Is charity leaving the American character?
"let your hand give, in proportion to your purse"
The Trump administration formally accepted a $400 million jet from the Qatari government. During Trump’s very tense meeting today with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa to discuss refugees entering the United States to escape “white genocide” in South Africa, the visiting leader apologized for not having a plane to gift Trump. In response, our president said:
I wish you did. I’d take it. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it.
Also today, the UN reports that Israel allowed dozens of aid trucks to enter Gaza on Monday, but none of the food, medicine, and fuel has actually reached suffering Palestinians. These 93 trucks are the first source of critical aid to cross the border after an 11 week blockade.
Sabah Warsh Agha, a 67-year-old woman from northern Gaza, says “There is no flour, no food, no water. We used to get water from the pump, now the pump has stopped working. There is no diesel or gas.”
Umm Talal Al-Masri, a 53-year-old displaced Palestinian living somewhere in Gaza City, told AFP “We’re grinding lentils and pasta to make some loaves of bread, and we barely manage to prepare one meal a day.”
Antoine Renard of the World Food Program says Israel wants to ensure safe passage, as looting has become an even greater risk. Meanwhile Palestinians in Gaza are isolated and starving with little to no recourse.
On the day those trucks entered Gaza, Vice President JD Vance met with the newly elected leader of the Vatican to presumably have another photo op and to extend an invitation to Pope Leo XIV to visit the United States. In that meeting, the Vice President gifted a Chicago Bears football jersey with “Pope Leo” written on it.
Americans, Christians and non-alike, are a charitable people. Giving to those in need has always been a cherished American value. In Charities Aid Foundation’s most recent World Giving Index, the United States still ranks as one of the 10 most giving nations in the world with 61% of Americans reportedly having donated money and 76% of adults having helped a stranger.
Between 2009 and 2018, the same index awarded the United States the most generous nation in the world for the decade following the 2008 financial crisis. Charity and caring for strangers has been central to the American character dating back to the nation’s founding fathers. George Washington in January 1783 wrote:
Let your heart feel for the affliction, & distresses of every one—and let your hand give, in proportion to your purse—remembering always, the estimation of the Widows mite. But, that it is not every one who asketh, that deserveth charity; all however are worthy of the enquiry—or the deserving may suffer.
That character surely inspired the leaders who crafted New Deal programs (e.g. Social Security) to meet the challenges of the Great Depression. And since at least World War II, American generosity has not been limited to its borders. In Secretary of State George Marshall’s speech regarding the European Recovery Act of 1948, he said:
Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
Of course, the Marshall Plan of 1948 to help rebuild Europe had geopolitical value, but it would be cynical to say it was the only value which motivated American leadership to act. Today, the democratic superpower which emerged from World War II stands afar from those suffering.
President Trump while in Abu Dhabi last week sat down for an interview with Fox News and said of the situation in Gaza:
Gaza is a nasty place. It's been that way for years. I think it should become a free zone, freedom. I call it a freedom zone. It should become a freedom zone.
Yesterday in Brussels, European leaders agreed to review their political and economic relationship with Israel due to what the European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas referred to a "catastrophic" situation in Gaza. She went on to say “the aid that Israel has allowed in is of course welcomed, but it's a drop in the ocean. Aid must flow immediately, without obstruction and at scale, because this is what is needed.”
The very next day, a group of diplomats from the EU, France, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Russia, China and elsewhere were visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin and were fired upon by Israeli troops. While Kallas and others demanded accountability for what the German Foreign Ministry called “unprovoked shelling,” Israel responded “the IDF regrets the inconvenience caused.”
The United Kingdom suspended free trade talks with Israel and placed sanctions on West Bank settlers. The British Prime Minister publicly called the children's suffering in Gaza "utterly intolerable."
Meanwhile when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before Congress yesterday, the US response could be summarized as:
The Trump administration is encouraging but not threatening Israel to resume humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza.. the U.S. is not following the lead of several European countries that have imposed sanctions or warned of actions against Israel amid the dearth of assistance reaching vulnerable Palestinians.
Recently the Trump administration has declared a new world order in which so-called nation builders, full of neocons and liberal nonprofits, are no longer in charge, but how the United States acts in Gaza is unique from other global conflicts.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Israel is by far the largest recipient of US foreign aid since 1946 having received more than $300 billion from US taxpayers. In contrast, Afghanistan, which received considerable aid to rebuild its nation while the US was embroiled in a 20 year war with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, received only roughly half of what Israel received yet is ranked 3rd in terms of US foreign aid.
While the United States continues to fund Israel economically and militarily, the White House refuses to firmly demand Israel secure a path for humanitarian aid (inspected by IDF) immediately despite being able to wield incredible leverage.
And, in other news, the House of Representatives will vote this week on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” in which more than 7.5 million Americans could soon lose Medicaid health coverage.
Thankfully Trump himself will soon be very comfortable flying in his veritable “palace in the sky.”