Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, made a similar claim on Tuesday during her debut news briefing. She stated that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) “found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.”
That would be an awful lot of sex, though "awful" and "sex" probably shouldn't be in the same phrase.The following day, the President, a little more weirdly, himself boasted "we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. They used them as a method of making bombs. How about that?"
Though not most important to the story, the Trump-Leavitt claim was inaccurate, as explained by The Times of the United Kingdom. There is a province in Mozambique and
In this Gaza, and the adjoining Inhambane province, about a quarter of the adult population is HIV positive, and since 2021 the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation has received more than $82 million from USAid, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to operate reproductive health projects there. The support was expected to continue until 2026.
A comprehensive report issued in September by USAid was reviewed by The Times. Some $60.8 million in funding was allocated for condoms and female contraceptives in 2023, but not a cent of that seems to have gone to Gaza.
In fact, no condoms were sent to any part of the Middle East
and just one small shipment — $45,680 in oral and injectable contraceptives —
was sent to the region, all of it distributed to the government of Jordan.
The most common form of contraceptive paid for with USAid money was contraceptive implants for women ($23 million), followed by injectable ones ($17 million). Only about $7 million was allocated for “male condoms”.
Dan Evon, of the non-profit News Literacy Project, said: “It’s also worth noting that this is not a Biden programme. Trump, too, spent funds on sending contraceptives around the globe. In 2019, about $40 million was spent on contraceptives by the Trump administration.
Sending money "to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas" would be ridiculous policy. Sending money to Gaza to buy condoms for whomever probably also would be unswise because the millions would more likely be used for weapons or tunnels than for contraceptives.
Nonetheless, sending condoms themselves to Gaza is not such a crazy idea. At worse, they'd go unused, disposed of by Hamas or unused by the populace. At best, however, it would be vey wise strategic policy.
As a vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance said "We owe something to our country. We owe something to our future. The best way to invest in it is to ensure the next generation actually exists. I think we have to go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country."
Your mileage may differ. However, ridiculous hyperbole aside, the aggressively pro-natalist Vance arguably has a point, in that the USA- as nearly all of the West- has a fertility rate below replacement level. This affluent nation can afford to have a higher birth rate (or not).
The USA, with an estimated 12.2 births per 1,000 people, in 2024 ranked 145 out of 228 entities in fertility rate. However, the two entities most closely associated with having a "Palestinian" population, Gaza and the West Bank, do it differently. The Gaza Strip is #38 with 26.8 births per 1,000 while the West Bank comes in at #22 with 27.8 births per 1,000 people.
That's a lot of little children. That's not only a lot of mouths to feed, but also a tremendous number of children who grow up, potentially to become terrorists or, at least, voters.
This does not sit well with Jordan, whose population already is approximately half "Palestinian." (How one can be a Palestinan though never living in Palestine is an issue for another time.) President Trump stated that he pitched to Jordan's King Abdullah the idea of sending displaced Gazans to Jordan and
"I said to him, 'I'd love for you to take on more because I'm looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it's a mess.'"
He said he was making a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during a conversation they were having while Trump was at his Doral resort in Florida on Sunday. Mr. Trump said he would "like Egypt to take people and I'd like Jordan to take people."
Jordan's foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Sunday that his country's opposition to what Trump floated was "firm and unwavering"...
Egypt's foreign minister issued a statement saying that the temporary or long-term transfer of Palestinians "risks expanding the conflict in the region
This can be roughly, yet accurately, translated as "There are too darn many of them." The more individuals of an ethnic group in a country, the more influence, and eventually power, they can potentially wield. As is not fully appreciated, Jordan doesn't want Palestinians. Egypt doesn't want Palestinians. The Arab/Persian world doesn't want Palestinians, and we already know that Israel doesn't want any more of them.
Short-term, sending Gazans to Egypt and/or Jordan would be a boon to the region because those individuals would at least be living in a region not beset by war or the destruction it wrought. It would be a convenient solution for the USA because its President would claim to have ended the wr and brought peace to the Middle East. And it woul assist the Israelis, who would face less threat of a terrorist attack and would not have to do as much as quickly to a place which has suffered tremendously from Israeli attack in retaliation to a brutal and evil attack from Hamas.
But it's not going to happen. There is not a small number of Gazans, whom the world considers Palestinian, and they do not possess the "anti-chid ideology" which the American vice-president claims exist in the USA. They present a short-term, medium-term, and long-term threat to various nations in the Middle East and especially to the countries in which they reside.
That's the dirty little secret of all of this. The Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, is deeply unpopular there and is not self-sufficient, relying on Israeli help. Gaza is controlled and dominated by the deeply unpopular, deeply terroristic Hamas. Amd the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank renders establishment of a Palestinian state there highly unlikely.
Exacerbating these realities is the growht rate among residents of both the West Bank and Gaza. "For years," USA Today notes, "the U.S. government has provided millions of dollars worth of condoms and other contraceptives to foreign countries as a way to help prevent the spread of AIDS and HIV and to make sure that family planning is available in developing nations." If condoms actually could get past Hamas and into the hands (and elsewhere) of residents of Gaza, it would be a wise investment.
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