08-Feb-17: Migrant challenges, deep polarization and new findings in Europe

The shouting and name-calling on all sides of the ferocious debate over Trump's January 27, 2017 Executive Order halting all refugee admissions for now and temporarily banning travel into the US from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Somalia ["Is this a Muslim ban? Trump's executive order explained", The Guardian, January 28, 2017] – reflects how deep the polarization is on the issues.

But it's not just the US.

A few hours ago, a UK newspaper published the findings of a poll carried out by the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs - better known as Chatham House. The study, released yesterday, is entitled "What Do Europeans Think About Muslim Immigration?".

The data, based on polling done shortly before Trump signed that executive order, indicate that

majorities in all but two of the ten states opposed immigration from mainly Muslim countries... ["Most Europeans want immigration ban from Muslim-majority countries, poll reveals", The Independent UK, February 8, 2017]

Our brief summary of the findings follows. On the whole they seem to be strikingly decisive:

• A majority of Europeans want a ban on immigration from Muslim-majority countries. On a pan-European basis, only 20 per cent disagree. Undecideds are 25 per cent. 
• Overall opposition to Muslim immigration is "especially intense" among older people.
• On average, 55 per cent of people across the 10 European countries surveyed want all future immigration from mainly Muslim countries into their own part of Europe to stop.
• Ranked from most opposed to least opposed, the ban is supported by 71% of Poles, 65% of Austrians, 64% of both Belgians and Hungarians, 61% of French, 58% of Greeks, 53% of Germans, 51% of Italians, 47% of Brits.  
• By contrast, a 2016 Pew survey showed unfavorable views of Muslims were held by 28% of Brits, 29% of Germans and 29% of French. Something's changed in the past year, and not for the better. 
• 50% of Spaniards were said to have unfavorable views of Muslims in last year's Pew study, but yesterday's Chatham House poll findings put Spain at the bottom of the "immigration ban" support list with 41% favoring a ban.

The Chatham House people say their survey results were based on asking 10,000 people from 10 European countries. The results, in their words -

"are striking and sobering. They suggest that public opposition to any further migration from predominantly Muslim states is by no means confined to Trump’s electorate in the US but is fairly widespread."

Another commentary notes that

the survey found little correlation with the number of Muslim people already settled in a country.

Worth keeping in mind as coverage in the mainstream media and the social media keeps sinking to ever lower levels of fairness and mutual respect.

As a postscript, the parents of one of us (Arnold) who at the end of World War II were orphaned, destitute survivors of the systematic Nazi destruction of the European Jews (not threatened destruction but the actual thing - genocide) and desperately wanting to get away from Europe, tried to be admitted as refugee immigrants to the United States. They, along with most Jewish survivors of that period, were unable to get the necessary American approvals. (The doors of the United States were famously closed to Europe's Jews before and during the Holocaust.) They eventually found refuge in a remarkably hospitable country - Australia - leaving their son with a lifetime resistance to sanctimonious advice from Americans and Europeans about the moral obligation to give shelter to the homeless and imperilled.

07-Oct-16: Haaretz: British foreign aid to the Palestinian Arabs is being delayed while the return on funding is investigated

From today's The Sun revelations [Source]

This might turn out to be a big deal. We're hoping.

As Haaretz reports this afternoon ["U.K. suspends aid to Palestinians over concern it reaches terrorists"]:

British government freezes transfer of 25 million pounds to the PA following complaints that money ends up with assailants who carried out attacks against Israel. | By Barak Ravid | Oct. 7, 2016 | 2:33 PM | The British government has decided to freeze a transfer of 25 million pounds – about a third of the annual aid money it grants the Palestinian Authority – due to concerns that such money had been passed to pay allowances to terrorists or their families.
According to the Sun newspaper [which we tweeted a few hours ago here], the recently appointed international development secretary, Priti Patel, has announced that the transfer of funds will be suspended until the conclusion of an investigation that was opened into the matter. Earlier this year, a number of right-wing parliament members complained to the British Foreign Ministry and International Development Department that British tax payers' money was transferred as aid to the PA's budget, and from there onwards as allowances to assailants who carried out attacks against Israel. Sources in the British Foreign Ministry told the Sun that aid to the Palestinian Authority will not stop, but that part of it will be suspended until the end of an investigation into the matter. According to the sources, chances are that the suspended aid will be delivered in 2017. “We are not stopping for the Palestinian Authority overall, just delaying it to a date when we know our money won’t be going to people who do nothing in return for it.”

In reality, as we have been writing here for years (for instance, "27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in"; and from five years earlier "1-Mar-11: Finally, some sanity on European funding of Palestinian Arab terror"), it's simply untrue that Palestinian Arabs engaged in, convicted of, and serving time for, terrorism have done "nothing in return for it". They have done terror.

And in doing that, they have produced a meaningful return on the PA's investment in a scheme we have repeatedly called Rewards for Terror. That scheme may be the single most impactful of the Palestinian Authority's various initiatives.

Let's hope the British investigation doesn't get hijacked along the way.

13-May-16: Ongoing gullibility: UK foreign aid and the Palestinian "Rewards for Terror" scheme

A written question, asked in the British parliament's House of Lords ten days ago on a subject that ought to be getting much more attention, has just been answered.

The subject: Overseas aid and the payments that the UK is making to the Palestinian Arabs. Yes, the very matter that is going to be debated in the parliament next month as we noted last month ["13-Apr-16: Parliament will debate UK funding of the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme"].

It's an important debate that is going to happen because of some good activist journalism ["27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in'] by the Daily Mail which has turned the matter into a talking point ["27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad"] in the UK, at least for now.

Here's the exchange of question and answer [from this official UK source; and thanks to the ever-watchful MH for pointing us to this.]

Baroness Deech (asked on May 3, 2016): To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have given any consideration to suspending aid to the Palestinian Authority in the light of its decision to transfer over £85 million a year to the Palestine Liberation Organisation for the purpose of paying salaries to convicted terrorists imprisoned in Israel.
Baroness Verma (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development and Ministerial Champion for tackling Violence Against Women & Girls Overseas)  (answered yesterday, May 12, 2016): DFID is currently reviewing all its programmes following the publication of the updated Official Development Assistance strategy last year. DFID provides financial support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to help deliver peace and support progress towards a two state solution. DFID funding helps build Palestinian institutions and promotes economic growth so that any future Palestinian state will be a prosperous and effective partner for peace. UK funding to the PA is for vetted civil servants only. The PA has reaffirmed that prisoner payments are administered by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. We continue to lobby that the payments to prisoner’s families are more transparent and needs-based. 

Seems a reasonable answer, right? There's probably been a case of confused identity but HMG has gotten assurances from the terror-addicted Palestinian Authority and their actual reaffirmation. All cleared up. Nothing much to see here, folks. Move along.

If only.

What's on display here is (a) professional incompetence (which we think unlikely given the quality and quantity of staff people employed in the parliament to prepare ministerial written answers to questions posed by the Lords); (b) a factual mistake on a minor matter (but as we noted, there's going to be a full-scale parliamentary debate on this very issue in a few weeks, so at minimum the staffers are on top of the facts); or (c) cynical sand-in-your-eyes disinformation designed to confuse the gullible and paper over a deeply embarrassing UK policy failure (quite plausible, we think, in the absence of a better alibi).

Palestinian Arabs where they can do less harm [Image Source]

In formulating this deeply dishonest answer to a vitally important question, the back-room civil servants in the UK's Department for International Development have chosen to pretend not to be aware of relevant matters that should have brought them to a very different conclusion for their minister to deliver. We have wrestled with those issues here repeatedly. They are at the heart of the life-and-death issues which keep us blogging. And they are all about money - large servings of it.

For a representative overview of what we have written about them, you might want to see "25-Jan-16: Felons, funding, fooling, failing"; "09-Jul-15: When incitement to murder is financed by foreign aid, where will the accounting come from?" "02-Jun-15: The obvious, petty lies that keep European money flowing into the hands of the PA's terrorists"; "30-Dec-14: Killers, heroes, passions and (sadly) churches"; "10-Nov-13: Who finances those savage acts of terror? And why is this so poorly understood?"; "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"; and from nearly a decade ago, "6-Oct-06: Crying poor: The terror-laden rise and rise of the Palestinian national payroll and the men who allow it to happen". 

Here's a selection of the truths which the UK government and its representatives and servants evidently find too uncomfortable to share with the hapless British citizens who pay for this disgrace:

• In August 2014, the Ministry of Prisoners Affairs of the Palestinian Authority was torn down overnight. It was replaced the following morning with a brand-spanking-new, purpose-built entity that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Palestinian Authority. 
• This is what's often called a switcheroo - a strategy carried out by frightened people (frightened of being exposed) made up of lies and bogus contentions. It's done solely to deceive.
• Why the need for deception? Because, as the Jerusalem Post reported at the time ["Palestinians duping world by denying it pays salaries to prisoners in Israeli jails", Jerusalem Post, May 27, 2015] the Abbas-ruled PA had been proudly and publicly funneling monthly salaries to Palestinian Arab terrorists inside Israeli prisons and released from them. Then it became aware of a certain degree of pressure from Western donors, the governments whose cash - in the form of foreign aid - made this doable and affordable. 
• What form did the deception take? The Jerusalem Post said: "Rather than a PA ministry, a PLO Commission of Prisoners Affairs – purportedly independent of the PA and its funding – was set up to pay the salaries. The international community... largely accepted these changes as assurance the PA was no longer paying salaries to terrorists... [But] the PLO commission was new only in name. The PLO body would have the same responsibilities and pay the exact same amounts of salaries to prisoners; the former PA minister of prisoners affairs, Issa Karake, became the director of the new PLO commission and PA President Mahmoud Abbas retained overall supervision of the PLO Commission." 
• Based on comments made by Palestinian officials, the perpetually financially strapped PA spent $144 million in 2014 paying salaries to incarcerated and release prisoners. It has continued to do so right up until this week.
• Issa Karake, whose hate-filled, terrorism-encouraging utterances we have quoted in this blog numerous times, is key to the flim-flammery. He's the former minister for prisoners who overnight was turned into commissioner for some PLO business unit which is a completely different and perfectly legitimate thing. It's hard to think of a more cynical public figure than he. His is a name to remember.
• All of the donor governments who have provided the funding from the outset continue to do so and to by-and-large ignore the criticism. 
• Outside of Israel, where the real price of the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme is paid, few governments care to know whether the Palestinian Arab political leadership is trustworthy, honest, credible - or (which we firmly believe to be the case) the exact opposite. What they want is simply for the problems to go away. Throwing money at it is, astoundingly, a widely-appreciated way to achieve that and at the same time curry favour with the Arab world.
• The criticism that has come is from non-government observers. For instance: "What Abu Mazen [meaning Mahmoud Abbas] will not tell donors is that their money is being sent to the PLO, who does use the money to fund terrorism. Abu Mazen hopes by having the money used indirectly instead of directly to fund terrorism, the criticism will die down among donor nations to the Palestinian Authority. [Foreign Policy Association, September 8, 2014]

We editors of this blog tend to have a more hard-eyed view of the outrageous Palestinian Arab tactics behind this scheme. Regular readers of our blog know this is because two of the biggest beneficiaries of this embezzlement of European money happen to be two of the jihadist savages convicted of murdering our daughter. Details here: "31-May-15: Lights, camera, action, terror".

Is it possible that all of this was unknown to the nameless, faceless insiders who composed Baroness Verma's parliamentary reply? Readers who know the Lords quoted in the parliamentary report above might consider sharing this post with them. And perhaps asking her if the revelations about this ongoing Palestinian shell-game are news to her or to her staff.

As an afterthought: Whatever derision people might think they detect in our observations about the UK government and its parliament on this heavy issue, we do have a healthy appreciation for the British sense of humour. That's why we are not surprised to see what's on the home page of the ministry headed by Baroness Verma at this very moment:

Signs of a British sense of homour: The home page of the UK office responsible for the ongoing funding, by British tax-payers, of' the Palestinian Authority's Rewards for Terror scheme.

See the featured article? The UK's Department for International Development proudly beats its chest, trumpeting its role in helping people beat "corrupt practices around the world". Given the flagrant blind-eye treatment they have extended to the chronically corrupt, kleptocratic Palestinian Arabs since Arafat's day, you have to be just a tiny little bit amused by the chutzpah of these public servants.

31-Mar-16: More on UK funding of Abbas' Reward for Terror scheme

Jibril Rajoub, inexplicably termed a Palestinian statesman by some, personifies
much of what has gone hideously wrong with UK funding of Palestinian Arab
neediness [Image Source]

The searing report by Ian Birrell published this past weekend in the Mail on Sunday (the Sunday edition of the Daily Mail) has had a huge impact in the five days since it appeared.

We described it in a pair of blog posts here this past Sunday (see "27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad" and "27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in"). We called it an expose of

the ongoing fraud perpetrated by the conniving Palestinian Authority to hide its Reward for Terror scheme, and the active involvement of hundreds (maybe more) of European politicians and bureaucrats - many of them British - in funneling the indispensable cash without which it could not happen.

The report's impact is reflected in the massive and rapid response it has generated among readers. The Mail's editors framed a petition to the UK government that tied into the substance of the report. Here's the text:

Despite spending cuts at home the Government is committed to hand over 0.7% of national income in overseas aid, regardless of need. The Mail on Sunday believes voters do not want this and instead, we should provide money only for truly deserving causes, on a case-by-case basis.

The Mail's editors are arguing for a wider investigation into abuse of British aid, and a debate of what they term "the absurd new legislative requirement to give away 0.7 per cent of national income... These payments to Palestine seem a classic example of the core aid problem of "fungibility" - when foreign cash supporting public services frees up a regime to spend money in other questionable areas, which all too often fuels conflict or corruption."

Ending extreme poverty: From the DfID/UK Aid website

They explain that

Parliament considers all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for a debate [and] Government responds to all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures

Though the petition is going to remain open until September 24, 2016, it has already gotten past the critical barrier. As of tonight [Thursday], more than 148,000 Brits had signed.

It's hard to doubt the impact of Big Media. The Daily Mail is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper, according to published February 2016 data [here]. Its digital edition, Mail Online, is ranked by ComScore as the most visited newspaper website in the world, getting more than 50 million unique visitors per month which puts it just ahead of the New York Times. MediaWeek UK said Mail Online had more than 11.3 million daily unique browsers in August 2014, the most recent data we could find.

Today, a longer version of the Ian Birrell article is published on the Jewish Chronicle UK's website under the title "Cash for terror: how PA duped British backers | Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is used to fund Palestinian killers". And yes, we certainly feel "duped" is an appropriate word to sum up what Britain's foreign aid mandarins underwent themselves and continue (right up until this morning) to inflict on the citizens they ostensibly serve via money paid by those citizens as British tax. Duped.

The JC version of the Birrell revelations includes elements that we understand were edited out of the Daily Mail version for space-limitation reasons. The following extract happens to quote one of the bloggers of the site you are now visiting:

But critics say the surge of knife attacks and stabbings against Israelis are encouraged by the PA diverting funds from public services and fighting poverty into generous salaries for arrested terrorists. Highest sums go to those convicted of the worst crimes and serving the longest sentences. Recipients include Hamas killers such as Abdullah Barghouti, given 67 life sentences in 2004 for attacks including a Jerusalem restaurant bombing that killed 15 people. He is said to have earned £106,000 since his conviction, paid to him or whoever he designates. "Aid is most certainly being abused," said Tzipi Hotovely, Israel's deputy foreign minister. This serves as a huge financial incentive to carry out acts of terror against Jews. "Is it imaginable for a Western government to contemplate subsidising acts of mass murder and terror in this fashion? Yet that is effectively what is happening." She was backed by Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki died in the restaurant attack. He said: "Western governments enable the PA to keep afloat its hideous rewards for terror scheme - and the consequence is a rising tide of deaths on their side and ours." Several ex-prisoners confirmed to me 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. "Many are not capable of doing the jobs they are being paid to do. I went to university, but these are people without the ability to be managers, especially after 20 years in jail," said the source, who works for the interior ministry... ["Cash for Terror", Ian Birrell, Jewish Chronicle, March 31, 2016]

(The restaurant attack ascribed to Barghouti's satanic bomb-making prowess is the one that brought about the murder of our daughter Malki in 2001.)

Here's another segment that did not appear in the Mail on Sunday:

The UK pours so much aid into Palestine that the Foreign Office even spent £10,300 on the team's kit for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, according to its own reports. Jibril Rajoub, chairman of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, congratulates "martyrs" such as Halabi for "heroism" while his organisation hosts events named after terrorists behind savage atrocities.
The same killers are also routinely praised on state-funded television, say Israeli critics, even by presenters of children's shows... Yet amid an intense struggle against militant Islam, it seems astonishing Britain and the EU are linked to the funding of bloodstained terrorists and jihadist bombers... DfID defended its aid support, insisting none of its cash went to prisoners or their families. A spokesman said: "This funding helps build Palestinian institutions and promotes economic growth so that any future state will be a prosperous and effective partner for peace." DfID sources also said payments to civil servants only went to people on an approved EU list and that the government takes extensive precautions to ensure British aid does not support Hamas "either directly or indirectly"... ["Cash for Terror", Ian Birrell, Jewish Chronicle, March 31, 2016]

Jibril Rajoub is frequently mentioned - as he is above - when ongoing incitement by Arab leaders and the violent, dangerous and duplicitous games played by top-of-the-pile PA insiders are discussed. We have felt the need to write about this extremely unlovely man numerous times. Two examples among many from our previous posts:

1. He's a very public figure about whom we have written in the past. See for instance "3-Dec-12: Deadly dangerous games and those who play them" and "8-May-13: "I am your partner. I am going to kill you now" as two among many or click here. Rajoub heads the PA's Sports Authority as well as holding the political position of Deputy Secretary of Fatah's Central Committee. The busy fellow is also head of the Palestinian Football Association... ["02-Sep-14: Wonder how living with terror-minded neighbors works? We offer some tips"]
2. Let's also mention in this context how Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Football Association (also the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee; also a convicted and imprisoned Fatah terrorist in past years; also Head of the Palestinian Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs), has just gone on the record, speaking about [how] "Fatah supports and encourages the heroes who are carrying out the attacks. We are proud of them." Though Rajoub is a brazen liar, we feel he should certainly be believed on this. [Source]

Those British claims of "extensive precautions" quoted in that last extract from Ian Birrell's article, are, it has to be said, self-evident and somewhat arrogant nonsense in view of the facts we pulled together concerning the results of the one and only European foreign aid (to the Palestinian Arabs) audit that was publicized 18 months ago. We summarized them in "28-Mar-16: Is it time yet for UK's foreign aid office to come clean on their part in funding Palestinian Arab terror?"

Understanding what the Europeans learned when they finally got around, after 13 long years -- years of malfeasance and disclosures about Palestinian Arab corruption and about Arafat's secret massive cash horde -- to sending auditors to Ramallah, you have to assume the mandarins of Britain's Department for International Development (DfID, owner of the UK Aid brand) keep hoping this would slip below the radar of the British public.

Could be they were wrong.

28-Mar-16: Is it time yet for UK's foreign aid office to come clean on their part in funding Palestinian Arab terror?

A couple of years back, we wrote ["9-Sep-13: Snouts and troughs"] that there has been an active EU cover-up since 2003 to conceal the hideous things done with European foreign aid funds delivered to the Arafat- and Abbas-controlled PLO/PA regimes in Ramallah.

During the years since then, torrents of European funding, billions of Euros, were channeled to the terrorism-addicted Palestinian Authority. Throughout that time, the Eurocrats managed to avoid carrying out even a single financial audit until the one whose results were published in December 2013 [full text here]. 

The astounding policy of hands-off "see no evil", mismanagement happened while the EU "provides 20% of the direct financial support for the PA", making it "the biggest multilateral donor to the Occupied Palestinian Territories".

So what did that audit find?

1. EU aid to the Palestinian Authority worth billions of euros needs an "overhaul" and major changes in some areas, the bloc's Court of Auditors said... If the circumstances are difficult, there are still "a number of aspects of the current approach in need of an overhaul," said Hans Gustaf Wessberg, who wrote the report for the court. "There is a need for major revisions such as encouraging the PA to undertake more reforms"... [EUbusiness, December 12, 2013]
2. "The EU should stop paying the salaries of thousands of Palestinian civil servants in the Gaza Strip who are not going to work... They called for a major review, saying money spent on civil servants there should go to the West Bank instead." BBC, December 11, 2013.
3. "It is difficult to ensure that EU money is not misused or does not become a drip-feed, it said... The PA is not undertaking all the reforms that the EU would like. At every turn there are political causes and factors. The audit is therefore a political minefield." [European Voice, December 12, 2013]

But there's more. 

In the wake of the audit, the chairman of the European Parliament's Committee on Budgetary Control - a man who, given his official role, probably thinks about things like financial controls and honesty and checks and balances more than most of us and certainly has more information than we do - wrote that the EU's auditors found "major dysfunctions" in the way the Palestinian Authority were getting and spending their foreign aid Euros. 

In that important, but little noticed, article in the Wall Street Journal, he urged the EC to impose benchmarks and conditions on the Palestinian Authority as a condition for getting more EU gift money:

These should include improving the state of human rights in the West Bank, cracking down on corruption and cutting off subsidies to convicted Palestinian terrorists. In these hard times, Brussels shouldn't tolerate blatant misuse of EU taxpayers' money. [WSJ, April 9, 2014]

We will also mention that a Times of London journalist who saw the pre-publication version of the audit report wrote in an October 2013 article ["£1.95bn EU aid lost in Palestine", Sunday Times, October 13, 2013] that went further. Having seen the pre-publication version of the report, he concluded that "Billions of euros in European aid to the Palestinians may have been misspent, squandered or lost to corruption, according to a damning report by the European Court of Auditors..." Our uncorroborated sense is that the report went through a sanitization process after his article appeared and before the public saw it.

[Image Source]

Can anyone hear even a faint echo of any of this in today's defensive arguments put up by the UKaid/DfID people in the wake of the Mail on Sunday revelations this past weekend? [Refer to "27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in" and "27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UKaid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad".] 

For a taste of those UK official denials, see "Government denies foreign aid 'paid to Palestinian terrorists'" [AOL UK News, March 27, 2016]

Whatever the 2013 EU audit report says (and it strikingly side-steps any attempt to tackle the profoundly embarrassing matter of PA financial rewards for convicted terrorists), and taking into account what the UKaid people are now saying, two major points at least should be clear: 

1. It's outrageous that no professional effort had been made to check what was being done by the Palestinians in the previous 13 years. The 2013 audit leaves no doubt that money is misapplied, and it's far from under European control.
2. The Europeans and the Brits can say what they like about everything being checked and no possible room for malfeasance. But that's not what the PA says to its own people. The message from the Abbas insiders for internal consumption is that, as bankrupt as their regime is, there will always be money for those "heroic" Palestinian Arab convicted slaughterers of children and of Holocaust survivors. Review some of the evidence here: “20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?”; “28-Jul-11: Taxpayer-funded salaries to convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists. What a good idea”; and “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 mandarins of Whitehall will get away with murder again (we're not being metaphorical) only if we - which really means British taxpayers and the British media - let them. Perhaps now is the time to stop the lethal foolishness. 

We noted a while back ["13-Oct-13: Massive scandal in Palestinian Arab financial affairs? No!"] that there was one aspect of the European/UK saga of PA-centred corruption and dishonesty that was truly beyond our comprehension. It still is, and it's this: how can the members of the news media who cover the EU and the Middle East conflict have allowed this decade-plus financial scandal (one that everyone knows about and that few will discuss in public) to get so little media coverage? How much of the conspiracy of silence is based on intimidation?

Perhaps we're finally going to find. Or perhaps not.

27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in

Look closely at the backdrop. 
Issa Qaraqe/Karake was Palestinian Minister for Prisoners
until - poof - overnight, he turned into the head of an 
invented body with the same job. But now outside the PA government. 
Only someone forgot to tell the people who published 
this photo in May 2015 
[Source: archived here] 

We're in the midst of one of those rare, very brief moments when the massive flow of cash into the grubby hands of the terrorism-addicted Palestinian Arab leadership is getting a public airing. The reason why is in our post ["27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UKaid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad"] of earlier this morning.

At the heart of the revelations published in today's Mail on Sunday is the ongoing fraud perpetrated by the conniving Palestinian Authority to hide its Reward for Terror scheme, and the active involvement of hundreds (maybe more) of European politicians and bureaucrats - many of them British - in funneling the indispensable cash without which it could not happen.

Did we say active involvement? Yes, and about a year ago we outlined how it's done. (See "02-Jun-15: The obvious, petty lies that keep European money flowing into the hands of the PA's terrorists"). To save readers from searching back in time, here's the bare-bones version:

• In essence, the Palestinian Authority, under its "moderate" front-man Mahmoud Abbas, has been engaging in a clever little trick since 2014 to hide the way it takes foreign aid from the West and uses it to fund that scheme. 
• From time, the scheme has been mildly criticized. (Our 2015 article provides links.) The clever Abbas and his fellow kleptocrats eventually understood that defensive measures were needed in order to protect the in-flow of Euros and pounds. What they did was startlingly brazen and simple.
• They tore down their Ministry of Prisoners Affairs one evening, and overnight (in August 2014) replaced it with a brand-spanking-new, purpose-built entity that they claim has nothing whatsoever to do with the Palestinian Authority. The switcheroo is of course completely bogus and works only because public servants and their political masters in various European governments want oh-so-badly for there to be a fig leaf to cover their nakedness.'
• Here's how the Jerusalem Post described it a year ago:

• [T]he PA in August 2014 announced that it had closed its Ministry of Prisoners Affairs, which funneled monthly salaries to terrorists, because of pressure from Western donors. Rather than a PA ministry, a PLO Commission of Prisoners Affairs – purportedly independent of the PA and its funding – was set up to pay the salaries. The international community... largely accepted these changes as assurance the PA was no longer paying salaries to terrorists. "However," the [PMW] report read, "the PLO commission was new only in name. The PLO body would have the same responsibilities and pay the exact same amounts of salaries to prisoners; the former PA minister of prisoners affairs, Issa Karake, became the director of the new PLO commission and PA President Mahmoud Abbas retained overall supervision of the PLO Commission"... [T]he perpetually financially strapped PA spent $144 million in 2014 paying salaries to incarcerated and release prisoners. ["Palestinians duping world by denying it pays salaries to prisoners in Israeli jails", Jerusalem Post, May 27, 2015]

• The trick was calculated solely to deceive. And it did and does. As one analyst put it: "[W]hat Abu Mazen [meaning Mahmoud Abbas] will not tell donors is that their money is being sent to the PLO, who does use the money to fund terrorism. Abu Mazen hopes by having the money used indirectly instead of directly to fund terrorism, the criticism will die down among donor nations to the Palestinian Authority." [Foreign Policy Association, September 8, 2014]
• Not enough people outside of Israel really care to know whether the Palestinian Arab political leadership is trustworthy, honest, credible - or the exact opposite. They want the problems to go away. That's why the money keeps flowing. That's why people on all sides keep being killed.

The Abbas regime, and the Arafat regime before it, keeps taking European money, tens of millions of Euros a year of tax-payer funds from Britain, Germany, Netherlands and other sophisticated and modern states, to keep up the spirits of its practitioners of terror and of those who depend on them, thus perpetuating a culture of terrorism and the values of a death-cult that we see causing irreparable, irreversible damage to their society. 

It has been doing this for more than a decade [see "Money won't fix things here", published by David Frankfurter a decade ago, and nothing has gotten any better since then.] That's why we think it's accurate and reasonable to call it a Rewards for Terror scheme. 

So has everyone fallen for the Palestinian Arab deception? Mostly yes - but not the Palestinian Arabs who understand the game better than most people. Here's how the abhorrent Qaraqe/Karake, who is no longer a minister in the PA regime (wink wink) was described by Arab editors and reporters after his ministry was (ahem) shut down:

• "Issa Karake, the Palestinian minister for prisoners’ affairs, told Al-Monitor, “The situation is flaring up..." Source: "Palestinian prisoners resort to hunger strikes", Al-Monitor, June 2, 2015
• "The head of the PA's department of prisoner affairs Issa Qaraqe said al-Barghouthi's decision came...", Ma'an Palestinian News Agency, June 1, 2015 
• "An Israeli court on Thursday ruled... the head of the Palestinian Authority's Prisoners' Affairs Committee said. Issa Qaraqe told Ma'an that..." Source: Ma'an Palestinian News Agency, May 23, 2015 
• "Issa Karake, head of the Palestinian government’s Prisoner Affairs Department, said al-Khatib’s case is just another in a policy meant to break the spirits..." Source: "Associated Press, (via Washington Times), January 28, 2015
• "Issa Karake, head of the Palestinian government's prisoner affairs department, told the AP that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was..." Source: Mohammed Daraghmeh reporting for Associated Press (via Haaretz), November 2014.

Ian Birrell's expose in today's Mail on Sunday includes a snippet that we wish could be megaphoned directly into the ears of those European politicians sitting with arms folded while the scandal they facilitate continues to consume lives, cash and futures:

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.’ Tory MP Andrew Percy said last night: ‘How can we justify foreign aid as a noble endeavour when taxpayers money goes to pay terrorists? The government has got to get a grip.’ [Mail on Sunday UK, via the Daily Mail website, March 27, 2016]

Yes, they do. They need to understand that the terror-addicted PA, an entity with poor survival prospects and run by old men some of whom have gotten quite wealthy along the way, is ready to do anything it needs to do to keep that cash flowing into its coffers. The lies it tells are small, transparent and not that complicated. What makes them work is that the European insiders want to be duped. They know they are being duped, and they play along. Win, win.

Meanwhile the terror they fund keeps relentlessly grinding away, destroying what remains of their society's moral fibre, dooming yet another generation of their children, embittering Israeli lives and increasing the world's stock of misery.

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.

23-Mar-16: The morning after Brussels: Reflecting on the responses

When terrorism upends the lives of ordinary people, exacting a price that often ends up being paid over and again for years, its victims sometimes look around to see who, if anyone, understands what they have just been required to start enduring.

People who understand the insult, the pain, the grief, the loss, the sense of outrage and violation. And who understand the measures that victims expect their leaders to take so that something is learned from the awfulness. And so that the likelihood of it happening again, no matter to whom, will be reduced.

That understanding is not always easy to find.

In its place, as some victims of terror including many Israelis (we among them) have learned over the years, come advice and lectures from people who are often, themselves, unaffected in a personal sense by terrorist attacks. That advice, from the perspective of those who have been and often are its target, has frequently taken forms we find surprising, insensitive, unwise and occasionally outrageous.

To equip ourselves with some additional resilience for when the need next arises as it surely will, we have this morning culled a selection of expressions of understanding published in the wake of the savagery that took dozens of lives in Belgium yesterday.

In the selected quotes below, all published in the past 24 hours, much of the sentiment is understandably and thankfully humanitarian and emotional. They include words of encouragement and of outrage; determination and sympathy. (How much of it is genuine and sincere? Since these are politicians, that's not a fair or relevant question to ask.)

As people who have gotten to know terrorism from the victims' standpoint, who are we to deny its value? People reaching out to people, empathizing, sharing what we have in common, understanding, is not only one of the most effective things to do if we want to benefit the other. It's often the only thing that can be done.

Have a look down the list and please ask yourself, as we have today, whether, in each case, you could imagine a similar sentiment being expressed - but with Israel in place of Belgium.

• Washington stands with Belgium in the face of the "outrageous" attacks - Barack Obama, US President  [AFP]
• The Brussels attacks were "yet another reminder that the world must unite. We must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism."  - Barack Obama, US President  [US News]
• The attacks "have once again shown terrorism's global face." Turkey's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu [Associated Press]
• Those responsible for the "despicable" bombings should face justice - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [AFP]
• "His Majesty King Abdullah II condemns the terrorist attacks in Brussels" - Abdullah II, king of Jordan [Twitter]
• "This is a day of tragedy, a black day... [following the] deadliest attacks we have ever seen in Belgium" which were "blind, violent and cowardly... People were just going to work, to school and they have been cut down by the most extreme barbarity." The response? "We will continue to protect liberty, our way of life." - Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel [AFP]
• "Painful day for Brussels and all Europe. In Jordan with FM @NasserJudeh working together on counterterrorism #united" - Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, tweeting from Amman where our daughter's convicted murderer lives freely, unfettered by any counter-terror measures of which we are aware and in flagrant disregard of basic notions of justice [Twitter]. Ms Mogherini broke down in tears [link] at the end of her press conference with the Jordanian foreign minister yesterday. A photograph from some years ago [link] captures her standing Yasser Arafat, suggesting she knows more about terror than most European politicians. 
• "Terrorism knows no borders and is a plague to all of us... Correct education is the right answer to ignorance and extremism." Egypt's leading religious figure, Grand Mufti Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam [Associated Press]
• The terrorist attacks were "cowardly and odious" and Belgium would "respond together with firmness, calmness and dignity" - Philippe, king of the Belgians [ABC]
• The Eiffel Tower will be lit up in the colors of the Belgian flag - Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris [Twitter]
• "Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted - and all the world that is concerned." - French president Francois Hollande [Associated Press]
• "What is necessary now is that we show our collective strength and uphold the values of freedom and solidarity." - Dutch King Willem-Alexander [Associated Press]
• We will fight terrorism "with all necessary means" after this "attack on our open democratic society." - The 28 EU leaders in a rare joint statement [AFP]
• The terrorist threat facing countries across Europe is "very real... We will never left these terrorists win." - David Cameron, prime minister of the UK [AFP]
• "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help." - David Cameron, prime minister of the UK [Twitter]
• "All solidarity now with EU, Belgium... Terrorists will never win: Our European values much stronger than hate, violence, terror!" - German Chancellor Angela Merkel via her chief of staff Peter Altmeier [Twitter]
• "I think we’ve got to recognize that the threat posed by the modern incarnation of terrorism is one that we have to be vigilant against. I know that Americans have every reason to be frightened by what they see." - Hillary Clinton, US Democratic Party presidential contender [Time]
• "Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was... Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!" - Donald Trump [Twitter]
• The Brussels attacks are "just the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists perpetrated by those who are waging war against all who do not accept their extreme strain of Islam... Radical Islam is at war with us." Ted Cruz, US Republican Party presidential contender [Time Magazine]
• The Brussels attacks are "another cowardly attempt to terrorize innocent civilians... [and] a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS." - Bernie Sanders, US Democratic Party presidential contender [Twitter]
• The blasts in Brussels are "a barbaric crime [that] confirms once again that terrorism knows no borders and threatens the peoples all over the world" - Russian President Vladimir Putin [US News]
• "All Australians condemn these cowardly terrorist attacks in Brussels. And the Belgian people have our thoughts, our prayers and our resolute solidarity in this battle against terrorism. They are utterly cowardly attacks, attacking innocent people, but we need to be constantly vigilant, vigilance is the key." - Malcolm Turnbull, prime minister of Australia [The Guardian]
• The beloved Belgian cartoon character Tintin is depicted in tears [AFP]

We continue to scan the online news media for quotable calls by political leaders for Belgium and the EU to exercise compromise, act with reasonableness and restraint, to avoid vengeance, to find a peaceful path, to keep right away from carrying out extrajudicial executions, not to take steps that could further destabilize the situation, to be proportionate in defending themselves from the jihadists.

We plan to let readers know the moment we find them. And yes, we would appreciate your help [send to thisongoingwar at gmail dot com].