Personal Responsibility in the Arab World

You may have seen these incredible pictures on the Internet: ski slopes built in the middle of the Dubai desert. Yes, that's the same Dubai that was about to take over management of some of our ports.

The Dubai ski slopes are really an amazing engineering feat: a massive indoor freezer, the size of three football fields, in the middle of the desert. They maintain a 6,000-ton snow base for five different slopes kept at a constant temperature well below freezing.

The cost of building and maintaining something like this is well into the billions. And this is just one of the toys rich Arabs are building. Take a look at the Burj Al Arab hotel, also in Dubai, where you can't get a decent room for less than a few thousand a night.

All this got me to thinking about the Palestinians and the money we've been sending there.

We've sent billions in aid to the Palestinians over the years, even though we know that Palestinian leaders were stealing a lot of that money for expensive homes and shopping sprees in Paris.

But we recently announced that we're holding back on some of the aid to the Palestinians because the Hamas government in Gaza continues to call for the destruction of Israel.

Former President Jimmy Carter and others have scolded the U.S. for being so insensitive to Palestinian needs. So we're the bad guys for letting Palestinians starve.

But what about the folks who built the indoor ski slopes? Why don't we ever hear about the obligations of rich Arabs to take care of their own? They've obviously got billions of petro-dollars to throw around. Why aren't they told off for not giving more to their Palestinian brothers? We get creamed for not subsidizing dishonest terrorists and oil-rich Arabs hear not a word about spending money on toys while their brother Arabs are starving.

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this picture?

David Asman host's FOX News Channel's "Forbes on FOX" Saturdays at 11 a.m. ET