Father of American veteran slain by Palestinian says U.S. tax money should not fund Palestinian terrorism.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

The Zionist Organization of America released a new video over the weekend calling on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to “fund American Jobs, not foreign Palestinian Arab Terrorists.”

The video attacked a previous Biden election statement that should he win the election, he would renew American government funding to the Palestinian Authority that the Trump Administration had cut due to the PA’s continued payment of tens of millions of dollars to Palestinians convicted of terrorist activities.

“Joe Biden says he’ll reinstate funding for terrorist Palestinian Authority (PA) which pays Palestinians to murder Americans & Jews,” the ZOA tweeted about the release of its video. “Sending U.S. tax dollars to the Palestinian Authority will enable the PA to finance the murder of more innocent Jews and Americans.”

ZOA president Morton Klein said years of hard work were needed to turn off the taps on American funding that the Palestinians used in their “pay-to-slay” program that pays lifetime pensions to terrorists who “murder Jews and Americans.”

“Say it ain’t so, Joe. It’s inhuman to fund foreign terrorists, with American taxpayer dollars,” Klein said, adding that “this is not about politics, it’s about policy. The ‘pay-to-slay’ policy of paying foreign Jew-killers with American taxpayer dollars was ended with the Taylor Force Act and the U.S. administration. It must not be re-started, by any politician from any party.”

A 29-year-old U.S. Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Taylor Force was murdered by a Palestinian in a 2016 stabbing attack while =walking on a seaside promenade in Jaffa during a Vanderbilt University student visit to Israel.

The Taylor Force Act blocks American funding to the PA as long as it continues to pay salaries to convicted terrorists and the families of deceased terrorists.

“Our son Taylor was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist while visiting Israel, the terrorist’s family became eligible immediately for monthly payment for life from the Palestinian Authority for killing an Israeli or an American,” Stuart Force, Taylor Force’s father, said in a video posted on YouTube last week.

“This horrific program… is written in PA law,” Force said. “U.S. taxpayers send hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA which they use to fund those payments.”

“There’s talk that some politicians want to resume sending U.S. tax dollars to the PA even though they have refused to end their pay-to-slay policy,” Force said, urging Americans not to let “your hard-earned money [continue] paying the terrorist who killed my son and thousands of other innocent civilians.”

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Israeli police killed a Palestinian attacker in Jerusalem after he tried to mount a stabbing attack on the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people.

By: World Israel News Staff

A Palestinian assaulted a Jewish worshiper in Jerusalem as the Yom Kippur holiday commenced, but his would-be stabbing attack was thwarted by Israeli police who shot and killed the assailant.

Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year, and attracts droves of worshipers to Jerusalem.

According to a police statement, the Palestinian attacker charged a Jewish worshiper close to Jerusalem’s Old City on Tuesday evening, forcing him to the ground. Immediately afterwards, the assailant took off running with a sharp object in his hand, prompting officers to open fire. The attacker subsequently died.

Palestinians routinely launch stabbing attacks, killing Israelis and visiting tourists from the UK and the US, including visiting American student Taylor Force, who was stabbed to death in Tel Aviv in 2016.

In two years, Palestinians have killed more than 50 Israelis, Americans and British citizens.

On Sunday, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed to death Ari Fuld, an Israeli activist and US citizen who managed to fire shots and prevent further casualties before he succumbed to fatal stab wounds.

Palestinian leaders frequently call for “popular resistance” in the media and online, a term that many identify as a euphemism for violence against Israeli civilians.

Palestinian law requires murderers such as the ones who killed Fuld and Force, and their families, to receive generous monthly terror stipends.

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Two prominent former Israeli diplomats are charging that the State Department is recycling parts of its old reports in order to whitewash the Palestinian Authority’s incitement to violence.

The State Department last week released its annual assessment of global terrorism for the year 2016. For the 10th consecutive year, the report used nearly identical language in its defense of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

“The PA has taken significant steps during President [Mahmoud] Abbas’s tenure (2005 to date) to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank under its control do not create or disseminate content that incites violence,” according to the 2016 report. The exact same sentence also appeared in the department’s reports for 2015, 2014 and 2013.

Similar repetition can be found in the section of the reports pertaining to incitement in PA mosques. The 2014 report stated, “The PA maintains control over the content of Friday sermons delivered in over 1800 West Bank mosques to ensure that they do not endorse incitement to violence.”

The identical sentence regarding the mosque sermons also was used in the reports for 2013, 2012 and 2011, and almost identical language was included in the 2010 and 2009 reports.

As a result, two former Israeli diplomats say they suspect U.S. officials are simply copying previous years’ texts rather than providing careful assessments of the PA’s most recent behavior.

Alan Baker, who has served on Israel’s delegation in negotiations with the PA and was deputy director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told JNS.org that State Department officials seem to be “taking previous reports and copying them, making slight changes where they consider it relevant,” instead of objectively assessing the PA’s most recent behavior.

‘A License to Continue’ Inciting Terror

Baker said not only has the PA failed to take “significant steps” against incitement, but “the opposite is the case—their own actions, statements and publications, naming streets and squares after terrorists, formally paying fees to terrorist families, all point to a distinctive step backwards in violation of Palestinian commitments pursuant to the Oslo Accords.”

The result, Baker said, is that “the Palestinians see it as a license to continue and as support for their struggle. If the State Department closes a blind eye, this is tantamount to giving a green light.”

Another former Israeli diplomat, Lenny Ben-David, agreed that the State Department “does copy from year to year,” and gets away with it because, “Who pays attention?”

Ben-David, who held the second-ranking position in the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., from 1997-2000, told JNS.org he “never put much faith in the State Department’s reports, ever since I found in one of its first human rights reports this sentence: ‘While tribal in nature, Saudi Arabia is basically a democracy.’”

According to Ben-David, the State Department slants its reports about the PA because the department “fears that its own words will be used to buttress congressional efforts to cut aid to the PA; imagine what a truthful report on incitement would do to assist passage of the Taylor Force legislation.”

Ben-David was referring to a pending bill, opposed by the State Department, that would reduce U.S. aid to the PA if it continues paying salaries to imprisoned terrorists and families of dead terrorists. The legislation is named for a former U.S. Army officer who was killed in a Palestinian terror attack in Jaffa last year.

Both Baker and Ben-David said the Trump State Department’s assessment of Palestinian actions, including incitement, hardly differs from that of the Obama administration’s State Department.

“This in itself gives a negative message and is seen as supportive of the Palestinian case,” Baker said.

Not ‘Much Difference’ with New Administration

“I don’t see much difference between the two administrations on the issue of incitement,” echoed Ben-David, who suggested the new report may have been authored in part by Obama administration officials who have not been replaced by the new president.

A review by JNS.org of earlier editions of the State Department’s terrorism reports found additional instances of the same terminology being used year after year. The 2007 and 2008 reports, for example, claimed then-PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad “has condemned every attack against Israelis” since he took office. Very similar language appeared in 2009 and 2010.

Previously, the reports typically sidestepped the issues of PA incitement and terror condemnations, and instead claimed the PA was cracking down on terrorism. The reports for from 1996-1999 all used this sentence: “The PA, which is responsible for security in Gaza and most major West Bank cities, continued to act against Palestinian perpetrators of violence against Israel.”

A State Department spokesperson told JNS.org, “We stand behind the content of this report. In developing the report, on an annual basis we ask our embassies around the world for reports on the terrorist threat and incidents in their jurisdictions, along with their assessment of the performance of their host government. These submissions are then compiled and reviewed in Washington by the State Department, as well as other U.S. government agencies.”

According to Ben-David, the role of embassies abroad in providing content for the reports is often part of the problem. Many U.S. diplomats in other countries suffer from “chronic client-itis,” meaning they “want to make their ‘client’ look good” and “fear losing access if they make their client look bad,” he said.

One of the most “notorious cases” of this scenario, Ben-David said, was that of Edward Abington, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem from 1993-1997, who went almost directly “from his diplomatic posting to working as the PA’s foreign agent in Washington.” In 1999, Abington signed a three-year, $2.25 million contract to serve as the PA’s representative.

By: Rafael Medoff/JNS.org

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Israel seeks to penalize the PA, which offers an incentive to potential terrorists by paying salaries to Palestinian prisoners.  

Israel’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation advanced a bill on Sunday that would cut tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) over stipends it pays to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and their families.

The bill, submitted in March by Member of Knesset (MK) Elazar Stern, stipulates that at the conclusion of each fiscal year, the Ministry of Defense will publish a report summarizing the scope of annual financial support provided by the PA and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to Palestinian prisoners and families of terrorists. Israel would then deduct the same amount from tax transfers to the PA in the following fiscal year.

Israel collects an estimated $2.1 billion in tax revenues for the PA, in accordance with the 1994 Paris Protocol, which governs economic relations with the PA, including import taxes on goods passing through Israel and destined for the PA.

According to the bill, seven percent of the PA budget, largely funded by American and European aid, is directed by Palestinian legislation to pay salaries and benefits to Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel and to allowances for Palestinian families whose relatives have been killed or injured while perpetrating terrorist attacks.

These payments, amounting to more than NIS 1.1 billion ($350 million) per year, are funneled through the Palestinian Authority Martyrs’ Fund, which was transferred to the PLO in 2014 in an attempt to divert criticism.

Stern called to end this practice. “It is inconceivable that terrorists will receive salaries for murdering Jews. The state must do its utmost to fight terror; this law is critical to Israel’s national security,” he stated.

“While we complain to the nations of the world about their turning a blind eye to the PA support of terrorism, the State of Israel itself does so to a considerable extent,” the legislation states.

Representative of bereaved families signed a letter calling on the ministers to vote in favor of the bill.

The bill is supported by both the coalition and opposition.

Stern’s bill emulates the Taylor Force Act, a 2016 US legislative bill sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), which proposes to halt American aid to the PA until the latter changes its legislation regarding the transfer of funds to Palestinian security prisoners and family members as well as to families of terrorists who died committing attacks.

The bill was introduced in the wake of the murder of 28-year-old Taylor Force, an American citizen and US army veteran who was visiting Israel as part of a Vanderbilt University study group. He was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist on the Tel Aviv beach promenade in March 2016.

The Israeli bill is scheduled to be presented to the Knesset Plenum for a preliminary reading on Wednesday. If successful, it would need to pass a second and third reading before becoming law.

By: Ilana Messika/TPS and World Israel News Staff

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US lawmakers are pushing for the Taylor Force Act, which would require verification that the PA has ended its policy of granting monetary rewards to terrorists and their surviving family members.

A group of lawmakers on Tuesday reintroduced legislation that calls for the cutting of all US funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) until it ceases giving monetary rewards to terrorists.

Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Roy Blunt (R-MI) and Tom Cotton (R-AK), along with Congressmen Doug Lamborn (R-CL) and Lee Zeldin (R-NY), reintroduced The Taylor Force Act, named after a former US Army officer who was brutally stabbed and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while visiting Israel.

The Taylor Force Act was also co-sponsored by Senators Tim Scott (R-SC), Marco Rubio (R-FL), John Boozman (R-AK), Ted Cruz (R-), Richard Burr (R-NC) and John Thune (R-SD).

PA head Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction praised the terrorist as a “heroic martyr,” and the PA has yet to condemn the terrorist attack.

The US lawmakers were joined at a press conference on Tuesday by Stuart and Robbi Force, Taylor’s parents. Also present were members of OneFamily, an organization which brings together survivors who have lost family members to terrorist attacks and provides support and services for these individuals.

“This legislation shines a light on a very real problem,” stated Graham. “Why is the Palestinian Authority paying young Palestinians to commit acts of terror against innocent Americans like Taylor Force or Israelis? The Palestinians need to decide – do they condemn these horrible acts or do they reward them? You can’t be a partner in peace when you are paying people to commit terrorist acts. The choice the Palestinians make will determine the type of relationship they have with the United States in the years to come.”

“We cannot continue allowing US taxpayer dollars to be used by the Palestinian Authority to reward convicted terrorists and their families for acts of violence against Israel or the United States,” said Blunt. “Under current Palestinian Authority law, the more heinous an act of terror an individual commits, the greater the reward. This is an outrageous policy and I urge my Senate colleagues to support this effort to end the Palestinian Authority’s unconscionable law.”

‘Reprehensible and Senseless Acts of Terror’

“The family of Taylor Force experienced loss no loved one should ever have to endure. These reprehensible and senseless acts of terror have no room in our modern world and we should seek all available resources to stop the evil that has claimed too many innocent lives. I stand by Senator Graham’s efforts, and look forward to continuing to explore all options to stamp out terrorism,” Scott stated.

“Taylor Force was what every parent hopes their son will be. And this legislation will honor his memory by making sure no taxpayer money rewards the kinds of terrorists who took this young man’s life,” said Cotton.

“It’s unacceptable that our taxpayer dollars are still being used by the Palestinian Authority to pay terrorists who have Israeli and American blood on their hands, and to brainwash young Palestinians to hate Israel and the Jewish people. The US should condition assistance to the Palestinian Authority on it stopping these despicable practices,” Rubio declared.

“This bill delivers a message that should be heard loud and clear: The United States must not fund a Palestinian leadership that engages in incitement and supports acts of terrorism against both American and Israeli citizens,” Cruz said. “I’m proud to work with Senator Graham and my colleagues on this legislation, named in honor of Taylor Force, a Texas native and Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran who served multiple tours in defense of our country before being murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv last year. The US must hold the Palestinian leadership accountable for continuing this heinous practice of incentivizing and rewarding terrorism by providing monthly salaries and benefits to terrorists, their families, and the families of those who died committing acts of terrorism. We must ensure US taxpayer dollars are not being used to fund and enable Palestinian terrorism and stand with Israel against radical Islamic terrorism that targets citizens from both of our countries.”

By: Aryeh Savir, World Israel News

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