24-Aug-18: What aid funds handed to the Abbas regime ($1 million and growing) have done for savages who kill Jews

The only portrait we want to show in this post is this one of our
daughter, Malki. She was 15 years old when these barbarians carried
out their evil plot.

Yesterday, we published a post ["23-Aug-18: New data: How the terrorists who bombed the Sbarro pizzeria fared financially"] focusing on the sums of money that, according to computations done by the fine team at Palestinian Media Watch  (for whose input we are very grateful), have funded the lifestyles of the Sbarro bombing gang and, where relevant, their heirs.

Those Sbarro-related payments stand at close to a million dollars and increase every month. And by the way, the massively corrupt Palestinian Authority, which pays out the cash granted to them, is perpetually insolvent.

The incentive value of sums like those paid out, and continuing to be paid, month after month, in encouraging ever more Arab-on-Israeli terror is clear. Note also that the Fatah-controlled PA has had no problem in the past making payments to Hamas terrorists, even with the deep and frequently lethal rivalry that reigns among them. Abbas and Fatah bestowed the Al Quds Mark of Honor, the PLO’s highest medal, to Ahlam Tamimi (briefly profiled below) while she was imprisoned in an Israeli jail for her central role in  the Sbarro massacre. As this source notes, "Conferring the Al Quds Mark of Honor is decided at the discretion of [Abbas] the Palestinian Authority’s president, and he alone has the final say when choosing the Palestinians to be honored with the medal."

He later reversed the award because of the outcry that it attracted, but that doesn't change the point: payments and medals to terrorists and encouraging more terror remain a consensus issue in their deeply dysfunctional world.

There's much to be learned from knowing more about those Hamas terrorists - what they did, what's become of them. It's regretable that even people relatively well-informed about Israel's experience at the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists seem to be unaware of much of the detail below. 

We offer brief profiles of the terrorists named below - with the exception of the one who appears at the bottom of the list - all of whom took part in the 2001 Battle of the Sbarro Pizzeria (names are listed alphabetically by surname). 

We also note how they have fared since setting out to execute a massacre on a 'battlefield' deliberately chosen by the plot's barbaric mastermind, Ahlam Tamimi, for its attractiveness to Israeli children during their school holidays.

• Jamal Abu al-Hija: Headed Hamas’ military wing in the Samaria city of Jenin. In addition to his role in the Sbarro attack, he had direct involvement in the bombing of a full commuter bus traveling from Haifa to Tzefat at Meron Junction (9 killed, 38 injured, September 4, 2002). After being arrested and tried, he was sentenced to 9 life terms of life imprisonment plus 20 years. Career status: For now, continues to reside in an Israeli prison cell.
• Qeis Adwan: Emerging as a popular leader in the student union of the notorious An Najah National University in Nablus (they honored the Sbarro bombers by erecting an on-campus replica of the destroyed pizzeria the month after the massacre), he became a senior manager in the Hamas terror hierarchy. Described by the New York Times as an "inventive bomb maker", he is said to have taken responsibility for the murdering of no fewer than 77 Israelis. He played a managerial role in several of the most savage Hamas atrocities including the Sbarro massacre, the bombing of the Nahariya railway station (3 killed, 94 injured, September 9, 2001), the Passover bombing of Netanya's Park Hotel (29 killed, 64 injured, March 27, 2002), and the bombing of the Arab-run Matza restaurant in Haifa (16 killed, 40 injured, March 31, 2002). Career status: Permanently terminated by Israeli security forces in the northern Samaria city of Tubas on April 5, 2002. 
• Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri: The human bomb planted by Hamas in general and Ahlam Tamimi in particular outside the Sbarro location. We described the circus-like spectacle of the very public funeral given to his remains here: "5-May-14: The making of a martyr: it takes more than a village". An extract from what we wrote: "Back in August 2001, starting just a day or two after the Sbarro massacre, al-Masri's father was 'marketed' to both the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corp as a lover of peace and as a worthy interview subject. We know this because both the [Australian] ABC and the [British] BBC approached us, astoundingly asking that we take part in double-headed interviews: on one side, the freshly-bereaved father [Arnold Roth] of a child blown up just a few days earlier by a human bomb; on the other, the parent of the human bomb himself. We declined both invitations with considerable puzzlement and anger. We soon had cause (as we wrote here) to wonder what kind of soul-less reporter thinks that sort of proposal is moral and professional. Are you reading this, Tim Palmer?"  Worth mentioning that reports of payments being made to al-Masri's parents have never been in serious doubt since his father, Shuhail Ahmed Al-Masri, comprehensively blurted out the facts in a television interview with NBC [archived here]. It's likely that the regular payments to the voluble, proud and honored al-Masri parents from Arab Bank were separate from and in addition to the Martyrs' Fund payment they presumably still get until today from the Palestinian Authority. Career status: Permanently terminated when he pressed the detonator on his chest inside the pizzeria and the guitar case filled with nails and explosives did its horrible work.
• Abdullah Jamal Barghouti: Manufactured the explosives-packed guitar case that al-Masri, the human bomb, carried into the pizzeria. We describe Barghouti and his egregious barbarism in this post: "1-Jul-13: 66 acts of murder make him a hero in parts of the Arab world. What does this tell us about parts of the Arab world?" He's "the self-confessed murderer of 66 people including 9 in the July 2002 bombing at the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 11 in the March 2002 bombing of Jerusalem's Cafe Moment; 10 in the December 2001 triple-bomb outrage on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall; and 15 (most of them children, including our 15 year old daughter Malki) in the August 2001 massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in August 2001." His most famous quote: "I feel bad because the number is only 66. This is the answer you want to hear? Yes, I feel bad because I want more." [Quoted on a CBS site]. At his trial, evidence was produced to show that Barghouti's high-profile relative (nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize with the enthusiastic backing of Desmond Tutu, a South African church figure) Marwan Barghouti - a prominent Palestinian Arab political figure now himself serving several life sentences for murder - paid Abdullah Barghouti $500 build the bomb. This came on top of the $117,000 he received for his troubles from Hamas, according to evidence given to the court. Career status: Currently serving a sentence of 67 terms of life imprisonment.
• Bilal Yaqub Barghouti: Recruiter and member of the Hamas cell and, according to Haaretz: “The senior Hamas activist behind the Sbarro restaurant bombing in Jerusalem, Bilal Barghouti, told interrogators that Marwan [Barghouti - the Nobel candidate] hid him for a few days while Israel was hunting for him and gave him a weapon when he left.” Convicted January 16, 2003 – sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment (see judgement), his only words to the court at the conclusion of his trial on terrorism charges, and this is a direct quote, were: "Thank God. I regret that I did not kill even more people than I did kill". Career status: Still in an Israeli prison. 
• Muhammad Wael Daghlas: Active member of the Sbarro attack team, taking a role in its planning and execution. Arrested April 9, 2001 and convicted on terror charges on January 16, 2003. Sentenced like Ahlam Tamimi and Bilal Barghouti to 16 life terms.. Career status: Released, like Ahlam Tamimi, in the 2001 Shalit Deal and now alive, unrepentant and completely free. (We're aware of reports that he currently lives in Qatar.)
• Ayman Adnan Muhammad Halawah: Also known as Iman Halaweh - a Hamas explosives expert. Took a lead role in the Sbarro assault, and was involved in other terror attacks on Israeli civilians including the March 28, 2001 attack on a group of boys waiting in the parking lot of the Neve Yamin gas station near Qalqilyah for a ride to their yeshiva in Kedumim (two were killed, one was critically wounded, another had moderate injuries) and the mass-casualty human bomb attack on the Tel Aviv beach Dolphinarium (June 1, 2001). Career status: Never arrested. Passed away from violent causes on October 22, 2001 - one source [Dawn] suggests Israeli forces were involved.
• Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi: Since we have written literally hundreds of posts about this vicious embodiment of female savagery, we will be brief now. Born in Jordan in 1980; moved to Nabi Saleh, north of Jerusalem,  in about 1998 to live there with fellow members of the notorious Tamimi clan. Then to Ramallah, while attending a nearby university, working as a part-time reporter and becoming the first woman terrorist in the ranks of the Hamas Islamists. Masterminded the bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria after selecting it for the large number of Jewish children it attracted. Arrested September 14, 2001; convicted by an Israeli court on September 23, 2003. A 2006 report quotes Tamimi saying from her Israeli jail cell: "I'm not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison." Sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment. Released October 2011 in the catastrophic Shalit Deal. Career status: Freed in the Shalit Deal and "exiled" to where her parents and most of her siblings live: Amman, Jordan. She is there today, living with a husband, Nizar Tamimi, who is also an unrepentant murdering terrorist, in his case for Fatah, and their child. The husband also receives monthly payments from the Abbas regime. Ahlam Tamimi was added to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list in March 2017; there is a $5 million prize for information leading to her arrest and conviction. She is not in hiding and for most of her years in Jordan she has been working in the service of Hamas, making a weekly TV program for them along with other special promotional appearsances. We are deeply into a campaign to have the US put real pressure on Jordan to extradite Tamimi under the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty. So far, Jordan has refused on grounds that we, and many of the experts we have considered, consider bogus and an embarrassment to Jordan's relations with the West.
• Finally, the case of Nizar Tamimi, Ahlam Tamimi’s cousin and since 2012 also her husband. Both husband and wife are unrepentant terrorist-murderers. Both walked free in the catastrophic Shalit Deal. And both are beneficiaries of the Palestinian Authority's disgraceful, foreign-funded Rewards for Terror scheme. They may be the only double-income terrorist family to qualify under the blood-soaked incentive scheme. Nizar Tamimi was convicted of the 1993 murder of Chaim Mizrachi, along with two other close Tamimi relatives. (Another member of the clan, Bassem Tamimi, father of media starlet Ahed Tamimi and uncle of Nizar, was also charged but released under strange circumstances.) Nizar Tamimi was sentenced to life in prison but released October 2011 in the Shalit Deal. Career status: Nizar Tamimi now lives in Jordan with his wife Ahlam Tamimi and their family. How much has he earned from the Fatah/PA/PLO scheme so far? At least $92,057 from the time of his arrest until he walked free in the Shalit Deal. This is not included in the total on the PMW poster. What, if anything, did Nizar Tamimi earn from the PA in the nearly seven years after he walked free? The PMW experts say he would probably got a one-time release grant of $6,000 on top of the stipend he had been receiving during his 18 years behind bars. He would be entitled, as a released prisoner who served 15 to 20 years, to a privileged position and commensurate salary in the PA with the seniority of Colonel or higher. Calculating what this means in practice is complicated by the fact that he and his wife live in Jordan.

If there's outrage among Palestinian Arabs in whose name taxpayer-provided funds are donated so that killers can be rewarded, there's no sign of it at all. Quite the opposite: as a July 1, 2016 article by Eli Lake for Bloomberg ["The Palestinian Incentive Program for Killing Jews"] notes:

"[T]he prisoners and the families of the prisoners themselves are actually paid a higher wage than what most Palestinians earn for nonviolent work... [P]ayments to terrorists' families are exceedingly popular these days. Ziad Asali, the president and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, told me that in recent years the media and politicians have elevated these payments to something "sacred in Palestinian politics." Asali said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and others are too weak to stop it. "This is where we find ourselves now. The vast majority understand there has to be an end to violence; it's not serving the Palestinians in any way," Asali said. "But I think nobody really has the stature and clout to confront these issues publicly."

Sbarro: Tending to the maimed

We're less disposed to seeing Abbas' actions as due to lack of stature or clout. 

Here's what has happened in the wake of the Taylor Force Act, a US law that authorizes the American government to cut back portions of US aid to the Palestinian Authority

"until it stops paying stipends to terrorists in Israeli prisons, released terrorists and the families of shahids, the Arabic word for martyrs – terrorists who die while carrying out violent acts", 

in the words of a recent Jerusalem Post analysis.

From May 2014, Palestinian funding of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs was removed from the PA budget so that the Abbas regime could more easily

“disguise the fact that it is the PA that finances the payments to imprisoned and released terrorists... This institution was made subordinate to the PLO [instead of to the PA] in order to mislead the donor countries.” [source].

That same Israeli report from April 2018 now shows that

On March 4, 2018, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas approved the PA’s 2018 budget, in the sum of around NIS 18 billion (around USD 5 billion). The budget specifies the allocation of funds to government ministries and various bodies. The budget includes two items dealing with the allocation of funds to two institutions subordinate to the PLO that assist terrorists and their families...

Meaning the incentive scheme for more terror is once again openly included in the PA budget.  Reflecting the state of mind of the somewhat-dried-out Mahmoud Abbas, they no longer demonstrate any visible concern about being criticized. They do however care about Palestinian Arab public opinion. And their voters - little reported but demonstrably true - want more incentives for terror, not less.

Which surely means more terror ahead, not less.

Non-trivial footnote: The scale of the Abbas regime's investment in the Sbarro Massacre savages grows each and every month. 

29-Mar-18: Taylor Force Becomes Law

Abbas getting hot under the collar in Ramallah, January 2018 [Image Source]

There's a spectrum of views on how well the new US law, just enacted, is going to serve the purpose for which it was drafted. Here's one, reprinted in full, that raises some points we think need emphasizing.

Taylor Force Becomes Law 

Editorial of The New York Sun | March 23, 2018

The passage into law today of the Taylor Force Act represents a particle of bipartisan good news amid an omnibus spending bill that is, as President Trump marked today, riddled with pork. It represents a first step toward calling the Palestinian authorities to account for paying their people to kill Jews — and others — and using American money to do so.

Sad to say, though, the memory of the magnificent American for whom this law is named deserves better than what the Congress gave him today. Taylor Force was a West Point graduate who became an officer of field artillery (its motto is “First to Fire”). Out of the Army, he was a graduate student when, at 29, he was stabbed to death by an Arab terrorist in Israel.

Early versions of the Taylor Force Act would have brought to a halt nearly all American funding of the Palestinian Arabs if the Palestinian authority continued to underwrite terrorist families. Cutting off American funds, which are fungible, could have dealt a body blow to a Palestinian Arab regime that for years has been playing a cynical and lucrative double game.

And for a lot of money. Our government alone has been paying the Palestinian Arabs on the order of $400 million a year. The Jewish News Syndicate cites a report that the outlays for 2017 would come in at $363 million. JNS quotes Prime Minister Netanyahu as reckoning that the Palestinian Authority parlays something like $353 million a year to terrorists and their families.

By the time the Senate got done with the Taylor Force Act, though, the potential penalties for the Palestinians could cost them as little as a third of the U.S. funds. The penalty is bupkis. Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America tells us he is shocked by the final measure, even though it is getting praise from many other sources.
We share his reaction. What happened to the Taylor Force Act as it went through Congress reminds us of what happened to the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which was gutted in the Senate. That deed was done at the last minute by Dianne Feinstein, through a waiver that allowed the President to hold off on moving the embassy for national security exigencies.

So Mrs. Feinstein — with the connivance of Charles Schumer — was able to delay the move of the American embassy for a generation. Is it going to take that long before the Palestinian Arab leadership feels the full force of the Taylor Force Act? It will be an early test of President Trump and his new leadership at the State Department and National Security Council.

We have written often about the Palestinian Authority's Rewards for Terror scheme (known also as Pay-to-Slay), and will be doing so again in the coming days now that the newly announced PA budget drops the camouflage and admits what it has concealed for years. Whenever Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks happen, it's important to recall that  the perpetrators become entitled to substantial payments from the PA. As we noted at the time, the relatives of the Palestinian Arab stabber who killed an American visitor to Tel Aviv, Taylor Force, in 2016 now receive monthly payments equal to several times the average Palestinian wage.

09-Jan-18: Money, deception and terror: Israel is taking some concrete steps

Image Source: "The Palestinian Dream"

Over at the Jerusalem Post this afternoon, there's an important summary of information placed before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this afternoon ["Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017", Lahav Harkov, January 9, 2018].

If you're not already familiar with them, the data are simply eye-popping. In a society where the average income is about US$580 per month, the PA regime headed by Mahmoud Abbas gives that sort of money to anyone sentenced by the Israeli court system to three to five years in prison.

But since serious terrorist offences often come with sentences stiffer than 3-5, it's worth understanding what those offenders get paid by their perennially-broke government and what other benefits they can expect to get.

• A terrorist sentenced to 20 years or more in prison is paid five times the average salary. It starts to flow while he or she is still in prison. And it then keeps coming - for the rest of the recipient's life. Does anyone think there might be some subtle message here about where the PA and Abbas are placing the emphasis in the vision they offer their citizens?
• Then the fine print: If the imprisoned terrorist holds Israeli citizenship (there were about 1.8 million such Arabs in 2017 according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, meaning they represent 20.8% of Israel's total population), then they qualify for a US$145 bonus.
• The sum paid each month by the PA for what the article calls "the most severe crimes" exceeds US$2,900 which is larger than the average Israeli income (currently about US$2,700 per month according to the article and about US$2,955 according to another source). 
• Being married gets a terrorist a further increment, and there are add-ons for each child parented by the convicted terrorist.
• There are also specific pay increases for (a) being married and (b) each child a terrorist parents.
• If and when the terrorist beneficiary of all this largess gets out of prison, the PA law entitles him or her to a prestigious civil service post in its government

And as we observed not long ago ["25-Jul-17: The scale of the PA's terror-funding scheme keeps growing"], it's all getting worse, not better. 

At various times, advocates for the Palestinian Arabs contend that this is nothing more than social welfare and the Israelis are making a big deal out of nothing. But that's not so: the fact that you get more money according to the severity of the crime and/or the length of the sentence means that the payments are there to encourage serious crime - the more serious the better. And as Palestinian Media Watch has pointed out, the PA defines the entitlement to these payments in terms that ensure PA salaries do not go to Palestinian Arabs convicted of crimes such as theft - who may very well be social welfare cases - but do go to terrorist murderers in the service of Hamas and Fatah. Further elaboration is really not needed: anyone taking a dispassionate look at the realities knows the PA scheme has one clear purpose, and it's not the alleviation of poverty.

From a recent US summary of the scheme's impact:

The PA spent an estimated $300 million last year, roughly seven percent of its total budget, on these payments to more than 30,000 terrorists and their families. It does so at the direct expense of helping provide a better future for its own citizens, and despite its heavy dependence on foreign aid for income. Much of that aid comes from the United States - an average of $335 million annually over the last five years. The lion’s share, roughly $280 million per year in that span, is economic assistance to cover the PA’s significant debts, freeing up funds for their “pay-to-slay” system. The issue has not gone unnoticed by Congress. ["Passing the Taylor Force Act will mark a vital step in the War on Terror", TheHill.com, November 15, 2017]

We also noticed. See "08-Jul-16: Violence, terror, cash and the PA Rewards for Terror Scheme: Congress takes a look". And before that, we had posted dozens of reports and analyses [click here for more of them.)

The report delivered today to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, is part of the current efforts to create a new law that will deduct the total of what the PA pays its terrorists and their families from the taxes Israel collects and until now has handed across to the PA. There's more money at stake there than most people would guess. A July 2016 Reuters report estimated the scale of Israel-to-PA transfers at between US$130 and US$155 million per month. Translating this to annual figures, it's something between US$1.5 and US$1.9 billion.

The new Israeli bill, says the Jerusalem Post, "will likely go to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation in three weeks, with a first reading in the Knesset in the ensuing days". It's said to be largely inspired by the Taylor Force Act, a United States law that will stop all US aid to the Palestinian Arabs as long as the PA keeps paying salaries to terrorists and their families. (Our take:
"11-Jul-17: Incitement to terror: Sometimes it really is all about the money") The House of Representatives passed the bill in December 2017. It's now awaiting Senate approval.

The US is of course not the only state giving aid to the Abbas regime. Others include [according to this source] UNRWA and the EU through the European Commission [see "02-Jun-15: The obvious, petty lies that keep European money flowing into the hands of the PA's terrorists"], Japan, Canada, Norway [see "02-May-16: Norway's polite and cautious funding of Palestinian Arab terror"], Germany, Sweden, Spain, France and the United Kingdom [see "14-Jun-16: In the UK, law-makers (some) worry over the bloodshed funded by their taxpayers"].

The deep and corrosive damage on Arab lives and on ours depends on the unquestioning passivity of ordinary tax-payers of (mainly) Europe and North America, leading us to ask some years ago: "20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?" 

It also depends on much less innocent, faceless government bureaucrats who silently and with little-to-no publicity (especially to their own citizens) sign the wire transfers behind closed doors and pay next to no attention to how those funds are spent or what's done with them. Darkness, secrecy and deception [see "6-Oct-06: Crying poor: The terror-laden rise and rise of the Palestinian national payroll and the men who allow it to happen"] have been part of the whole story pretty much from the outset.

25-Jul-17: The scale of the PA's terror-funding scheme keeps growing

Abbas [Image Source: AP]

Someone has done some useful number-crunching to give up-to-date and stats-based proportion to the Palestinian Authority's blood-soaked Rewards for Terror scheme.

A paper published online yesterday, ["Palestinian Payments to Incarcerated Terrorists and Martyrs’ Families Rise in 2017", Yossi Kuperwasser - JCPA Institute for Contemporary Affairs, July 24, 2017] analyzes the PA's detailed budget for 2017.

Naturally, the "usual allocations for salaries to imprisoned and released terrorists" are there. So are the so-called "martyr" payments. They get transferred to the families of Palestinian Arabs killed or injured in what the PA disingenuously calls the “struggle against Zionism” - in reality, the decades-long Palestinian Arab terror campaign against Israelis and Jews.

How does the Palestinian Authority's economics management track record look when compared with say Israel's. Catastrophically might not be overstating it. Just three indicators point to the direction of things:

• In terms of GDP per capita (most recent published data, in US dollars), Israel produces $33,783 [2016 numbers]. The number for the PA is $1,997 [source]. Half a century ago, tiny Israel with almost zero natural resources, already had a GBP per capita about two and a half times what the PA has today.
• GDP growth: The PA's most recent data shows growth of 0.7 per cent. Israel's was 3.8 per cent. Inevitably the chasm is going to keep widening.
• According to the useful Nationmaster website, in 2012 terms (the latest comparison they offer). Israel's economy produced exports of $90.2 billion. That was 54 times larger than the PA's most recent exports. 

UNRWA school girl in Jerusalem explains why she and her friends
have to prepare for war. Your taxes at work. [Video source]

What are the PA's goals when they're not talking overt propaganda? How they spend their cash gives it away:

• The PA budget shows that salary payments to "incarcerated and released terrorists" this year will cost their economy $153.4 million. That's 13% more than it spent for the same thing in 2016.
• This will be somewhat hidden (hiding is a core PA regime skill) by being channeled to recipients via the Palestinian National Fund, the financial arm of the PLO. Israel designates the PNF as a terrorist organization. A cursory look at what it says about its own activities makes that sound pretty accurate. This recent analysis says the PNF, a by-word for massive Palestinian Arab corruption, is now controlled by Mahmoud Abbas. It's one of the key sources of his political power.
• Those payments via the PNF used to be made directly by the PA until that provided to be too much of a political liability. The switch to the PNF was made overnight is mainly cosmetic.
• Payments to "families of those killed or wounded in the struggle against Zionism" are going to rise this fiscal year to about US$ 193 million. 
• Taken together, those two expenditure categories (living terrorists, families of dead terrorists) amount to an outlay of US$ 344 million just for 2017. The Kuperwasser paper says that's 7% of the total PA budget.
• It's also just under half of all the foreign aid the PA expects to get this year. You don't need to be an economist to understand how much more could done - in the positive, life-affirming sense - with foreign aid than what the Palestinian Arabs do.
• Then there's this: "The amount of welfare support per family under the poverty-line is much smaller than salaries provided to terrorists and their families..." So being poor - which is a result of pretty much everything the Abbas regime does for its people - is less of a challenge than fighting more and killing more. 

That the PA stands squarely behind its terrorists and their terrorism is beyond doubt. Palestinian law calls them - the people who break into kitchens of pizzerias and murder by knives and exploding guitar cases - the “fighting sector” of Palestinian Arab society.

UNRWA education: Return on investment [Video source]

Kuperwasser points out:

This ongoing pattern stands in sharp contrast to the Palestinian commitments in the Oslo Accords and to international law and conventions. It also reflects the fact that until now, no real pressure has been put on the Palestinians to stop the payments.

This might change soon if the US legislates into law the Taylor Force Act which is currently before Congress.

But the US is not the only country providing aid to the Abbas regime (one-half of every dollar, euro and or shekel of which goes into the appalling Rewards for Terror pot. Here are some others [via this source]:

• During the 2006–2007 period, main bilateral donors to the PA were the US, Japan, Canada, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Spain and France
• In addition, the two major non-bilateral donors were UNRWA and the EU (through the European Commission). 
• "From 2000 the European Union had provided over €1.6 billion to UNRWA... In 2013 UNRWA received $294m from the US, $216.4 million from the EU, $151.6 million from Saudi Arabia, $93.7 million from Sweden, $54.4 million from Germany, $53 million from Norway, $34.6 million from Japan, $28.8 million from Switzerland, $23.3 million from Australia, $22.4 million from the Netherlands, $20 million from Denmark, $18.6 million from Kuwait, $17 million from France, $12.3 million from Italy, $10.7 million from Belgium as well as $10.3 million from all other countries, totaling just over $1 billion in 2013.

Unlike most other aspects of the thuggish violence practiced by Fatah, the PLO and their cohort, the evil done via the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme [click here for more of our posts about it] is enabled - funded and perpetuated - by ordinary tax-payers in (mainly) Europe and North America and the faceless government bureaucrats who silently sign the wire transfers behind closed doors.

There are efforts to slow it down or defeat it - see "08-Jul-16: Violence, terror, cash and the PA Rewards for Terror Scheme: Congress takes a look" and "27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad". But as the current PA budget shows, neither the cashflow nor the enthusiasm of its stewards show signs of diminished ardour.

11-Jul-17: Incitement to terror: Sometimes it really is all about the money

Taylor Force was murdered by an Arab assailant while he jogged on Tel Aviv's foreshore on March 8, 2016. He was 29 and a student at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management. He is pictured here with his sister Kirsten [Image Source]

The US Senate is due to hold hearings tomorrow (Wednesday) on the Taylor Force Act which, if passed, is likely to substantially cut US funding to the Palestinian Authority:

The Taylor Force Act is a legislative bill co-sponsored in the United States Senate in 2016 by U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Dan Coats (R-Indiana), and Roy Blunt (R-Missouri). The legislation proposes to stop American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA changes its laws to cease paying stipends funneled through the Palestinian Authority Martyr's Fund to individuals who commit acts of terrorism and to the families of deceased terrorists. [Wikipedia]

Palestinian Media Watch - an Israel-based nongovernmental organization and media watchdog group founded in 1996 by Itamar Marcus documents cases of incitement in Palestinian media - yesterday released a transcript (translated from the original Arabic) of an Israeli Police interrogation of a Palestinian Arab terrorist, one Khaled Rajoub, caught after an unsuccessful attempt to murder Israelis.

In the course of Rajoub's interrogation on February 2, 2014, he gave the police a stunningly candid rationalization for his deeds: so that he would be killed by the Israelis and his wife and children would become entitled to monthly payments from the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme.

It's material that ought to get the widest publicity. But, things being what they are, probably will not.

The text extracted below is based on a longer PMW online version ["Interrogation of Palestinian terrorist proves: PA payments motivate terror", Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch, July 10, 2017] and an earlier version of that same report here.

Had this Rajoub died in the course of carrying out an Arab-on-Israeli terror attack, the PA would have certified him as a "martyr" (in Arabic: shaheed). His family would have become entitled to a monthly allowance of 2,800 New Israeli Shekels per month based on NIS 1,400 base pay, NIS 400 for the wife (for her life) and NIS 200 for each of the five children (for their lives). It's a good, family-sized salary in their society's terms. It would have brought honour on the head of the dead-ender who made it possible by attacking Israelis.

As PMW has reported, it's not only “martyr” families who receive monthly payments; under PA law, every terrorist prisoner is granted a monthly PA salary while in jail, ranging from 1,400 shekels to NIS 12,000 a month based on the time spent in prison. For Khaled Rajoub, the PA's Rewards for Terror and its financial rewards were all the incentive he needed. The scheme works.

Rajoub to his Israeli interrogators: "I am a man with a family of seven, including me and my wife. I don't work. I have accumulated large debts and am unable to pay them off. I reached a point where, if my son wants a shekel, I have nothing to give him. Therefore I decided to die. It didn't matter how, by hanging, any way, [just] to die. I thought about it and said to myself that if I die by hanging, or any other way, I won't get anything out of it, so I decided to do something serious such as committing murder, something in which I will both kill and die and then my family will get money [meaning from what we call the Palestinian Authority's Rewards for Terror scheme] and will live comfortably. In other words, something will come out of my death. In the end I decided to kill Israeli soldiers. I got in a car and drove to Al-Fawwar, to the junction because there's always a military post there, and I said [to myself] that I'll run [the soldiers] over in my car and kill as many as I can and they'll shoot me and kill me. However, I didn't find a military post in Al-Fawwar. I continued to drive to a second post, to the gate of [the Israeli community of Beit] Hagai because I know there are always soldiers standing there... I did not find [any soldiers] there either. I had no other hope or way, so I broke through the gate of the settlement [meaning Beit Haggai]... I broke in with my car and smashed it and rammed into the second gate. But I couldn't smash it and the guards were behind the second gate. I tried to smash it in order to bring it down on them but it didn't come down and they didn't shoot me, but captured me instead. I was injured during the incident and they took me to a hospital..."
Interrogator: "Do you have a gun?"

Rajoub to his Israeli interrogators: "I've never carried [a gun]."

Interrogator: "Did you consider bringing a gun?"

Rajoub to his Israeli interrogators: "I have nothing to eat. How can I buy a gun?" 

Interrogator: "Why did you decide to kill soldiers, and not someone else?"

Rajoub to his Israeli interrogators: "The best is to kill soldiers. That way they have guns and they'll shoot me and kill me. But if I'm not able to kill soldiers, I'll try settlers, guards - in other words any Israeli target - the important thing is that I will die and they will kill me, so that my children will receive a [PA] allowance and live happily."

Interrogator: "What did you want to achieve by killing soldiers or settlers, or any Israeli target?" 

Rajoub to his Israeli interrogators: "So they'd shoot me and I'd die, and my children would receive an allowance."

Interrogator: "Are you still determined to do that?" 

Rajoub to his Israeli interrogators: "Of course, 100%. I'm telling you: if you'll set me free, I'll do it again as soon as possible. I'll bring another car, and I'll run over [soldiers] at the first military post I see. I'll kill as many as possible, and they'll shoot me, and I'll die. There is no other solution... I say to you again - I don't regret what I did, and if I have the opportunity, I'll do it again, and I'll kill soldiers or any Israeli I come across."
Interrogator: "If you have the opportunity to kill soldiers or an Israeli [civilian] in another way - shooting, stabbing, or any other way - will you do it?"

Rajoub to his Israeli interrogators: "I don't know. Something like that requires checking. Why? Because someone like me, small and disabled in his leg - I barely walk - needs a thorough plan to kill in a different way. The easiest way for someone like me is to run over [someone] with a car."

(We're still trying to track down details of the circumstances of the terror attack.)

For what it's worth, let the record show we're strongly in favour of the Taylor Force Act and urge the US Congress to bring it into law as soon as possible. Can there be any doubt, after you read open and candid admissions like Rajoub's, that defunding the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme will save lives - on the Palestinian Arab side as well as on ours?

Are Europe and the UK listening?

04-May-17: When Mahmoud met Donald: Thinking about the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme

In the White House yesterday [Image Source]

We had a welcome opportunity yesterday to publicly express some things about the Palestinian Authority's blood-soaked Rewards for Terror scheme. That's not its official name but it does describe what actually goes on.

The occasion was a formal visit by PA president Mahmoud Abbas to the White House, and a perceptive article by Ben Cohen: "As Trump Meets Abbas, Victim Families Press Issue of Financial Rewards for Palestinian Terrorists" [Ben Cohen | The Algemeiner | May 3, 2017]

Some excerpts (and Arnold Roth is quoted):

The PA currently spends $300 million annually on the payments – close to 8 percent of its budget. Critics say that the PA actively incentivizes terrorism, by promising financial rewards and national glory for those who participate...
“There are some small indications that ‘concern’ was expressed in the name of the United States during the Trump/Abbas encounter concerning the ongoing PA payments scheme that rewards Palestinian Arabs for engaging in terror,” noted Arnold Roth, whose 15 year old daughter, Malki, was murdered in the suicide bombing of Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizza restaurant in August 2001.
“The passions that the prisoner payments scheme arouses in Palestinian Arab society seem never to be adequately captured in mainstream news reports – I worry that they are not well-enough understood by the people now exercising power in Washington,” Roth told The Algemeiner.
Roth argued that western governments enjoy leverage over the PA which they are reluctant to exercise.  “Mahmoud Abbas’ perpetually insolvent administration stays in business only because of massive hand-outs of foreign aid,” he stated. “In a sane world, the providers of those donations – the US and the European Union in particular – would be attaching real conditions to them. But mystifyingly they don’t.”
Stephen Flatow, whose 20 year old daughter Alisa was murdered in the 1995 suicide bombing of an Israeli bus by Islamic Jihad, asserted that “raising the issue for discussion is just not enough.”
...Neither Trump nor Abbas mentioned the issue of the prisoner payments at their joint appearance on Wednesday. “If the issue is not raised, I wouldn’t understand the rationale for the US position and I’d be extremely disappointed,” Flatow said. “The PA’s payments to terrorists –on  a sliding scale no less, based on the number of Jews killed or injured – serves to encourage others to commit terror.” [Read the whole article here]

It's worth noting that Wednesday's Abbas state visit came as the US Congress is weighing legislation (described here: "Senators introduce Taylor Force Act to cut Palestinian funding over terror rewards", JNS, September 30, 2016)

to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if they continue their policy of paying monetary rewards for terrorism. U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC.), Dan Coats (R-IN.) and Roy Blunt (R-MO.) introduced the Taylor Force Act, which would require the U.S. secretary of state to certify the Palestinian Authority has ended its policy of paying monetary rewards to terrorist and their surviving family members. The bill also calls on the PA to publicly condemn terror attacks and to take steps to bring the perpetrators to justice.

We wrote about Taylor Allen Force [here] about 14 months ago. An American visitor to Israel as part of a Vanderbilt University school trip and a graduate of West Point Military Academy, he was stabbed to death by a Palestinian Arab terrorist who also injured 10 others in an attack on the seashore at Jaffa.

Poster at a British protest against the incitement of the PA
[Image Source]

The legislation that bears his name is not yet US law. It was referred to the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs in February [source] and is currently working its way through the system.

Whatever the outcome, the name of the murdered young US veteran will get considerably more respect there than it did when the "moderate" Arab-operated-but-European-financed Ma'an News Agency turned its attention, so to speak, to what was done to him:

Ma'an says the attacker is a 22-year-old from a village, al-Zawiya, near Qalqiliya. It gives his name as Bashar Masalha. What does Ma'an tell its readers about the man who was murdered by the villager? Not his name, not his age, not his background or anything about his life; just that he was "an American tourist". Nor do they mention how an Israeli musician, sitting near the beach and strumming on his guitar, gave the fleeing knife-man a massive whack on the head, destroying his musical instrument but slowing the murderer down so that the armed security people in pursuit could catch up with him and eventually stop him,
Not surprisingly, the Arabic version of the Ma'an report, the one which the editors assume will not be read by people outside the Arab world, honors the knife-man in a sub-heading as "shaheed", or "martyr". Mr Force is not mentioned at all. Hamas, whether because it's true or because they wish it were, issued a Tweet [here] saying the killer came from its ranks. The American man he murdered is dismissed as "a Zionist"... ["09-Mar-16: News reporting and how it ensures more terror"]

(By the way, people concerned with the pursuit of peace and a much better future for children on our side and on the Arab side as well certainly ought to know more about Ma'an and the hideous values it disseminates. We try to do our bit.) 

Ben Cohen's Algemeiner article ends with a quote worth emphasizing from Grant Rumley, a Palestinian affairs expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noting 

the centrality of the prisoner payments issue to Palestinian internal politics. “Any change on the payments policy will cost Abbas dearly at home,” Rumley said.

Yes, changing the Rewards for Terror scheme will be expensive for Abbas.

But we think the question for non-Palestinian Arabs is: so what? Should we be worrying about the political future of this 82 year-old kleptocrat, this inveterate inciter to hatred, this career politician now in the thirteenth year of his four-year term as president and continuing to hold tight for more?

No.

Abbas parading with freshly-freed terrorists, all of them killers,
in 2014. In the days after this rally took place, very one of the ex-prisoners
enjoyed a Rewards for Terror payday beyond anything of which they
dreamed - all of it funded by the foreign aid budgets of EU states and the US. 

We should care instead whether the payments - funded mainly by ordinary and unwitting taxpayers in the United States and Europe under the guise of international foreign aid - that serve to perpetuate a culture of lethal bigotry and the weaponizing of Palestinian Arab children can be stopped as a matter of urgency.

We should care about what it will take to cultivate a new and completely different kind of leadership among the Palestinian Arabs, one that will focus on reshuffling the core values of their own people so that building them a better future takes precedence over stealing ours.

It could be that Abbas agrees. In yesterday's meeting, he said (according this source):

We are coming into a new opportunity a new horizon that would enable us to bring about peace... [Associated Press, May 3, 2017]

Can someone urgently show him and his entourage the way to the exit? That new horizon is needed desperately.