By Alex Truman, from
JNS – July 3rd 2018
The passage of an
Israeli law to withhold funds that the Palestinian Authority uses to pay
murderers for killing Jews is the correction of an unconscionable injustice.
That a democratic country with a High Court of Justice has allowed itself to
transfer funds month after month to a murder-sponsoring entity within its midst
is not just bad policy, it is completely illegal and utterly immoral.
Israeli
parliamentarians finally awoke to the reality that the P.A. pays more than $360
million a year to terrorists serving prison sentences in Israeli jails and to
the families of terrorists killed while in the act of attempted murder. The
payment scheme—on the law books of the P.A. from as early as 2011—bases amounts
to each terrorist or family on the severity of the jail term, with additional
incentives for terrorists holding Israeli identification cards.
Israel was not the
first country to legislate against the “pay to slay” practice. In March, the
United States passed the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the U.S. from
sending foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority as long as the payment scheme
remains in place.
The bill was named
after Taylor Force, a 26-year-old American West Point graduate who had served
tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. Taylor was visiting Israel as part of an
entrepreneurial seminar connected to an MBA program at Vanderbilt University
when he was stabbed to death on a popular Tel Aviv promenade by a terrorist
from the Palestinian city of Kalqilya.
The terrorist was
killed by police responding to the attack. To add insult to injury,
Palestinians celebrated Taylor’s death, and soon afterwards, the terrorist’s
family began receiving large monthly stipends—well in excess of average
Palestinian salaries.
Several months
later, Sander Gerber, a private New York financial executive and former board
member of AIPAC, reached out to Taylor’s parents, Stuart and Robbi Force.
Gerber had recently
been made aware of the payment scheme, and was shocked to learn that most
Israeli and American politicians were clueless that terrorists were being paid
to kill in accordance with Palestinian law.
No longer was the
P.A. simply guilty of incitement to murder through school textbooks, television
stations, social-media avenues and frequent speeches by Palestinian leaders,
including P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas calling for the blood of Jews; the P.A. was
proven to be an official terror-sponsoring entity.
Worse yet, most of
the funds utilized to secure its budget and make the terror payments came
either by way of foreign aid provided by the United States and others, or
through a tariff agreement with Israel whereby funds are collected on behalf of
the P.A. at ports of entry and then passed monthly by Israel to the Palestinian
entity.
With this
information in hand, Gerber enlisted Taylor’s parents in a campaign to educate
lawmakers. Together, they demanded that both the United States and Israel stop
sending funds that now could be proven were going into the hands of murderers.
For the United
States, the issue was simple: The foreign aid that America provides is
voluntary and can be withheld if it is deemed to not be serving America’s
interests. For Israel, there were additional legal questions, as the funds are
collected by Israel on behalf of the P.A. as part of the Oslo Accords. Yet once
it was clearly established that the sponsorship of terror was a direct
violation of the Oslo Accords, legal concerns were eased.
The U.S. Taylor
Force Act was signed into law in March; it took several more months for Israel
to follow suit. Despite calls by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for
funds to be withheld from the P.A. from as early as 2015—coupled with his
expressed support for the passage of the Taylor Force Act—the government sought
to insert a waiver provision into the Israeli law.
Recently, the United
States rejected an argument by moving
its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Trump administration was warned
that the move would spark widespread unrest and destabilize the region. While
protests ensued on the Gaza border, little violence was recorded in the West
Bank and virtually none of the 250,000 Arabs living in Jerusalem—some just
several hundred meters from the embassy—protested a move that did little to
impact their day-to-day lives.
The passage of both
the U.S. and Israeli versions of the laws to withhold funding is a testament to
the relentless pursuit of Gerber and Force (who were both present for the
Knesset vote). At an Israeli event in celebrating the outcome, Force noted that
because they weren’t government officials, it might have been easier to push
for the two laws’ passage.
Other countries are
now taking notice. On the same day as the vote in Israel, Australia also
announced it would withhold funds from the P.A. European nations may soon do the
same.
According to the
Israeli law, a review of the Palestinian budget line items and payment scheme
must take place at the end of each calendar year. According to this
provision—unless a stricter interpretation of the law is demanded—Israel will
continue to send the monthly payments until the start of 2019, when a
presentation will be made as to whether the payments have halted or not. If
not, funds can be withheld in February.
Gerber, Force and
the backers of the Israeli law are pushing for any funds withheld to be paid
out to the victims of Palestinian terror who have secured judgements against
the P.A. in court. This represents the truest form of justice: to take the
funds once designated for the murderers and to provide them instead to the
victims.
