Palestinians bite hand that feeds it, suffer consequences

Gee, all this time, who knew that the only reason Palestine could even pretend to statehood was because the Israelis were paying for it?

I don't know about some folks, but I'm guessing that "tax transfers" sounds an awful lot like "tribute," and am having some fairly serious problems mustering the requisite sympathy. Not that I really give a crap about the Israelis, a bunch of perfidious bastards who sell our miltech out to China (the actual real government most likely to shoot us with it) whenever our back's turned.

But what part of a traditional society, in which the woman are largely not working, has 25% of its population on government "salary?" I'll tell you what kind of a traditional society... a dead one. You're talking about a society that is, in effect, one giant infant at the welfare tit.

If the Palestinians want to be a nation, they can build an economy, just like everybody else. And if they want to put into power a bunch of folks who think that war with the only neighbor of theirs willing to make more than token statements on their behalf -- that's right, folks, even the Saudis are pleding chump-change compared to what the Israelis are about to cut off -- then they can discover that the greatest freedom, as Terry Pratchett says, is the freedom "to suffer the consequences."

(And before the peanut gallery pops up with a chorus of "Mexico!," I'd like to remind everybody that we're getting back a bunch of people in exchange, so that's not an apple-to-apple comparison...)