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OPINION

Americans Paid Billions In Welfare to Palestinians. Never Again, If Congress Passes Proposed Bill

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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American taxpayers pay welfare to U.S. citizens, immigrants, and to people who have nothing to do with this country at all, like the Palestinians. The Palestinians have received billions of dollars earned by the U.S. working class because our government confiscates our salaries in order to redistribute our monies domestically and abroad. 

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Why, you may ask, are Americans being forced to subsidize people who have no connection to us? “American assistance to the Palestinians is an important component of our nation’s engagement in the Middle East," answers Republican Senator James Lankford. Lankford has been able to balance our foreign policy interests with the interests of taxpayers. He introduced a bill to the U.S. Senate seeking to drastically reduce American expenditures on this redistribution program but does not propose to eradicate it entirely. Lankford's bill echoes some of the concerns outlined by the Trump administration during the recent announcement that this administration is canceling funding to this program at the U.N. 

The U.S. tax redistribution to Palestinians is a program known as UNRWA, and it is run by the U.N. Since 1949, American taxpayers have contributed more than $6,000,000,000.00 to UNRWA, to have those funds redistributed to people claiming to be Palestinian "refugees." The U.N. through UNRWA gives our money to anyone who is a Palestinian "refugee" under the U.N. definition.

Lankford's bill explains that the overwhelming majority of Palestinian "refugees" receiving UNRWA benefits, those living in West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, are in fact not refugees, but are descendants of those, or related to, people who were once refugees. By including blood-line relatives, UNRWA’s definition of "refugee" is not just broader than the American definition; it is also more ubiquitous than other international refugee assistance organizations’ definitions. Lankford seeks to reduce the scope of the welfare program to Palestinians who meet the American definition of the word refugee, which does not include blood-line descendants.

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Consider this example: UNRWA considers more than 2 million citizens of Jordan, most of whom were born in Jordan and had lived in Jordan for their entire lives, as Palestinian "refugees." But if you were born in America, you would be called an American. So if you are born in Jordan, you are a Jordanian. Not so, according to racist UN, which continues to archaically define people by their blood, not their country of origin. Jordanians get to be called Palestinian "refugees," and they are receiving American welfare. As a result, Jordanians have become lavishly accustomed to the lifestyle afforded to them by U.S. dollars. 

How many Palestinian "refugees" are currently receiving U.S. welfare benefits? 5,117,942 people, according to a 2014 accounting. How many are actual refugees, not counting their offspring? Around 20,000 people, according to sources trusted by the Free Beacon. That means that over 5 million people who are receiving U.S. taxpayer funding are not refugees by any rational definition of the word. The overwhelming majority of the recipient base are just relatives. The actual number of refugees is less than 0.5%, an amount so minuscule that it is smaller than a margin of error. 

"Refugee" as is used by the U.N. is thus a term of art; or, more accurately, a term of fraud, that has been invented by the morally bankrupt United Nations to provide stronger support to the group of people who oppose UN's greatest victim, Israel. Moreover, UN's deceitful definition of UNRWA "refugee" automatically grants life-long refugee status to any descendants of Palestinian refugees, regardless of specific circumstances or need. Based on the purposeful inflation of refugees to 5 million recipients, the U.N. is practically building an army. But why? 

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The only reason why the U.N. would choose this over-broad definition seems to be that the U.N. is intentionally and deliberately funding the Palestinian people's desire to overtake Israel, something they call "the Right of Return." This is the idea that Palestinian descendants should have the right to reclaim the property once rented by their ancestors, property that was legally purchased by the ancestors of the people currently living on the properties from landowners who sold it to them. (Liberal media like CNN brush over this seemingly important detail to enhance the Palestinian-friendly false illusion of Israeli land theft.) Many Palestinians have understood this right to mean Islamic jihad, “to liquidate a free society through conventional war, subversion, shootings, bombings, suicide attacks, rockets,” explains Elan Journo, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

The end result is American tax dollars have been redistributed to people who have nothing to do with the original aim of those benefits in order to subsidize the UN's anti-Israel agenda, to continue investing in the concept of a Palestinian "right" to terrorize Israelis, and to pay welfare to non-citizens more indiscriminately than to our own American citizens. 

How is this fair, from any American perspective? It is not. This is why Trump pulled us out. But that is not enough. The next liberal President will be able to push us back in. Lankford's bill is a prophylactic for this situation. The effect of a change to U.S. law, to more strictly regulate our funding of UNRWA, would mean that a future Presidential administration would not be able to easily revert back to an Obama-type of indiscriminate UNRWA-funding policy. Lankford's bill is a strong safeguard for the American people. 

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UNRWA has been a U.N. racket that looted billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers while our leaders encouraged it. Our money was redistributed to those who showed no need for it, and it was used to support terrorism in Israel. Lankford's bill is a legislative equivalent of "never again!" 

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