These large payments reward past terrorist acts and incentivize the commission of future terror attacks.

By Hugh Fitzgerald, Frontpage Magazine

John Spencer is a West Point professor who, after 25 years in the American military, become a leader in the field of urban warfare. His own study of the IDF in Gaza has led him to conclude that “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires.”

Now he has published a piece on the “Pay-For-Slay” program that is still supported by the Palestinian Authority.

This program provides large monthly stipends both to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists who died while carrying out their attacks.

The American government passed the Taylor Force Act in 2018, declaring that American aid to the PA would be suspended as long as “Pay-For-Slay” remained in force.

The program continues, but the Biden administration managed to find various excuses, and imaginative misinterpretations of the law, for not enforcing Taylor Force and cutting off all aid to the PA.

John Spencer’s piece on the need for the Trump administration to end “Pay-For-Slay” can be found here:

“Peace in Israel isn’t possible until Palestinians stop paying terrorists to kill | Opinion,” by John Spencer, USA Today, January 10, 2025:

“An 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, Ludmila Lipovsky, was brutally murdered last month in Israel while waiting for her daughter to take her to a doctor’s appointment. A 28-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank is accused of stabbing her to death.

This horrific act is yet another example of the violence incentivized by a multimillion dollar program known as “pay to slay,” which is written into Palestinian law and governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Some view it as simply a system that rewards Palestinians for committing acts of terrorism against Jewish Israelis. In reality, it is a deeply ingrained economic structure and societal program in the West Bank and Gaza that incentivizes violence, thus undermining any chance of a sustainable peace deal…..”

The amounts provided by the PA to imprisoned terrorists and the families of terrorists who died as “martyrs” in the commission of their terror attacks are substantial, much higher than the average monthly wage in either Gaza or in the Palestinian-populated parts of Judea and Samaria.

These large sums both reward past terrorist acts and incentivize the commission of future terror attacks.

“The program provides monthly payments to Palestinians convicted of violent acts against Israelis and imprisoned for their crimes. Crucially, these payments are not extended to those convicted of non-terror-related crimes. The payments increase with the length of the prison sentence, which perversely rewards perpetrators of the worse crimes.

For example, as of 2017, a prisoner sentenced to up to three years receives $400 monthly, while someone sentenced to 10 to 15 years earns more than $1,500 monthly. During incarceration, the Palestinian Authority also pays the individual’s social security and pension fees. The payments to prisoners are adjusted to account for increases in the cost of living.

Upon release, the benefits continue. Released prisoners receive a lump-sum grant ranging from $1,500 to $25,000, depending on the duration of their imprisonment. Employment in government institutions is guaranteed, with job placements prioritized based on years spent in prison. Those who cannot secure jobs receive unemployment stipends − provided they served at least five years for men or two years for women.

Moreover, released prisoners enjoy free college education and lifelong health care. A male prisoner who has spent at least one year in an Israeli prison is exempt from tuition fees at Palestinian universities and professional training programs, as well as from health insurance payments.

If a terrorist is killed during an attack or by Israeli forces, their family is supported through the “martyrs” fund. Families receive monthly payments − spouses for life and children until they reach adulthood − ranging from $100 to $1,200…..”

Does “Pay-For-Slay” really incentivize terror attacks? The data certainly suggests so. In 2024, there were 18,000 terror attacks on Israelis. Many were rockets and drones launched by Hamas from Gaza and by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.

But close to 2,000 were committed inside Israel by Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria, or by Israeli Arabs.

Clearly “Pay-For-Slay” is having the desired effect: huge numbers of terror attacks on Israelis, by every conceivable means — arson, Molotov cocktails, shootings, use of explosives, stabbings, car rammings, bombings, and abductions.

“Pay-For-Slay” works — it rewards and massively incentivizes terrorism, and that is why it is essential that the Trump administration return to the policy of the first Trump term, which was to assiduously enforce Taylor Force after it was passed in 2018, by cutting off all aid to the PA.

Unfortunately, just a few months into his first and only term, in April 2021, Joe Biden reversed Trump’s course and renewed aid to the Palestinian Authority, with a lot of Jesuitical casuistry about how these PA payments were not really “pay-for-slay” rewards, but should be thought of as welfare payments, being given to Palestinian prisoners and families who most “needed” the money.

This claim might have been more plausible if the payments were made to all the poorest Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including those who had been sentenced for non-terrorist-related crimes.

But this is not the case: only those who committed acts of terrorism, and no matter how well off they might be, are eligible for the PA’s stipends.

And the families of those Palestinian Arabs who died in the course of committing not terrorist attacks but common crimes (robbery, burglary, arson, rape, and so on) are similarly not eligible for monthly stipends from “Pay-For-Slay.”

President Trump should declare his intention to enforce the Taylor Force Act, denounce the PA’s “continued reward to terrorists and their families with generous monthly stipends,” and cut off all the aid to the Palestinian Authority that the Biden administration had reinstated in April 2021.

I suspect that once that happens, the PA — facing four years of Trump enforcing Taylor Force — will suddenly discover that it really can do without its “Pay-For-Slay” program after all.

The post The Palestinian Authority’s diabolical ‘pay-for-slay’ program appeared first on World Israel News.

Internal docs show Biden admin knew there was a ‘high risk’ Hamas would benefit from U.S. aid.

By Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon

The Biden administration pushed through plans to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer aid to the Palestinians despite internal assessments that those plans could boost the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

State Department officials in 2021 outlined the concerns in private communications, asking the Treasury Department to exempt them from laws that bar the U.S. government from injecting taxpayer aid into territories controlled by Palestinian terror groups. The Biden administration needed this authorization in order to move forward with its plans to unfreeze more than $360 million in U.S. funds for the Palestinian Authority that were cut off during the Trump administration due to the authority’s support for terrorists.

“We assess there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza. There is less but still some risk U.S. assistance would benefit other designated groups,” the State Department wrote in a draft sanctions exemption request circulated internally in March 2021, shortly after Biden took office. “Notwithstanding this risk, State believes it is in our national security interest to provide assistance in the West Bank and Gaza to support the foreign policy objectives.”

The documents—obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust—show the Biden administration was privately worried its efforts to restart Palestinian aid could benefit Hamas and other terror factions operating in the Gaza Strip. As officials publicly provided assurances to Congress and the press that this aid would be doled out “consistent with U.S. law,” the State Department was scrambling to secure a sanctions exemption that would let it skirt anti-terrorism laws.

The State Department claimed it needed broad authorities to conduct work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip “that would otherwise be prohibited by the Global Terrorist Sanctions Regulations and the Foreign Terrorist Organization Sanctions Regulations,” according to a draft version of the request.

“Such authorization would enable activities, including assistance activities, that are critical to support the administration’s efforts to advance prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians and to advance and preserve the prospects of a negotiated solution in which Israel lives in peace and security alongside a viable Palestinian state,” according to the draft request.

Warnings from Republicans

The previously unknown draft request adds credibility to warnings from Republicans at the time that aid would bolster terror groups. In April 2021, 18 Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) sent a letter to the administration calling for Palestinian aid to be halted until measures could be put in place to prevent it from benefiting terrorists.

The internal documents obtained by the Free Beacon include the draft of the exemption request as well as internal emails discussing the need for the Treasury Department to grant it. One email, sent to over a dozen State Department employees, said it was urgently needed to push the Biden administration’s “foreign policy objectives,” which included an immediate resumption of funding to the Palestinian government.

State Department officials said they did not specify what programs or activities they intended to fund if exempted from counterterrorism laws due to the need for “broad flexibility.” Instead, they would only provide the Treasury Department with “illustrative examples” including a list of assistance projects totaling over $200 million, according to one of the emails.

The State Department also asked for the exemption to be unclassified, “so relevant U.S. government agencies can share a copy with partners,” such as other governments and nonprofits.

State Department officials did not immediately return a request for comment on whether its assessment about the risk of U.S. aid bolstering Hamas was ultimately conveyed to the Treasury Department, or if the reference was deleted before the request was sent. The Treasury Department declined to comment on the matter, citing a policy of not discussing exemptions that may have been granted.

The administration ultimately moved forward with its plans to restart Palestinian aid, just months after the State Department’s internal wrangling over the issue.

One U.S. official familiar with the matter told the Free Beacon that the State Department’s early assessment of the risks of restarting aid should have given the Biden administration pause.

“The fact that there was a high risk that Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization, would benefit from U.S. assistance should have been enough to at least give the administration some pause in resuming aid, if not keep it from restarting it altogether,” said the official, who would only discuss the matter on background.

Breaking US Law

As the administration began pumping hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars into the Palestinian government’s coffers, Republicans in Congress claimed the funding ran afoul of additional U.S. laws as well.

Under the Taylor Force Act, a bipartisan 2018 law, the United States is barred from awarding funds to the Palestinian government until it stops paying salaries to imprisoned terrorists and their families, a policy known as “pay to slay.”

The State Department said in a non-public 2022 report to Congress that the Palestinian government “continued payments to Palestinian prisoners who had committed acts of terrorism, as well as the families of so-called ‘martyrs’ who died while committing acts of terrorism.”

Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, which sued the administration for stonewalling its FOIA request, said the latest cache of internal State Department documents indicate the administration was aware its funding efforts could violate the law.

“The Taylor Force Act was a bipartisan effort to prevent American taxpayer dollars from funding terrorists and rewarding terrorism,” Chamberlain said. “But here it appears State Department officials were trying to get around the law’s restrictions and send resources in a manner that even they thought was likely to result in funds ending up in the hands of a group designated as a terrorist organization.”

The Biden administration, he added, “talks a good game about respecting the rule of law and being the most ethical administration in history. But too often it is willing to ignore those ideals to advance a policy objective—even when that objective may conflict with the law.”

The post Biden administration knew Palestinian aid would boost Hamas – but gave it anyway appeared first on World Israel News.

“The US seems to be bucking the global trend in increasing its funding to UNRWA while the organization does nothing to stop the hate teaching.”

By Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner

The U.S. Department of State has increased its 2023-24 contribution to the UN agency assisting Palestinian refugees despite widespread concern that antisemitism and jihadi violence is openly taught in schools it administers in the Palestinian territories.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), founded in 1949 to provide humanitarian and social services to Palestinian refugees, will receive an additional $16.2 million this year, the State Department announced on Wednesday, bringing the total dollar amount it will rake in from the US under a framework agreement finalized in April to $223 million. Since 2021, the US has provided UNRWA $940 million.

On Thursday, Israeli education watchdog Impact-se, citing numerous reports it has authored about antisemitic teachers and curricular materials in UNRWA administered schools, criticized the funding boost.

“UNRWA not only teaches the hate filled Palestinian curriculum but produces its own extremist teaching materials,” Impact-se CEO Marcus Sheff said on Thursday in a press release. “The US seems to be bucking the global trend in increasing its funding to UNRWA while the organization does nothing to stop the hate teaching.”

The announcement of additional funding for UNRWA comes amid repeated calls for defunding the agency from US lawmakers.

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​​​​​US envoy to the PA has met with PA, PLO, and Fatah officials to “to improve the lives of the Palestinian people,” but did he call on the PA to stop rewarding terrorists and murderers for attacking and murdering Israelis?

By Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch

The 2018 bi-partisan US Taylor Force Act (TFA) conditioned much of the US aid to the Palestinian Authority on the latter abolishing its Pay-for-Slay terror reward policy. TFA was not merely a financial law. Rather, it contained substantive Congressional findings and direction, inter alia, to the US Department of State regarding the activities required of their representatives to pressure the PA to abandon its policy.

After finding that “The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror” TFA added the “Sense of Congress.” In this section of TFA, Congress called on the PA to abandon its terror reward policy and on other PA donor countries to cease aid to the PA until the PA abolished the policy.

TFA then added directions to urge “the Department of State to use its bilateral and multilateral engagements with all governments and organizations committed to the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians to highlight the issue of Palestinian Authority payments for acts of terrorism and to urge such governments and organizations to join the United States in calling on the Palestinian Authority to immediately cease such payments.”

In recent weeks, the PA approved its 2023 budget. While the PA hides its finances, the PA’s 2023 budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars that the PA will spend on its terror incentivizing and rewarding payments.

Soon after the announcement of the PA cabinet approval of the budget, Mr. Hady Amr, who according to the US Department of State website currently serves as the Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs within the Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs met with different senior PA, PLO and Fatah officials.

On April 11, Amr met, in the US, with governor of the PA Monetary Authority, Feras Milhem.

Two days later, in Ramallah, Amr met with Hussein Al-Sheikh, who is the Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO (which is still a US designated terror organization).

On April 17, Amr met with Fatah Secretary Jibril Rajoub, who, as Palestinian Media Watch has exposed, openly called for the commission of terror attacks against Israel and uses his position as the Head of the Palestinian Football Association and Palestinian Olympic Committee to promote and glorify terror.

The US Department of State, Office of Palestinian Affairs, summed up Amr’s recent trip to the region by saying:

“Special Rep. Hady Amr wraps up six days in Jerusalem & the West Bank where he engaged w/government, religious and civil society leaders to improve the lives of the Palestinian people. He also had moving visits to the Church of the Holy Seplechure and Al Aqsa mosque.” (errors in source –Ed.)

[Twitter account of the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs, April 19, 2023]

While Amr is meeting with all the right people “to improve the lives of the Palestinian people” glaringly missing from all of the reports about his meetings is a clear, unequivocal and repeated call, as required by TFA, from the US administration’s most senior official to the Palestinians, demanding that the PA/PLO abolish its terror incentivizing and rewarding payments.

Having now completed six months in his position as the Biden administration’s Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs, Amr should be requested to provide a detailed summary of all his efforts to persuade the PA to abolish its terror reward policy.

The summary should include details of every meeting held by Amr with PA/PLO officials in which he raised and relayed the Sense of Congress, included in TFA, calling on the PA/PLO “to stop payments for acts of terrorism by individuals who are imprisoned after being fairly tried and convicted for acts of terrorism and by individuals who died committing acts of terrorism and to repeal the laws authorizing such payments.”

The post What is the US Palestinian affairs rep doing to stop PA from rewarding terrorists? appeared first on World Israel News.

It cost $10,000 to kill a six-year-old boy, and the terrorists have the money.

By Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Magazine

When Secretary of State Blinken met with PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, he boasted of the over billion dollars in aid that the Biden administration had programmed for the terrorist territories.

That aid has come with a very heavy price.

In Feb 2019, President Trump’s total cutoff of aid became official. That year, 10 Israelis or people in Israeli controlled areas were killed in stabbings, shootings, rocket and other attacks, down from 12 the previous year, and 15 in 2017, and 16 in 2016.

In 2020 however only three Israelis were killed.

These numbers reflected the diminished capacity of the Islamic terrorists. The reduction in numbers was not due to the pandemic. 2020 still saw attacks, including firebombings, rocket launches and stabbings, but the success and lethality rates for these attacks were lower.

The numbers turned around dramatically once again in 2021.

In April 2021, the Biden administration restored aid to the PLO. Terror incidents, reflecting attack attempts, shot up sharply from 91 in February and 89 in March to 130 in April.

By May, major fighting resumed with 13 Israelis, including two children, killed.

By the time the year was over, 17 people in Israeli areas had been killed. The over 400% increase in deaths was only the beginning. In 2022, 31 Israelis or people in Israeli areas were killed, up from only 3 in 2020, for a massive 900% increase in casualties since the restoration of foreign aid to the terrorists. This was the worst death toll since 2015 under Obama.

But in January and the first half of February of 2023, 10 Israelis have already been killed, including a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy.

Three times as many have been killed in a month and a half of 2023 as in all of 2020. That’s a 233% increase over 2020 in just a fraction of a year, but it’s also a marked month-to-month escalation from 2022 which featured no attacks at all in January or February. More people have already been killed by terrorists in 2023 than through most of March in 2022.

What a difference a billion dollars makes.

While the media has tried to portray the terrorism as “lone wolf” attacks, they’re crowdsourced violence of the kind that Al Qaeda and ISIS helped innovate. But the PLO’s version is unique through its ‘Pay-for-Slay’ program which rewards terrorists, regardless of their formal affiliation, including ISIS and Hamas members, with salaries and payments for their families.

Terrorists are paid based on the length of their prison sentence. That means successful killers can earn $2,000 to $3,000 a month in a part of the world where the average salary is around $700 a month. It’s five times more profitable to be a terrorist than a teacher.

The Palestinian Authority calls for the murder of Jews, praises it and then rewards it.

Muhammad Al-Lahham of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, which runs the political movement behind the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority, was caught on video praising the “patriotic conscience” of a terrorist who had killed a rabbi taking his 2-year-old son for a walk in 2022.

The Trump administration cut off aid to the PLO’s Palestinian Authority and Congress passed the Taylor Force Act banning funds from going to finance Pay-to-Slay.

Throughout all this, PLO leadership have been consistent in refusing to stop financing terrorism.

“We will neither reduce nor prevent [payment] of allowances to the families of martyrs, prisoners and released prisoners, as some seek, and if we had only a single penny left, we would pay it to families of the martyrs and prisoners,” Abbas had bragged. By “martyrs”, he meant those Islamic terrorists who were killed while carrying out terrorist attacks.

Despite this, the Biden administration had restored aid and rebuilt diplomatic relations. Biden and Blinken have met with Abbas. And while they have attacked Israel over everything from letting Jews pray on the Temple Mount (due to Jewish prayers offending Muslim sensibilities) to democratic judicial reform that will limit the unilateral authority of pro-terrorist judges, Biden and Blinken have had nothing to say to the terrorists about the program funding the murder of Jews.

America First Legal, under Stephen Miller, filed suit against the Biden administration on behalf of the parents of Taylor Force: a non-Jewish Afghanistan war vet murdered in Jerusalem.

“The Biden Administration is well aware that the PA pays Palestinian terrorists to injure or kill innocent Americans and Israelis in Israel. Yet, in blatant violation of  the Taylor Force Act, a federal law that prohibits the government from sending American taxpayer dollars to the PA until it stops supporting terrorism, President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have resumed payments to the PA after the Trump Administration had stopped these payments in compliance with the Taylor Force Act,” America First Legal declared..

“The Taylor Force Act, named after our son, was passed by Congress and signed by President Trump to stop this Pay to Slay. Yet the Biden Administration has resumed payments to the PA notwithstanding its Pay to Slay program,” Stuart Force, Taylor’s father, said.

Threat reaches beyond Israel

The Biden administration’s decision to fund the Palestinian Authority has consequences beyond Israel. Islamic terrorism is a global threat and has been a reliable killer of Americans abroad.

“Robbi and I call upon President Biden to stop sending fungible taxpayer dollars to the PA that will end up funding terrorism,” Stuart Force appealed.

And the latest wave of violence shows just how ‘fungible’ that money is.

The massive uptick in successful terrorist attacks is not a coincidence. The numbers become more significant when we distinguish between so-called “lone wolf” attacks which are most directly impacted by ‘Pay-to-Slay’ and rocket attacks by other terrorist groups. 14 people were killed in direct terrorist attacks in 2018.

That number dropped to 5 in 2019, the year Trump cut off aid to the PLO. By 2020, it fell to 3, in 2021, the year Biden restored aid, it rose to 4 and then shot up to 32 in 2022 reflecting the ‘slow burn’ effect of fungible aid money being taken away and then restored within a government bureaucracy even if it’s run by and for terrorists.

As the Biden administration continues pumping money into the terrorist entities occupying parts of Israel, the violence is drastically increasing. 2023 is already on track to top 2022, which had the worst numbers since 2015. The level of Islamic terrorism is returning to that of the Obama administration and that means that we can expect an even higher death toll in Israel.

The billion dollars in aid is a factor, but an even bigger factor is that the Biden administration, like its Democrat predecessor, has made no secret of its support for the Palestinian Authority. And the Biden administration has gone even further with its diplomatic support for the PLO regime and its pressure on Israel. The latest murders are the work of a terrorist group that knows that Washington D.C. has its back and will intervene to protect it from Israel.

The Biden administration’s decision to appoint Hady Amr, an open supporter of Islamic terrorism and opponent of the Jewish State, as its key liaison to the PLO, who was inspired by the intifada, has consequences, and dead bodies in Jerusalem are among the most obvious ones.

Islamic terrorism runs on money and foreign support. The Biden administration has provided both. The Palestinian Authority spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on Pay-to-Slay.

The pipeline of terror may end with a 6-year-old boy lying dead on a Jerusalem street but it begins with cash coming out of Washington D.C. The attacks of September 11 cost Al Qaeda about half a million dollars.

The cost to the PLO of killing that little boy, his brother and a newly married man going to spend the Sabbath with his wife’s family probably comes out to about $30,000 a year. Or $10,000 per dead Jewish person. That’s a fraction of the millions of dollars in foreign aid which could be used to finance hundreds and thousands of more murders of Jews.

$10,000 to kill a six-year-old boy, another $10,000 to kill his 8-year-old brother. Thanks to the financiers of murdering Jews in the Biden administration, the terrorists have the cash.

And we’re the ones providing it.

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“It is a total mystery to me why [President Joe] Biden and [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken are violating a federal law, the Taylor Force Act,” said Stuart Force, Taylor’s father.

By JNS

In 2018, the Trump administration signed into law the Taylor Force Act to prevent the U.S. government from sending funds to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) as long as it continues to fund terrorism. Now, a new lawsuit supported by victims of terror is seeking to compel the Biden administration to follow suit.

Filed by America First Legal, a new firm founded and led by former Trump presidential senior advisor Stephen Miller, the lawsuit identifies the Biden administration funding the P.A. with more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars as a violation of the Taylor Force Act, named after a Vanderbilt University student and former army officer stabbed to death in Tel Aviv in 2016.

“Joe Biden is breaking the law by allowing our tax dollars to fund terrorism in Israel, and he must be stopped. I have deep respect for my fellow plaintiffs who have been tragically and directly impacted by Pay to Slay, and I am proud to be on the same team as we hold this failed administration accountable,” U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) said, referring to the P.A. terror-funding policy’s nickname.

Miller said, “Our lawsuit seeks to stop President Biden from violating the Taylor Force Act and illegally subsidizing terrorism against Americans who visit or live in Israel…Thank you to Dr. Ronny Jackson, Taylor’s parents Stuart and Robbi Force, and Sarri Singer, a survivor of a Palestinian suicide attack against a Jerusalem bus, for your courage in fighting back against the lawless Biden administration.”

Advocates for victims of terror Stuart Force (Taylor’s father) and Sarri Singer, director of Strength to Strength, offered their perspectives on the new lawsuit.

Force said he sought “to put a human face on the horrific effects of the Palestinian Authority’s Pay for Slay policy. Multiply the devastating loss of our beloved son Taylor by the hundreds of Israeli families that have also been impacted by this inhumane atrocity of Pay for Slay and you will understand why we are committed to ending the flow of U.S. dollars to the P.A.”

Singer, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, described her own experience with terrorism which inspired her to participate and form her organization.

“On June 11, 2003, I was on bus 14 in Jerusalem when a terrorist who was recruited by Hamas boarded my bus strapped with explosives and detonated,” she recalled. “He injured over 100 of us and murdered 17 innocent people including all those seated and standing around me. It is almost 20 years later, and I am still dealing with the long-term effects of the attack. There is still shrapnel in me that is not operable and not a day goes by that I am not reminded that a simple bus ride to meet a friend for dinner turned into one of the largest bus bombings in Israel during that time.”

Force could not understand why Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were breaking the law passed in his son’s name. “It is a total mystery to me why Biden and Blinken are violating a federal law, the Taylor Force Act. Only they know what motivates them,” he said. “If they understood what motivates Israel’s enemies, the elimination of the State of Israel, I would think they would stop any funding that could possibly find its way into the wrong hands. Honestly, I don’t know why this administration makes the decisions it does on any issue.”

Singer echoed that sentiment.

“I couldn’t even begin to guess [the Biden administration’s] motivations, but I wouldn’t think that they have bad intentions,” she said. “The fact is the law is clear and that is what matters. Many people worked very hard to pass the Taylor Force Act which is so important. Under the law, as long as the Palestinian Authority continues to use foreign aid to fund the pay for slay program, U.S. funds should not be directly sent to them.”

Jackson sees political motives in the Biden administration ignoring the Taylor Force Act. He said, “I believe Joe Biden is doing his best to score cheap political points with the antisemites in his party who have openly advocated for the Palestinian Authority while condemning one of our greatest allies, Israel.”

Force and Singer explained how the funds provided by the Biden administration to the P.A. were in violation of the law. “Aside from the increased rocket barrages, tunnel construction, and increased frequency of attacks on innocent civilians when ‘foreign aid’ increases, the money is used in its widespread PR campaign to incite violence and foment hatred of Israel and the United States,” Force said.

Singer emphasized how these taxpayer dollars intended to aid the Palestinian people would only exacerbate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Funds that supposedly go to help the Palestinian people are actually being used to pay terrorists and their families,” Singer said. “Foreign aid should be going to help people, not to incentivize violence and encourage future terrorist attacks. It only gets in the way of peace. As long as the conflict continues, both sides will suffer.”

Force was realistic about the time it would take to change minds, but said this lawsuit was an important step.

“I understand that changing beliefs and ideology is a long term prospect. By stopping the flow of dollars that funds Pay for Slay, we hope to change their criminal behavior. Ending Pay For Slay is a necessary step in the search for a better life for all,” he said.

Jackson emphasized that “the American people want their taxpayer dollars to be used responsibly.”

“In the Palestinian Authority’s case, we know they are not exclusively using our money for humanitarian efforts,” said the Texas lawmaker. “They are using it to advance their anti-Israel agenda, including paying people to carry out terrorist attacks. The Taylor Force Act gave the P.A. an ultimatum: stop funding terrorism if you want humanitarian aid. The P.A. brazenly chose terrorism over their own people, and Joe Biden has decided he simply does not care that blood is on his hands.”

David Litman, senior analyst at Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) said, “While Israel’s designation of terror-linked NGOs led to extensive, and often hyperbolic and misleading, media coverage, virtually none was given to the Palestinian Authority’s decrees that effectively nationalized Palestinian NGOs, including those to which U.S. aid is being funneled. This lawsuit should help direct attention to this reality and the implications it has for efforts to circumvent the Taylor Force Act.”

Singer pointed out the consequences of the resuming of American funding for the PA.

“Unsurprisingly, since the Biden administration resumed this illegal funding, Palestinian terrorism has greatly increased in Israel,” she said.

She also revealed how she continues to live with the painful effects of the terrorism she experienced nearly 20 years ago.

“It’s very real,” said Singer. “I think people think you go through something like this and OK, a year or two goes by, and everything’s fine, and that’s not the reality of the situation. Everyone deals with it differently and everyone deals with trauma differently…For me what’s been really incredible and has helped in the healing has been the connection with other victims of terrorism, that peer-to-peer support piece…I don’t want our club to get any bigger. This is a club none of us asked to join.”

She added, “For me in the healing process, having justice is really important…There has to be more accountability, part of that healing process is not to sit back but to take action…like taking action like these suits.”

The post Lawsuit challenges Biden to stop funding Palestinian terror, violating federal law appeared first on World Israel News.

“ZOA deplores the fact that Biden reinstated this U.S. aid after President Trump wisely stopped these terror training funds.”

By World Israel News Staff

Following the deadly twin-bombing attacks Wednesday morning that claimed the life of 16-year-old Aryeh Schupak and wounded 23 others, some critically, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is demanding the Biden administration take serious action to fight Palestinian terror.

The bombs were packed with nails to cause the most damage and detonated remotely when people were nearby, ZOA notes.

ZOA National President Morton Klein stated on Wednesday, “There has been an average of seven Arab terrorist attacks against Jews in Israel daily for the last nine months, including today’s terror bombings. The Zionist Organization of America demands that President Biden immediately halt the $700 million in aid to UNRWA, which runs schools and training camps where Hamas members teach Arab students to hate and violently attack Jews.

“ZOA deplores the fact that Biden reinstated this U.S. aid after President Trump wisely stopped these terror training funds.”

“The ZOA also urges the Biden Aministration to demand that the Palestinian Authority immediately end their policy of paying Arabs lifetime pensions to murder Jews and Americans,” Klein continued. “Furthermore, Biden should demand the rescinding of the naming of schools, streets, sports teams, and children’s camps after Jew-killers.”

“The U.S. must also abide by the Taylor Force Act, American law which prohibits U.S. funds from being used to pay Palestinian terrorists who kill Israelis and Americans,” added ZOA Chairman of the Board David Schoen.

“The Palestinian Authority, led by so-called moderate Mahmoud Abbas, pays bounties to these terrorists in a ‘Pay for Slay’ program that was run for years by Intisar Al-Wazir, the wife of arch-terrorist Abu Jihad. If the Biden administration keeps providing funding to the PA, terrorists and their families will be paid for life by U.S. taxpayers.”

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has appointed a Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs, in an effort to upgrade relations with the PA, Axios reported on Tuesday.

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Non-public State Department report confirms Palestinians are not living up to promises.

By Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon

The Palestinian government is still paying imprisoned terrorists stipends and inciting violence against Israel, even as the Biden administration provides nearly half a billion dollars in American taxpayer funds to the government, according to a non-public State Department report recently furnished to Congress.

The Palestinian Authority, which committed to stop these acts to receive new tranches of U.S. aid money, “continued payments to Palestinian prisoners who had committed acts of terrorism, as well as the families of so-called ‘martyrs’ who died while committing acts of terrorism,” according to the report, a copy of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

Official Palestinian government media organizations and social media accounts also “broadcast or published content praising or celebrating acts of violence.”

Details from the State Department report are likely to fuel congressional opposition to the Biden administration’s renewed funding of the Palestinian Authority, which almost immediately resumed when the Democratic administration entered office.

U.S. aid was slashed by the Trump administration due to the Palestinian Authority’s support for terrorism, as well as a bipartisan U.S. law mandating that American aid be frozen until the Palestinian government ends its terrorist payment policy, also known as “pay-to-slay.” That law, the Taylor Force Act, was passed in 2018 and banned the State Department from allocating aid to the Palestinian government until it could certify that payments to terrorists and incitement against Israel ceased.

A State Department spokesman said the administration opposes the Palestinian pay-to-slay program and has repeatedly pressed the Palestinian Authority to stop it. The official also said all U.S. aid is allocated consistent with the law.

Palestinians not meeting requirements

Information contained in the latest State Department report indicates the requirements for aid set forth under the law are not being met.

Since April 2021, the United States has provided “over half a billion dollars in assistance for the Palestinians,” according to the State Department. In July, President Joe Biden announced that another $316 million would be awarded to “support the Palestinian people,” according to the White House.

“First, the administration tried to mislead Congress about Palestinian terrorists and payments to terrorists, which unfortunately worked long enough for them to move money to the Palestinian government,” one senior congressional official who works on Middle East issues told the Free Beacon. “Now, they just don’t care.”

The State Department collected evidence showing that “elements of Palestinian leadership made individual statements that appeared to support violence,” according to the report. The Palestinian Authority’s “conventional media and social media also broadcast problematic comments and videos.” This occurred as Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas condemned a spate of terrorist attacks in Israel and “maintained a public position against incitement of violence and terrorism.”

Official Palestinian government media outlets were labeled as “inconsistent” in their enforcement of prohibitions on terror incitement, according to the State Department. Social media accounts affiliated with Abbas’s Fatah Party, for instance, have “featured content praising or condoning acts of violence.”

The Fatah Youth Movement at Najah University in the West Bank territory “praised the December 2021 killing” of an Israeli civilian as a “heroic operation,” according to the information compiled by the State Department. Palestine TV also broadcast footage of “a young girl at a primary school in Jenin” reciting a poem “asking God to banish the Jews from the region.”

In March, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, Wafa, posted a celebration on Facebook of terrorist Dalal al-Moghrabi, who killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children, in a 1978 attack. The outlet praised al-Moghrabi as “the icon of struggle and resistance,” according to the State Department.

The Biden administration has given more than $417 million in humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is known to advocate against Israel, and terrorists have used its schools as a base of operations. The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded some $75 million in humanitarian assistance, and $20.5 million was allocated for COVID relief and “Gaza recovery assistance,” according to the State Department.

Jonathan Schanzer, a regional expert and senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the Palestinian Authority and its splinter groups are becoming increasingly polarized.

“Incitement continues unabated by the Palestinian Authority,” Schanzer told the Free Beacon.

“In recent months, this has been accompanied by violent splinter factions of entities closely tied to the P.A. All of this could backfire rather badly on the P.A., which has not exactly been popular or stable. Washington has a duty to not only enforce its own policies. It has an obligation to preserve the system that it created, which now appears increasingly brittle.”

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Oz said that if elected, as a secular Muslim, “it’d be a great honor to articulate why Israel is so important to the Middle East and the world.”

By Ira Stoll, The Algemeiner

“The best way to have peace is to support Israel strongly, unwaveringly,” the Republican candidate for U.S .Senate in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, told The Algemeiner in an interview.

“I treasure Israel’s role as a democracy in the region,” Oz said, describing the country as a “thriving democracy” that is “doing a great job.”

Oz said that if elected, as a secular Muslim, “it’d be a great honor to articulate why Israel is so important to the Middle East and the world.”

He said he and his family had visited Israel at the invitation of Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the philanthropists and Republican donors. On the trip, he traveled the country, from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and down to the Red Sea.

“There is a lot to see there,” Oz said. “Gosh, these guys did something incredible.”

Oz said that if elected, he’d try to lead on foreign policy issues, perhaps seeking a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee. His television program, a health and wellness show which has run for 13 seasons, aired in 100 countries, including in Israel in both Hebrew and Arabic.

Oz said that in travel related to the show, people around the world saw America as an inspiration.

Oz spoke of his close family history with the Jewish community. His father, an immigrant to America, grew up in a house with a dirt floor in Turkey, where he won a scholarship to medical school in 1944. Istanbul University’s medical school then was a refuge for Jewish doctors fleeing the Nazis. Oz’s father was trained by Jewish physicians, then immigrated to America and settled outside Philadelphia.

It was an example, Oz said, of the “American Dream”: “You work your tail off.”

Oz indicated he’d be somewhat hesitant as a senator to authorize combat by U.S. troops overseas, because of the price paid by veterans of wars. However, “we could still be very active,” he said.

Asked about the contrast on foreign policy between him and his Democratic opponent, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, Oz called the Iran nuclear deal reached by President Obama “incredibly flawed.”

“We were right to withdraw from the deal,” Oz said. “Fetterman has been supportive of it the entire time.”

Oz said that he had stayed close to Miriam Adelson, who, like him, is a physician.

He said that among those who have counseled him on Israel and the Middle East are Matt Brooks and Senator Norm Coleman of the Republican Jewish Coalition; Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of the World Values Network; Republican strategist Jon Lerner, who was deputy to Ambassador Nikki Haley at the United Nations during the Trump administration; and the ambassador to Israel during the Trump administration, David Friedman, who is scheduled for an upcoming event in support of Oz.

Oz said he was hopeful that with strong American support for Israel, the Abraham Accords would expand to include more countries. He added that he opposed the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel: “I think it’s antisemitic,” he said.

He said he supported the Taylor Force Act, a law aimed at preventing American taxpayer dollars subsidizing payments by the Palestinian Authority to terrorists and their families.

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The Taylor Force Act bars U.S. funding to the PA as long as it continues its “pay-for-slay” policy, rewarding terrorists and their families with financial stipends.

By Mitchell Bard, JNS.org

Joe Biden made clear during his campaign that he would restore Palestinian aid cut by his predecessor as part of an effort to improve relations with the Palestinians.

As president, he wasted no time in approving $290 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority and another $150 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

These allocations violate the spirit if not the letter of the laws designed to make the Palestinians and the United Nations accountable for undermining the prospects for peace with Israel.

Since Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Peace Accords in September 1993 and promised to stop terrorism, at least 54 Americans have been among the more than 1,600 people murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

Those serving time in Israeli jails have been receiving stipends from the PA since it passed a law in 2004, providing these killers as much as $3,400 per month.

For example, American Ari Fuld was stabbed in the back and killed by Khalil Yusef Ali Jabarin in 2018. Jabarin was convicted in 2020 and became eligible to collect about $415 a month for the first three years of his sentence from the PA During his lifetime in prison, Jabarin can expect to collect tens of thousands of dollars.

Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, named for an American Army veteran who was visiting Israel as a graduate student and was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in Jaffa, barring U.S. funding to the PA as long as it continues this “pay-for-slay” policy.

Aid continues to flow, however, despite the U.S. State Department acknowledging that the PA has not terminated payments for acts of terrorism against Israeli and U.S. citizens. This month, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed his commitment to the “pay-for-slay” policy.

Finding a way around the law

The administration claims it is not violating the law. Even if that were true, since money is fungible, U.S. taxpayer dollars free up money for the PA to continue to incentivize and reward terrorism.

In addition, the Consolidated Appropriations Act mandates that the United States withhold economic assistance from the PA if “the Palestinians initiate an International Criminal Court (ICC) judicially authorized investigation, or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.”

The administration has found a way around this law as well, ignoring PA calls for ICC investigations into Israeli policies in Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Last June, PA Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad al-Maliki demanded that the new ICC prosecutor give priority to the cases submitted by the “State of Palestine” and expedite the opening of the investigations. The PA has also submitted 60 cases accusing Israel of crimes.

There is no law barring aid to UNRWA; however, Congress has made its concerns known by requiring the State Department to report whether the agency is taking steps to ensure the content of educational materials taught in UNRW-administered schools and summer camps is consistent with the values of human rights, dignity and tolerance, and does not induce incitement.

The Biden administration said it was restoring aid after “UNWRA has made clear their rock-solid commitments to the United States on the issues of transparency, accountability, and neutrality in all its operations. … And what neutrality means in the context of the United Nations is zero tolerance for racism, discrimination, and antisemitism.”

A sinkhole for billions of dollars

The United States has continued to fund UNRWA while acknowledging the agency continues to distribute antisemitic and anti-Israel material.

A report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), for example, found that “UNRWA is complicit in radicalizing schoolchildren through the glorification of terrorists, encouragement to violence and teaching of blood libels to Palestinian schoolchildren.” UNRWA maps label all of Israel as “Palestine,” and Israel is referred to as “The Enemy” or the “Zionist Occupation.”

In 2020, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning the use of such materials, and the United Kingdom and European Union subsequently cut their contributions to UNRWA.

UNRWA has been a sinkhole for more than $6 billion in U.S. funding since 1950. This is an agency that was supposed to support Palestinian (and Jewish) refugees until they could be resettled or repatriated. More than 70 years later, UNRWA creates refugees, claiming the need to support 5.7 million Palestinians—more than 10 times the number that was displaced in 1948-1949.

Today, the real number of surviving refugees is probably less than 20,000 but by defining “refugee” to include descendants, the number has continued to grow each year.

Thanks in part to U.S. support, UNRWA can incite violence and teach millions of Palestinians to hate Jews and Israel.

Rather than use aid as leverage to encourage reforms, the administration is rewarding the Palestinians for their intransigence and underwriting their promotion of terror.

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Jerusalem-based think tank notes unusual Israeli government “loans” and “advance payments” to the PA may have violated Israeli law.

By World Israel News Staff

A Jerusalem-based think tank revealed Monday that the Israeli government may be indirectly funding terror by transferring funds to the Palestinian Authority and that Defense Minister Benny Gantz may have acted outside of the boundaries of the law by providing the PA with “advance payments” and “loans.”

The Kohelet Policy Forum (KPF), a nonprofit organization focused on security and strengthening Israel’s democracy, approached the Israeli government to ask if it deducted PA payments to terrorists and their families before transferring funds to the entity, which is required by Israeli law.

The PA maintains a notorious “pay for slay” policy according to which Palestinians who attempt or commit violent terror attacks against Israelis receive a salary — which the KPF says oftentimes amounts to five times the average monthly wage in PA-controlled areas.

As Gantz has repeatedly engaged in appeasement efforts towards the PA, including reportedly telling PA president Mahmoud Abbas that he strives to be the “next Rabin” and transferring large sums of money to the Authority, some of which occurred ahead of schedule, the KPF’s Litigation Department raised concerns about the non-transparency of these transactions.

It took the Israeli government more than two months to offer a laconic response to KPF’s inquiry. the think tank said.

According to a statement from the KPF, the Finance Ministry simply responded that all the transfers were “done according to the law.”

The Ministry did not attempt to explain the legality of the advancement payments and loans, nor did it offer a legal justification for those transfers.

“As Israel faces another wave of terror, it is preposterous to see our own government appearing to skirt Israeli law to send hush money to the Palestinian Authority,” said Ariel Erlich, director of the Litigation Department at KPF, in a statement.

“We call upon the government to explain how Gantz could transfer funds to the Palestinians while they continue pay for slay.”

“One of Israel’s greatest diplomatic achievements was the United States passing of the Taylor Force Act, which bans U.S. money from going to the Palestinian Authority while they maintain pay for slay,” said Professor Eugene Kontorovich, director of the International Law Department at KPF.

“When Israel breaks its own law to the same effect, it undermines this pillar of American support for Israel,” he added.

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Whatever Israel’s defense minister may have told himself and others about what took place during his latest session with the Palestinian Authority leader, it certainly wasn’t “confidence-building.”

By Ruthie Blum, JNS.org

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz must have known that hosting Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at his home in Rosh Ha’ayin would arouse the ire of the right. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have cloaked the outcome of his tête-à-tête last Tuesday night with the octogenarian honcho in Ramallah in typically euphemistic language.

Following the meeting, Gantz tweeted that he and Abbas had “discussed the implementation of economic and civilian measures, and emphasized the importance of deepening security coordination and preventing terror and violence—for the well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians.

His office subsequently released the details of a slew of so-called “confidence-building measures,” a phony term suggesting some kind of mutual arrangement that actually means Israeli concessions. These include: VAT, import-tax and excise-duty benefits; a NIS 100 million ($32.2 million) loan; more than 1,000 permits for Palestinian businessmen entering Israel by car; dozens of VIP permits for PA officials; and the legalization of the status of 9,500 undocumented Palestinians and foreign nationals living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

The above benefits are in addition to the 500-million-shekel ($160 million) “loan” that Gantz vowed to provide the PA after convening with Abbas in Ramallah at the end of August.

Despite the left’s fantasy of a return to the misnamed “peace process” that’s been on hold since 2010, the reason for Jerusalem’s unwarranted generosity towards Ramallah over the past few months is that it’s in “Israel’s interest” to keep the financially strapped PA from collapsing.

The tragic irony is that one cause of the PA’s dire straits is Israel’s deduction of hundreds of millions of shekels from the taxes on Palestinian imports and exports that it collects on behalf of Ramallah. Offering Abbas compensation for this move—aimed, like the Taylor Force Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2018, to coerce the PA to cease its “pay-for-slay” policy—is a twisted, back-door reversal of sound Israeli legislation.

Israel’s decision to undermine a measure designed to curb the incentive of Palestinians to kill Jews is counterproductive. In the first place, Abbas’s sole claim to (minimal) popularity stems from his glorification and funding of “martyrdom.”

Secondly, he’s made it abundantly clear that if he had “only a single penny left, it would be paid to families of the martyrs and prisoners.” In other words, while Israel is bent on alleviating the socioeconomic woes of the Palestinians, Abbas wants the cash to maintain his well-oiled murder machine.

Aware that he and his Fatah faction were bound to suffer a stinging defeat by Hamas in the PA legislative elections slated for last May, he canceled the vote. Attempting to garner international sympathy for the maneuver, he reverted to his default position of blaming the Jewish state, in this case by claiming that Israel was unjustly forbidding eastern Jerusalem Arabs from casting ballots.

To enlist support among disgruntled members of his populace, he tried to prove that he was just as radical, if not more, than his Hamas rivals. It’s one task that the champion of Jew-killers doesn’t find terribly hard to perform.

This isn’t news to Israelis of any stripe, including those on the far left. The dispute lies in whether or not Abbas has just cause for his violent agenda. You know, due to the “occupation.”

Apologists point to Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, and insist that harmony will reign once Israel withdraws to the pre-war borders. Abbas’s speeches in Arabic, along with the messages conveyed through the media outlets and education system that he controls, cite the nakba (“catastrophe”) of Israel’s establishment in 1948.

In this respect, he is no different from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—and their patron, Iran—which make no bones, in any language, about their intention to rid the world of the Jewish state. In fact, PA maps depict all of Israel as “Palestine”—and a judenrein one, at that.

Terrorist-in-a-tie

This brings us back to Gantz. Whatever he may have told himself and others about what took place during his latest session with Abbas, it certainly wasn’t “confidence building.”

On the contrary, after the meeting, Abbas immediately proceeded to prepare for the 57th anniversary of the launch of Fatah and the organization’s first attack on Israel—the Jan. 1, 1965 attempt to blow up the country’s National Water Carrier.

Never mind that this was two and a half years before the Six-Day War; Abbas realizes that his backers at the United Nations and in the current administration in Washington don’t bother doing the math.

At the celebratory event on Friday, a mere three days after extracting valuable promises from Gantz, the terrorist-in-a-tie accused Israel of “hideous policies of ethnic cleansing and organized terrorism.”

According to The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh, Abbas declared: “The anniversary of the launch of our revolution comes under extremely critical and difficult circumstances, due to the continuation of the heinous Israeli occupation, the escalation of its repressive practices and persecution of our people, the theft of our land and natural resources, the stifling of our economy, the withholding of our tax funds and racial discrimination.”

He failed, of course, to mention his meeting with the Israeli defense minister, which, according to Abu Toameh, was strongly condemned by several Palestinian factions and activists.

Gantz, on the other hand, took the opportunity of the aftermath of Abbas’s visit to his house to announce: “Only those who are responsible for sending soldiers into battle know how deep the commitment is to prevent it. This is how I have always acted, and this is how I will continue to act.”

In light of his silence in the face of Abbas’s belligerent remarks, we believe him.

Ruthie Blum is an Israel-based journalist and author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’ ”

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A Palestinian NGO with links to Hamas received over $1 million in UN funding between 2016 and 2020, the report found.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

A report from Zionist watchdog group Im Tirtzu revealed Tuesday that some $40 million in funding from the UN was funneled to Palestinian NGOs that support terror and BDS from 2016 to 2020.

All of the 19 Palestinian NGOs that received UN funding support BDS, and eight of them have clear ties to Hamas or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror groups, the report said.

One group which received tens of thousands of dollars in funding from the UN, Al Haq, calls itself a human rights organization.

According to the report, Al Haq has ties to the PFLP, supports the Palestinian Authority’s pay-for-slay policy, which pays salaries to imprisoned terrorists, and is a member of the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), which refused to sign an anti-terror pledge.

Another group thath received over $1 million in funding, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), has extensive ties to both Hamas and the PFLP.

“Their names are innocuous and mislead people into thinking they promote human rights, but in reality they peddle malicious anti-Israel agendas,” said Eytan Meir, director of external relations and development for Im Tirtzu.

The report also charged that the UN is perpetuating a culture of obfuscation when it comes to how such funding is actually distributed.

In reports, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) often omits “implementing partners” — namely, the bodies who are responsible for actually carrying out the tasks for which the funding was granted.

This means that radical organizations can be given funding, without accountability to ensure funds are used properly, or the name of the organization being officially recorded.

Because the U.S. is responsible for a large portion — 22 percent — of the UN’s core funding, the country is in a unique position to cut off cash to terror-supporting Palestinian NGOs.

Citing the 2018 Taylor Force Act, which barred U.S. funding for the PA as long as it pays salaries to terrorists, Im Tirtzu suggested that the UN adopt a similar policy towards the UN.

“A similar law can be implemented…which would stipulate that the U.S. will halt its aid to the UN so long as it continues to fund propaganda organizations that have ties to terrorist groups, promote BDS, and lobby international bodies against Israel.

“Such a law would require the UN to cut its funding of these organizations out of fear of losing funding from the U.S., its largest donor.”

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The Palestinian Authority broke its commitment to the Biden administration by paying $40,000 to the family of terrorist Muhannad Halabi, who murdered two Israelis.

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Tens of millions in aid flowing to Palestinians despite failure to enforce anti-terror laws that Biden supported.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

The Biden Administration is resuming financial aid to the Palestinian Authority despite the failure of government agencies to vet funding to ensure it complies with U.S. anti-terrorism laws, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Since coming into office in January, the Biden Administration has allocated a total of $130 million in aid for the Palestinians – the first American aid since the Palestinians announced in December 2018 that they were turning down any American funding because they did not want to comply with the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act that was signed into law in 2018.

The newly allocated $40 million for Palestinian security services is in addition to $75 million revealed last week for infrastructure and other projects along with $15 million for “humanitarian” purposes.

The new Biden Administration funding to the Palestinians is also problematic in light of a General Accounting Office (GAO) report released last week. It found that U.S. government agencies which distributed hundreds of millions of American tax dollars to the Palestinians had not properly vetted all the recipients to ensure they were in compliance with the U.S. anti-terrorism laws.

The non-partisan GAO concluded that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) “did not ensure that awards these entities made to others, known as subawards, were compliant with anti-terrorism requirements.”

“If funding resumes, we recommend measures to improve compliance,” the GAO stated. However, the State Department has so far released no details of how the renewed funding to the Palestinians is being monitored.

The new aid is also questionable under other U.S. anti-terrorism laws that were approved when Biden was a senator, Middle East analysts noted in an op-ed published by The Hill.

“While the Biden administration has not acknowledged it yet, congressionally imposed restrictions that President Biden himself helped author as a senator may complicate his administration’s efforts to restore diplomatic contacts,” noted Jonathan Shanzer and Matthew Zweig of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, adding that “the provision of financial aid may be even more complicated.”

The two wrote that the upcoming Palestinian elections place the issue of U.S. taxpayer aid to the Palestinians in doubt because Biden sponsored and pushed through the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 (PATA). That law, passed after Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections, stipulates no U.S. funding if Hamas has anything to do with the Palestinian Authority.

Current indications are that the Palestinian elections could very well result in “a power-sharing agreement that brings Hamas or other terrorist entities into a government with Fatah,” Shanzer and Zweig noted. “The State Department and the White House continue to remain silent — risking an outcome similar to that of the ill-fated elections of 2006.”

The latest American funding appears to be in violation of other U.S. laws, including the Taylor Force Act that withholds tax money unless the Palestinian Authority ceases its policy of paying cash rewards to convicted terrorists, and the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA) that allows Americans to use the U.S. justice system to sue anybody who received American foreign aid and was involved in “acts of war” including terrorism.

In December, 2018, the Palestinians announced they would stop accepting American aid because they feared they would be sued under the provisions of ATCA.

During the Trump Administration, both former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley worked to cut funding to the Palestinians, who lost $165 million in U.S. assistance because of their failure to stop their pay-for-slay policy.

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Palestinian policy of paying reward money to convicted terrorists stands between renewing ties with the Biden administration.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

The Palestinian Authority is looking at ways to change its pay-for-slay policy of giving cash handouts to convicted terrorists in order to hide or change the process and make it more palatable to the Biden administration, Axios reported.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh formed a special negotiating team to discuss the controversial payments with the Americans in order to renew relations and open the way for the PA to start receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid.

That aid was cut off in 2018 when the Palestinians refused to stop the payments and the Americans, under the Trump administration, invoked the terms of the Taylor Force Act that was passed by Congress the previous year.

The legislation is named for 28-year-old former U.S. serviceman Taylor Force, who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in March 2016 during a graduate school visit to Israel. Under the “pay-for-slay” policy, the PA pays monthly stipends to any Palestinian jailed for acts against Israel as well as payments to the families of those who committed suicide bombings or were neutralized and killed.

U.S. and Palestinian officials acknowledged that the payments are an issue that must be resolved before foreign aid to the PA is renewed, the report said. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas gave Shtayyeh the job of having a team of lawyers and experts find loopholes to disguise the payments. One option is to change Palestinian law so that the payments are based on the welfare needs of the prisoner or the family and not on the crime committed.

“We know we have to find a solution for the prisoner payments, but it is an important issue for many Palestinians and any solution must be dignified,” a Palestinian official told Axios.

However, as recently as last month, Palestinian officials vowed to continue the payments, putting pressure on the Biden administration, which wanted to resume funding to the PA.

“This pay (terrorists) to slay (Israelis) has been around for years,” tweeted former adviser to President Trump Jason Greenblatt. “We had ‘meetings’ where the PA said they ‘wanted to’ make a change, but they refused to stop making these atrocious payments. Hopefully the Biden Administration will make progress without trading anything for it.”

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