*Ø* Blogmanac | Arafat fabulously wealthy?
"The next time you hear the Palestinians and their supporters bemoaning how Israel's determination to defend itself against terror has 'crippled' the Palestinian economy, consider a new report from the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF recently disclosed that its own audit uncovered the fact that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat between 1995 and 2000 diverted fully $591 million from the PA budget into a special bank account under his personal control.
"That's nearly $100 million a year!
"Talking about hitting the lottery.
"According to the IMF's Karim Nashashibi, the money – which came from tax revenues collected by Israel and turned over to Arafat – was used to invest in 69 domestic and foreign commercial companies, whose actual owners were not disclosed.
"(Arafat's investments, by the way, returned a profit of $300 million. Not bad for a Marxist revolutionary.)"
[I found this New York Post story at Rhino's Blog, which is highly recommended.
Of course, despite what the cranky right-wing report in the Post says, Israel, with US aid, has indeed crippled the Palestinian economy, and quite deliberately so. Travellers to Palestine speak of families living in abject poverty as bad as, if not worse than, what they have seen in benighted Africa. However, Arafat has been about as much use as tits on a bull for the Palestinian people, and now he turns out to be a rich crook as well. So he can afford a proper trim for his whiskers after all? He had me fooled.]
"The next time you hear the Palestinians and their supporters bemoaning how Israel's determination to defend itself against terror has 'crippled' the Palestinian economy, consider a new report from the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF recently disclosed that its own audit uncovered the fact that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat between 1995 and 2000 diverted fully $591 million from the PA budget into a special bank account under his personal control.
"That's nearly $100 million a year!
"Talking about hitting the lottery.
"According to the IMF's Karim Nashashibi, the money – which came from tax revenues collected by Israel and turned over to Arafat – was used to invest in 69 domestic and foreign commercial companies, whose actual owners were not disclosed.
"(Arafat's investments, by the way, returned a profit of $300 million. Not bad for a Marxist revolutionary.)"
[I found this New York Post story at Rhino's Blog, which is highly recommended.
Of course, despite what the cranky right-wing report in the Post says, Israel, with US aid, has indeed crippled the Palestinian economy, and quite deliberately so. Travellers to Palestine speak of families living in abject poverty as bad as, if not worse than, what they have seen in benighted Africa. However, Arafat has been about as much use as tits on a bull for the Palestinian people, and now he turns out to be a rich crook as well. So he can afford a proper trim for his whiskers after all? He had me fooled.]
Pip Wilson posted item above at 8:57 PM | Permalink
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