The U.S. should stop paying for terror

 

Stop Paying for Terror: End U.S. aid to Palestinian Arab Forces that worship killers

Why should U.S. taxpayers be forced to bankroll those who hail our children’s murderers as martyrs?

In 1995, my daughter Alisa was murdered by Iranian-backed Palestinian Arab terrorists while studying abroad in Israel. She was 20 years old, full of life and hope, until a suicide bomber ended her dreams—and ours.

That’s why I, as an American, cannot stay silent as I watch the United States continue to funnel money into a Palestinian Authority security force that praises and elevates terrorists as heroes. This is not just an outrage—it is a travesty, one that dishonors the memory of those lost and endangers countless more innocents.

Pal. police        Flash90

The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial exposing how the U.S. State Department, through programs supposedly aimed at fostering stability, is bankrolling the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) police and security forces. The justification is that these forces help maintain order and fight extremism. But look closer, and you’ll see that this is a hollow argument, contradicted by grim reality.

To continue to the full column om Israel National News go here.

Stop Paying for Terror

My most recent column in Israel National News looks at the funding by America of the Palestinian Authority's security force. Taylor Force's memory deserves better than what the U.S. State Dept is now doing.

Stop Paying for Terror: End U.S. aid to Palestinian Arab Forces that worship killers

 In 1995, my daughter Alisa was murdered by Iranian-backed Palestinian Arab terrorists while studying abroad in Israel. She was 20 years old, full of life and hope, until a suicide bomber ended her dreams—and ours.

That’s why I, as an American, cannot stay silent as I watch the United States continue to funnel money into a Palestinian Authority security force that praises and elevates terrorists as heroes. This is not just an outrage—it is a travesty, one that dishonors the memory of those lost and endangers countless more innocents.

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Enough is enough. For the sake of the victims, for the cause of true peace, and for the moral soul of America, we must stop subsidizing those who dance on the blood of innocents.

Taylor Force

Congress must close the Taylor Force Act loopholes. And we must finally send a clear, unwavering message: the United States will not pay one dime to anyone who celebrates terror. Taylor Force's memory requires better.

Read the full column at Israel National News.

Let us know what you think.

Stephen M. Flatow

 Sweden rethinking aid to Palestinian Authority; what about U.S.?

Terrorism, authoritarianism, and corruption are not American values. They are those of the PA, a regime that deserves no US support. 

My Israel National News column may be read on-line here.

Stephen M. Flatow, October 24 , 2021
 
Last week, the United States took a step closer to giving the Palestinian Arabs $225-million, regardless of Palestinian behavior. Also last week, Sweden said it will not go forward with its aid to the Palestinian Authority if Palestinian corruption continues.
 
How can this be?
 
In Washington, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved language giving the Palestinian Arabs $225-million, which is $40-million more than the Biden administration requested at this stage. The committee’s action follows an identical step by the House of Representatives.
 
You may wonder how such aid can forward, when the Taylor Force Act of 2018 prohibits U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA stops paying salaries and rewards to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists.
  
American Jewish organizations need to speak out against the proposed $225-million U.S. aid package to the Palestinian Arabs.
The answer is simple—they will elude the law by routing the funds through non-governmental agencies. But that’s just sleight-of-hand. Make no mistake about it: this is American money for the PA in another form. Aid is fungible. That $225-million will mean the PA has to spend $225-million less of its own money.
 
U.S. Senator Christopher Coons said the U.S. aid “reflects America’s core values.” I beg to differ. Terrorism, authoritarianism, and corruption are not American values. They are the values of the Palestinian Authority, a regime that deserves no American support.
 
Sweden, by contrast, seems to be having second thoughts about the $49-million that it gave to the Palestinian Arabs last year. During her visit to Israel last week, Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde indicated that Sweden may be rethinking whether to continue that aid. She said that “corruption at such a level as exists in Palestine” has to end “if we are to be able to fully support” the PA.
 
Let it be noted that Sweden is far from Israel’s best friend in Europe. The Swedes have passionately supported forcing Israel back to the indefensible 1967 lines and creating a deadly Palestinian state in Israel’s back yard. Sweden also still pretends that Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, is Israel’s capital.
 
But apparently the Swedes are concerned about how their money is spent. I wonder why some of America’s leaders do not seem to have that same level of concern. I don’t see any statements from Sen. Coons or his colleagues saying that U.S. aid to the Palestinian Arabs should be conditioned on ending corruption.
 
Another interesting contrast: the Biden administration is withholding $130-military aid from Egypt because of human rights violations there. Yet the administration and its congressional allies apparently have no problem with the PA’s torture of dissidents, suppression of media critics, or mistreatment of women. Don’t Palestinian human rights matter?
 
Three years ago, two other European countries that are not particularly known as lovers of Israel likewise offered a model for the United States to follow.
 
Belgium, which had been giving the Palestinian Arabs more than $20-million annually, announced that it “will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.” That was because Palestinian Media Watch exposed that a Belgian-funded Palestinian school, the Beit Awwa Basic Girls School, changed its name to the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School.
 
Mughrabi was the leader of the Fatah terrorist gang that landed on Israel’s shore on March 9, 1978. They murdered an American Jewish nature photographer, Gail Rubin (the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff), then hijacked an Israeli bus and massacred 36 passengers, including 12 children. One of Mughrabi’s accomplices was later hired as a senior adviser to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
 
Norway decided that it, too, does not want to be associated with Mughrabi. The Norwegians had contributed $10,000 to a women’s center in the PA town of Burqa. The PA named the center after mass-murderer Mughrabi. The Norwegian government demanded, and received, a full refund.
 
If these three European countries can stand up for the principle of opposing the glorification of Palestinian terrorism, shouldn’t the United States be able to do likewise?
 
American Jewish organizations need to speak out against the proposed $225-million U.S. aid package to the Palestinian Arabs. Our tax dollars should not be sent—either directly or indirectly—to corrupt, terror-promoting regimes. Belgium, Norway, and now Sweden, are setting an example that the Biden administration should follow.
 
Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

"Pay to Slay" and Joe Biden

 My latest JNS column asks:

Will Biden tolerate ‘pay for slay?’

Through whatever financial or other pressure is available, we need to force the Palestinian Authority to stop paying terrorists, stop naming schools and streets after terrorists, and stop using their media to portray terrorists as heroes.

Supporters of the Palestinian cause are openly clamoring for the Biden administration to let the Palestinian Authority wriggle out of the ban on U.S. aid over the “pay for slay” policy. Friends of Israel should vigorously oppose these efforts.

Taylor Force

“Pay for slay”—the P.A.’s system of giving financial rewards to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists—should not be a partisan issue for Americans. Remember: There was broad bipartisan support for the 2018 legislation known as the Taylor Force Act, which bars U.S. aid to the P.A. until that policy stops.

The vote in the House of Representatives was 256-167 (Republicans had a 238-201 majority at the time). The vote in the Senate (where the Republicans had a 51-47 majority) was 65-32. And many of the “no” votes in both chambers were not meant as a “no” on Taylor Force; they were connected to other segments of the package to which Taylor Force was attached.

Taylor Force, an army veteran and Vanderbilt University graduate student murdered in Jaffa in 2016, was one of the more than 140 Americans who have been killed in Israel by Palestinian Arab terrorists. They were not killed because they were Republicans or Democrats. Every American, regardless of his or her political affiliation, should want to do everything possible to deter Palestinian Arab terrorists

Giving terrorists and their families financial rewards incentivizes terrorism. Forcing the P.A. to stop doing that will take away those incentives. That’s the key—forcing the P.A. to stop. Not coming up with gimmicks and sleight-of-hand maneuvers in order to avoid the Taylor Force restrictions.

The idea of coming up with such a gimmick was promoted in a major New York Times article on Nov. 19. It claimed that P.A. officials are planning to “overhaul” the system of paying terrorists in order to convince the United States to resume sending $500 million in aid annually.

What P.A. officials told the Times is not what they have been telling the folks back home. Palestinian Media Watch reports that “nearly every day since the Times report,” one or more senior P.A. officials have reaffirmed in Arabic that the payments to terrorists will continue.

What’s the gimmick that the P.A.’s American friends are promoting? Acting on “the advice of sympathetic Democrats” and “Washington think tanks,” according to the Times, the P.A. would give out the payments “based on their financial needs instead of how long they are behind bars.”

I’m sure it was just a coincidence that a former Obama administration official who is now with a Washington think tank, David Makovsky, told The Jerusalem Post last week that “the Palestinians would be smart [to adopt] a compromise plan that would allow for a welfare system that would avoid giving money” based on terrorism, but instead would be based on financial needs.

That’s not a “compromise.” It’s not a genuine “welfare system.” It’s a trick. And it’s the most contemptible kind of trick—the kind that is performed openly, right before our eyes, as if we’re all too stupid to realize what they’re doing.

It’s easy enough to imagine how it will proceed. An official of the P.A.’s Ministry of Prisoner Affairs will stamp a piece of paper that says, “You are hereby given X amount of money based on our determination of your financial need.” The amount of money given to each family of a terrorist will be the same as before, only it will come with the piece of paper that —presto!— certifies the money is now being given for “financial need.”

The great irony is that the “peace” activists who are trying to get American money to the P.A. in this fashion are actually undermining peace, not advancing it. The only hope for a real peace is to wean Palestinian Arab society away from its glorification of terrorism. Through whatever financial or other pressure is available, we need to force the P.A. to stop paying terrorists, stop naming schools and streets after terrorists, and stop using their media to portray terrorists as heroes.

The Palestinians need to genuinely recognize that terrorism is morally wrong and expunge their terrorists from their society—just as the Allies compelled the German people, after World War II, to recognize that Nazism was evil and to expunge it from their society. Sticking to the Taylor Force Act is one way to advance that goal. Helping them trick their way around it will only encourage terrorism and prolong the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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This column and others may be read at JNS.ORG here.

Well, that's what I think.

Stephen M. Flatow