Should we give half a million to Hamas?

Donating to countries is good because you can gain influence over other countries and make decisions for them like how you want them to teach in their children (e.g secular or Islamic). The more you donate the more you control their government.

There is no point influencing a good country because they are already doing the right sort of things so leverage is increasingly useful the more evil the country is to start off with, or rather in the absence of your money bribing them to obey your will (more opportunity to improve).

This is even less of a problem of course if it is a single leader and more so if it is more systematic reflection of the views of the population. So therefore donating money to a country is the equivalent of declaring it to be inherently evil. Donating lots of money means you think it is REALLY evil.

Good examples of such effective bribary are pre war (GW I) Iraq, Uzbekistan, Cambodia etc. if bad things have happened in these countries - imagine how bad it would have been WITHOUT extra money!

Regimes such as that in Sudan etc are particularly in need of our millions or billions.

Or maybe mindlessly applying that strategy has some flaws...