27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad

Abdullah Barghouti: A significant beneficiary of UK foreign aid,
though oddly no British civil servant seems willing to take credit

For years, the scandalous funding of Palestinian Arab terrorism by European politicians has been one of the main enablers of the huge human price paid by its victims.

Since the murder of our daughter and the growing realization that her killers and their support network are major beneficiaries of this insane abuse of power, we have done what ordinary people can do: write and talk about it, try to raise awareness and give a hand to others doing it more effectively than we can.

The sad reality is that the madness continues right up until this morning. It is certain to continue until political leaders feel the pain - in the customary political way - of doing immoral things that other people, usually unwittingly, are paying for.

At one of the world's largest-circulating newspapers, they published a major story today (Sunday) which is central to a public campaign of their creating. They introduce it today in these words:

The scandal of how Britain fritters away billions in foreign aid – including paying salaries to convicted terrorists who have murdered hundreds of innocent people – is exposed today by a major MoS investigation. The shocking revelation that thousands of Palestinian terrorists, including men who have masterminded suicide bombings and murdered children, are given cash handouts from aid money will cause anger and disbelief, particularly in the wake of the Brussels massacres. Our probe exposed how huge amounts of taxpayers’ cash, that critics say should be spent in Britain, is being ‘squandered’ on wasteful schemes elsewhere by the Department For International Development (DFID) and Foreign Office. Despite claims of astonishing waste, the Government maintains a dogged adherence to the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of the nation’s income on foreign aid – the highest proportion of any of the world’s major economies – even though last year it had to borrow £70 billion. [Mail on Sunday UK, via the Daily Mail website, March 27, 2016]

For how long will the funding scandal
be front page news? Today's Mail on Sunday

As part of the expose, there is a sharp taking-apart of how British money is fueling what we have often called here the blood-lust that animates the Palestinian Arab leadership. Written by Ian Birrell, who won the UK's Foreign Reporter of the Year award last week, it is headed in plain language: "UK Aid pays terrorists". Here's part of it:

Ahmad Musa sits beside me, a convicted double murderer sentenced to life in prison. As we talk, I ask him if he did indeed kill the two men. ‘Yes, I shot them dead,’ he replies.
Yet we do not meet in a jail cell. Musa is free, released after just five years. For he is a Palestinian terrorist and he was liberated under a peace deal.
Like thousands more Palestinian prisoners, including jihadi bombers and killers of children, Musa enjoys his freedom after being awarded a ‘salary’ for life.
He gets £605 every month, others get far more. If they die, the cash goes to their family. These men are seen as terrorists, certainly by Israel, and many in the West
But, astonishingly, the money behind these payments – described by some as ‘rewards for murder’ – flows from British and European taxpayers.
The UK cash comes from the Department for International Development, which will give up to £25.5million this year to the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) as part of a £72million aid package. Our investigation discovered that the PA passes millions on to the infamous Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) – which in turn gives it to convicted terrorists locked up in Israeli prisons and their families.
Among them are Amjad and Hakim Awad, cousins who killed Ehud and Ruth Fogel and their three children in their West Bank home in 2011. It is estimated that Amjad alone may have been paid up to £16,000 from the fund so far. [Mail on Sunday UK, via the Daily Mail website, March 27, 2016]

Birrell then mentions the man [background here] who assembled the exploding guitar that was carried by a human bomb into the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, murdering 15 people including our daughter Malki:

Also on the payroll is Abdallah Barghouti, the Hamas bomb-maker who was sentenced to life after attacks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It is thought he has received payments totaling £106,000. Dfid [the UK government's Department for International Development] confirms that the PLO makes such payments, calling them ‘social welfare’ provisions for prisoners’ families. It denies, however, that any British cash reaches terrorists, with the PLO taking over such payments two years ago from the PA after an international outcry.

For a little more about Abdullah Barghouti's life and awful deeds, see some of our past posts (among many others):

• 09-Jul-15: When incitement to murder is financed by foreign aid, where will the accounting come from?
• 10-Nov-13: Who finances those savage acts of terror? And why is this so poorly understood?
• 25-Jun-13: Dogs, psychopaths and the Internet
• 20-Jun-13: Abdullah Barghouti, terrorist, bomb-maker, killer of 66 innocents, has some demands
• 4-Sep-12: Where's the shame? How much of your tax dollars went to fund the pension of our child's murderer? More than you probably thought

The infuriating matter of the charade by which European governments pretend to believe that the PA no longer pays its terrorists is only too familiar to us. Birrell summarizes the deceptions behind it:

But a Mail on Sunday investigation has found that Britain funded the PLO until last year and that the PA openly boasts of still funding salaries of convicted terrorists, even in its own official statements.
Former prisoners and the families of terrorists we have spoken to also confirmed receiving cash from both the PA and the PLO. British aid money is supposed to be rebuilding and developing the Palestinian territories. However a devastating new report to be released this week by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli NGO, suggests that Western donors have been duped by assertions that the Authority no longer funds terrorists.
Some Hamas terrorist masterminds have reportedly been given more than £100,000. Other ‘salaries’ go to relatives of suicide bombers and even teenagers involved in the latest upsurge of deadly attacks on Israel. Several ex-prisoners confirmed to me that they were paid monthly stipends that started in jail.
One said they also received a ‘bonus’ on leaving prison and lucrative civil service job offers, the most senior posts going to those serving more than 15 years behind bars, even though they are not qualified.
PA officials openly defend such stipends. Amr Nasser, adviser to the minister of social affairs, said: ‘It is not a crime to be fighting occupation. These people are heroes.
‘We could be giving them much more money and it would not be enough.’ Nasser added that, if Palestine won independence, the government would seek reparations from Britain for its historic role in encouraging Zionism, saying ‘You should pay us more money.’ [Mail on Sunday UK, via the Daily Mail website, March 27, 2016]

Birell, a contributing editor of The Mail on Sunday, also writes columns regularly in other papers, including The Guardian and The Economist [source].

Nearly six years ago, we complained bitterly in this blog [see "20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?"] about the powerful symbolism at work in this shabby ongoing affair. 

The PA is chronically short of funds, and is perpetually requesting handouts. Yet it has sufficient disposable cash to make the decision this week to channel funds to the terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons. Evidently Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts have a sound understanding of the message they want to convey to their people, and how best to deliver it. It's humiliating that we, victims of these convicted jihadist terrorists, parents of murdered children, have to raise our voices about this - and evidently we are alone in doing so. Where are the European, American and Australian voices of outrage at what is being done with taxpayer funded aid money, and in their names?  

We have more to say on this and plan to post again later today.