President Joe Biden announced last week that the United States would provide “$100 million of new US funding for humanitarian assistance in both Gaza and the West Bank.” As my colleague Danielle Pletka notes, the administration will channel money for Gaza from the U.S. Agency for International Development's emergency funds that will not be subject to congressional scrutiny. USAID, meanwhile, will not answer questions about how it will spend that money in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
What is certain is that Hamas retains authoritarian control over the Gaza Strip, and it is not possible to distribute aid without going through at least some Hamas structures. Speaking to CNN, principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer twisted himself into knots explaining how the administration had come to an “understanding” with Hamas about how the money would be spent without actually saying what that understanding was. That Finer’s comments came so quickly after the United Nations Relief and Works Agency reported Hamas stole medicine and fuel before deleting its tweets only adds to the White House's naivete.
In effect, it is the North Korea aid debacle all over again. At the time, President Bill Clinton agreed to provide both food and heavy fuel oil to North Korea as part of an incentive package for a diplomatic deal. North Korea cheated, sending both oil and food to its army as ordinary citizens froze and starved. When the U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed the North Korean cheating and diversion, the State Department blamed America for demanding too inflexible a regimen of control.
Making the same mistake twice in the face of terrorists and rogues is bad enough, but it gets worse. While Biden bails out Hamas, a terrorist group holding American hostages and with American blood on its hands, it repeatedly refused to provide any substantive aid to Nagorno-Karabakh, which is home to one of the world’s oldest indigenous Christian populations.
In December 2022, then-Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried testified that since the second Nagorno-Karabakh War began in September 2020, the United States had provided “$21 million in humanitarian assistance, directly and indirectly.” Most of that assistance was indirect, channeled through the International Committee of the Red Cross. In theory, this was meant to provide humanitarian support for Nagorno-Karabakh’s besieged Christians, but Azerbaijan refused to allow ICRC aid in. That did not stop Azerbaijan from collecting its portion, as Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridors Act that prohibits countries receiving American assistance from interfering with its distribution in other countries, regions, or territories. In practice, this meant that Nagorno-Karabakh received only a portion of the $2.5 million the U.S. provided in demining assistance for the South Caucasus.
The juxtaposition is damning. Hamas ran one of the world’s worst dictatorships. It transformed Gaza into a terrorist statelet. Artsakh, the self-governing entity formed by indigenous Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, was democratic and invested what money it had into development projects, roads, and schools. Hamas represses all religious _expression_ that does not conform to its radical Sunni ideology, while Artsakh embraced religious freedom.
In effect, Biden shows a double standard: He rewards terrorists and turns his back on its victims. As a result, one of the world’s oldest indigenous communities was destroyed. Rather than get meaningful assistance, all they got was a letter promising his “strong support” amid Armenian “mourning” and a brief photo-op by Samantha Power, the USAID administrator who now will channel tens of millions of dollars to Hamas.
Christians, proponents of democracy, and victims of terrorism should be outraged.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/israel-war-biden-funds-hamas-but-turns-his-back-on-nagorno-karabakh-christians