reserved for the Palestinian

4. Israeli-built infrastructure bypasses the occupied Palestinian villages. The Wall of Same is 800 kilometers long and cut through Palestinian towns and villages. Why? So that the Israeli want have any opportunity to see a living Palestinians across from them…

5. the education system is funded by paltry international contributions and paltrier taxes,.. The UN has cut down on the budget to educating the Palestinians in the occupied land and in the refugee camps outside of Israel

6. agricultural land is periodically taken by Jewish settlers whose illegal seizures are retroactively approved by the government,. In period of harvesting olive or fruit trees, the settlers are instigated by the government to harass the Palestinian peasants and let the harvest rot…

7. land values are undermined because of the overhanging threat of expropriation by Israel…Israel routinely demolish villages on the ground of expanding military training ground…

Through all the savage indignities and economic violence of a 50-year-long occupation, by Zionist people whose ultimate goal is to force Palestinians off as much of the territory as possible, it is a miracle that Palestinians still have the energy and will to keep struggling and surviving.

An article in The Economist read:

“Gross corruption by Palestinian officials and counterproductive political and economic, attitudes on the part of Palestinian citizens, mainly a typical adaptive behaviours that any people tend to develop when they’re confined to massive donor-supported detention zones, have made the situation much worse.

Palestine was not going to be a wealthy nation under any circumstances. But without the occupation they might have been as wealthy as, say, Jordanians, who have a per capita income (purchasing-power-adjusted) of $6,000.

BUSH Jr. was never much of a CEO, but Mitt Romney, by all accounts, was a killer CEO; his campaign so far has been lackluster, and his first trip abroad has been a bit of a horn-honking, floppy-shoed clown show.

After spending several days getting flayed by the British press for insulting the country’s handling of the Olympic games, Romney moved on to Israel, where his campaign promptly involved itself in a diplomatic scandal (this time with actual consequences) over whether it had said that Mr Romney would back a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran.

Mr Romney went on to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, a position no American administration has ever taken because discussions over the final status of the city are the most explosive subject in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

At a fund-raising breakfast of ultra-rich Jewish Americans, Mr Romney managed to blurt that Palestinians are poor because their culture is inferior to that of Jews:

“As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality,”

The Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who breakfasted around a U-shaped table at the luxurious King David Hotel…Romney, seated next to billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson at the head of the table, told donors at his fundraiser that he had read books and relied on his own business experience to understand why the difference is so great.

“And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” Romney said, and went on to citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the “hand of providence.“

Palestinians were less than thrilled. Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian official said:

“What is this man doing here?Yesterday, he destroyed negotiations by saying Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and today he is saying Israeli culture is more advanced than Palestinian culture. Isn’t this racism?”

To make matters worse, Mr Romney got his numbers wrong. Per capita income in Israel is over $31,000; in the Palestinian territories it is closer to $1,500.

Those aren’t the kinds of numbers that divide industrious Protestants from happy-go-lucky Catholics. They’re the kind of numbers that divide South Korea from Ghana. You don’t get those kinds of divisions because of cultural differences.

Comparing the income of the average Israeli to that of the average Palestinian, as though their prospects at birth had been equivalent and their fortunes today are largely the result of their own efforts and their “culture”, is gratuitously insulting and wreaks damage to American diplomacy.

And it’s just wrong. Mr Romney may have noticed a rather large concrete wall running between many Palestinian towns and the roads (Wall of Shame) that might otherwise connect them with markets. To coin a phrase, Palestinians didn’t build that.

If one were looking for a country in which citizens of different religions are born into relatively equal positions and have equivalent levels of economic freedom, one might try comparing income by religion in the United States.

Perhaps at a fund-raising breakfast in New York, Mr Romney might compliment the city’s wealthy Jews and Hindus on their culture of educational excellence, which has made them so much richer and more accomplished, on average, than America’s evangelical Christians and Mormons.

Maybe it’s not just culture; perhaps the “hand of providence” plays a role, as well. With the political deft touch Mr Romney has displayed so far on his trip abroad, I wouldn’t put such a remark entirely past him.”

Does Romney forget that the State of Israel received more then $1,000bn of clear money just from the US, and not counting another $trillion from Germany and France and Italy and England…? Excluding the yearly funding that private corporations and Jews sent (tax free) to expanding the settlement grid?

Note: I doubt that Gaza was included in that picture. Over 1.5 million Palestinians are crammed in Gaza, totally blocked from the outside world and unable to trade or communicate with even the West Bank.  Israel destroyed all the infrastructures, hospitals and schools in Gaza and frequently cut off the power supply and water sources…