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.

****

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

 

Once Again, Qatar Saves Hamas

by Stephen M. Flatow / JNS.org

The government of Qatar has again rescued Hamas.

Every time the Hamas terror regime in Gaza is on the brink of collapse, the Gulf state of Qatar comes riding in on a white horse like a knight in shining armor to ensure that Hamas will live to see another day. What happened to the “moderate” Qatar that American Jewish leaders were praising just a few years ago?

Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.

This time, Hamas allegedly is running out of money to pay the salaries of its employees. If you don’t pay your employees, they don’t work. And if your workers don’t work, your gangster regime collapses. The collapse of Hamas would obviously be a good thing for Israel, the United States and modern civilization in general.

But once again, Qatar has jumped in on the side of the bad guys.

The new deal, according to media reports, will involve Qatar sending fuel to Gaza through Egypt. Hamas is then going to sell the fuel in order to meet its payroll.

That will keep Hamas in power so that it can continue firing thousands of missiles at Israeli kindergartens and kibbutzim near the Gaza border. And it can keep its cells in Judea and Samaria operating, so they can murder Jews there, too.

Qatar is already underwriting Gaza’s power plant and sending financial aid to 100,000 Gazans every month through a UN voucher system, which saves Hamas the expense of having to provide that aid. And it offered Hamas $500 million to rebuild after the 11-day conflict with Israeli in May—a conflict started by the terrorist organization and one that ended with the launching of more than 4,000 rockets at civilian populations in Israel. In short, Qatar is pretty much propping up the entire Hamas mini-terror state. 

Hamas is not the only terror gang supported by Qatar. Its close relationships with the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood have been well-documented. And a lawsuit now making its way through British courts charges that Qatar has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the Al-Nusra Front, a Syrian-based affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

 And for those who are concerned about the rise of antisemitism around the world, it’s worth recalling that a report by the Anti-Defamation League found the official Qatari government media continues to publish editorial cartoons “which blatantly demonize Jews” and “draw on the worst kind of antisemitic themes.”

In addition, a review by MEMRI of textbooks prepared by Qatar’s Ministry of Education and used in its schools found that they “feature antisemitic motifs, presenting Jews as treacherous, dishonest and crafty, and at the same time as weak, wretched and cowardly.”

Moreover, the last international book fair in Qatar’s capital, Doha, featured antisemitic books such as “The Myth of the Nazi Gas Chambers” and “Lies Spread by the Jews,” and an Arabic translation of “Awakening to Jewish Influence in the United States of America” by white-supremacist leader (and former Ku Klux Klansman) David Duke.

This is all quite different from what we were told by the handful of leaders of American Zionist organizations who took all-expenses-paid trips to meet with the Emir of Qatar in his oil-rich Gulf kingdom in 2017-18. One Jewish official later admitted publicly that he was a paid, registered foreign agent of the Qatari government.

When the secret trips were exposed by journalists, the Jewish leaders defended their actions on the grounds that Qatar was becoming more moderate.

I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar hosting and sponsoring the world’s largest antisemitic media network, Al Jazeera.

I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar financing terrorist groups around the world.

And I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar rescuing and sponsoring a deadly terrorist regime along Israel’s southern border.

It’s time to take off the blinders and see Qatar for what it really is—a terror-funding outlet for antisemitic vitriol.

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 Terrorism.”

 

 Searching for new ways to fund a terrorist regime.

By Stephen M. Flatow

The United States doesn’t finance schools in Iran or North Korea. So why should it pay for those under the Palestinian Authority, which not only sponsors terrorists but spreads some of the most vicious anti-American propaganda in the world?

(March 15, 2021 / JNS)

Question: How do you get the American government to finance a terrorist regime when U.S. law prevents it from doing so?

 Answer: Twist the meaning of words, claim that the law doesn’t say what it obviously says and pretend the regime doesn’t sponsor terror. In other words, play the usual games.

 Those games are in full swing now in the campaign to put American taxpayers’ dollars into the pockets of the Palestinian Authority.

 Last week, The New York Times published a gigantic feature story about a Palestinian Arab school located in the village of Jaba near Bethlehem that supposedly will be in dire straits unless it starts receiving large amounts of American aid, and fast.

Jaba School, NY Times

The article, by Times correspondent Adam Rasgon, never considers the question of why the P.A. chooses to fund terrorists rather than its own schools. Last year, the P.A. distributed $15 million monthly —monthly!—on salaries for terrorists who are imprisoned in Israel. Just one month of those funds could have built quite a few schools.

Instead, Rasgon’s entire article was based on the premise that America has some kind of obligation to pay for the P.A.’s schools.

 The United States does send humanitarian assistance to various impoverished countries, but not to anti-American, terror-sponsoring regimes. The United States doesn’t finance schools in Iran or North Korea. So why should it pay for schools under the P.A., which not only sponsors terrorists but spreads some of the most vicious anti-American propaganda in the world?

 Moreover, what exactly is being taught in the school that the Times wants American taxpayers to support? P.A. school textbooks are notorious for glorifying terrorism and vilifying Israel and America. Are we supposed to believe that the Jaba school will be the first P.A. school to use a moderate, peace-promoting curriculum?

 One of the main commentators quoted in the Times article was Joel Braunold, who was described as “an expert on U.S. law surrounding foreign aid to the Palestinians.” Braunold made it clear he is troubled that U.S. law, specifically the Taylor Force Act, prohibits sending aid to the P.A. so long as it pays terrorists.

So Braunold plays word games to get around that inconvenient law.

 He asks: “Would funding construction of this school, which is controlled by the Palestinian government, be considered direct support of the Palestinian Authority? It may or may not be. It is up to the Secretary of State to decide.”

 Braunold is obviously hoping that the current Secretary of State, unlike his predecessor, will change the plain meaning of the term “direct support” so that the Taylor Force Act can be discarded, and the U.S. can start sending checks to the P.A.

 Braunold and the Times are not the only ones playing word games in order to get aid to the P.A. Recently, David Makovsky—former right-hand man to ex-Mideast envoy Martin Indyk—has been promoting the idea that the P.A. should dress up its payments-to-terrorists program as “a welfare system” that would pretend to hand out money based on financial need (instead of based on how many Jews the recipient murdered). Makovsky was doing what we call “saying the quiet part out loud”—giving away, in public, what he hopes the P.A. will do in order to perpetrate a farce on American taxpayers.

 One last word about Joel Braunold, the “expert” who was quoted prominently in the article about the school. The Times correspondent, Adam Rasgon, somehow “forgot” to mention that Braunold is the managing director at a left-wing think tank, the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, which just happens to advocate U.S. funding for the P.A. (Key activists at the center in years past have included J Street leader Jeremy Ben-Ami and Sara Ehrman, one of the founders of Americans for Peace Now.)

 I would welcome a serious and robust public discussion about the question of American aid to the P.A. and the Taylor Force Act. What I don’t like are the dishonest tactics being used by some of those who are promoting the Palestinian cause.

 So, please, don’t tell us that the United States has some kind of obligation to finance P.A. schools. Tell us what’s being taught in those schools if you want us to fund them.

 Don’t tell us that the Secretary of State can arbitrarily change the meaning of U.S. law. He cannot.

 Don’t give the P.A. advice on how to pull the wool over the American public’s eyes so that it can get our money. And don’t pretend that an advocate for Palestinian funding is some kind of neutral “expert.”

 Most of all, stop searching for new ways to get American dollars to a terror-sponsoring regime. Instead, try searching for ways to force the P.A. to change its terrorist ways. That would be a real step towards Middle East peace.

 Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and 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.”