Gaza's Obama Contribution

What astounds me most about this story is that so much money would be given from such a poor place.

You'd be surprised how much money it costs to fund a war machine against Israel. Fear not, Saudi and Iranian oil money, trafficked into Gaza in suitcases, paid for those t-shirts.

In Gaza, 70% of the nonrefugees make less than $1.20 a day. This fact makes alone this story a bit hard to believe. Perhaps it was orchestrated by anti-Obama folks.

That's quite a reach, [Name]. You're stretching yourself into absurdity. No conspiracy is too far fetched, so long as Palestinians are the victims.

The donations came in between Sept. 20 and Dec. 6 and virtually all of the money, about $33,500, was returned by December 6. But the refunds weren’t reported to the Federal Election Commission due to a technical error, campaign officials said.

That's the end of the story.

Some Palestinians tried to buy a ton of Obama t-shirts directly from the campaign, probably to resell in WB/Gaza or elsewhere in the Middle East. They probably didn't even know they were funding his campaign and were just trying to buy authentic Obama shirts for resale.

The Palestinians I know would never give up their hard earned money this way. If Hamas was behind this, they would use the money to pay their forces, not fund a political campaign halfway around the world. $33k is nothing. A government like China can funnel millions into a candidate's campaign, as they did in the 90s with Clinton, and have some effect. $33k is about half the cost of one of the big rallies Obama does once a week. That enough for a year's worth of maybe one full time paid staffer, out of the hundreds that he has. It's nothing.

There was no conspiracy. The money was being refunded back almost immediately. If someone was trying to set Obama up, they would have done something more elaborate, like bundling campaign contributions through CAIR, or whatnot.

Let's be honest. [Name] is writing about this because there is an expectation among many of you Paliphiles that this country hates Palestinians and Arabs, and Obama being connected with Arabs in any way will be viewed as a negative for his campaign. She was railing against that, not the details of this particular situation.

That's why she - not to recycle a verb - bundled the story with Mazen Asbahi.