Funding our enemies

The first thing to note is that I am not DK himself. In fact, as a new contributor to the Kitchen, I ought to introduce myself. I'm Mark Wallace, the Campaign Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA), an independent campaign for lower taxes and better government. As such, I can normally be found blogging over at the TPA's site.

On to the actual issue at hand. It's well known that huge quantities of British aid money is abused—swept, far too often, into the pockets of an army of wealthy dictators, corrupt politicians and middle men rather than actually helping the poor it is intended for. That abuse is bad enough, taking billions from British taxpayers and giving it to rich men to supplement their palaces and fleets of limos, but it is not the worst abuse of our aid budget.

A new report out today from the TPA reveals that large quantities of British aid goes to an even more sinister and damaging destination—Islamist hate education in the Palestinian territories. While the poverty of people in Palestine is well documented, the sad truth is that the £100m a year Britain gives to support the Palestinian Authority's budget often ends up simply freeing up cash to be spent on propaganda dished out through the official media and the education system.

This is not only financially costly, it is disgusting that we are paying for people to be taught to hate this country and the principles of democracy and freedom. While politicians from all sides condemn vocally the work of suicide bombers and terrorists in Palestine, our money is subsidising school books that say things like:

"O heroes, Allah has promised you victory... Do not talk yourselves into flight... Your enemies seek life while you seek death. They seek spoils to fill their empty stomachs while you seek a Garden [Paradise] as wide as are the heavens and the earth... death is not bitter in the mouth of the believers. These drops of blood that gush from your bodies will be transformed tomorrow into blazing red meteors that will fall down upon the heads of your enemies."

Or funding the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation to air speeches like this, broadcast on 5 June 2008:

“There are diseases like smallpox, that can be eradicated, but the disease that was inflicted on the Palestinian people and the Arab nation in general, that's the Jewish disease, the Zionist disease, which is a cancerous disease, that started with occupying and taking over lands in 1904 […] Those (Jews), from 1904 to 1947, reached 605,000. That's the cancer that spreads over the lands.”

Nice. That's hardly the "dialogue" Government Ministers claim they are keen to promote. It's clearly time for the Government to get a handle on at least some of the taxpayers' money that they are dishing out around the world. Setting conditions in return for giving aid has become a taboo in these politically correct days, but it is essential to ensure our money is not being either stolen or abused.

Next time a politician says they want peace, harmony and understanding in the Middle East, ask them this: why the hell are we paying to teach kids that violence and hatred are good?

As a postcript, it will of course come as no surprise to Kitchen readers that the EU is responsible for doling out much of our aid money - this will be addressed shortly in a specific TPA report about the failings of the EU aid machine. In the meantime, those who would like to join the campaign can sign up for free here.