Inflation has exploded on United States consumers under Joe Biden, with gasoline prices above $5 or even $6 a gallon. Interest rates are surging. Food is up by double-digits.
And because the markets these days are worldwide, so, too, the rest of the world is feeling inflation one way or another.
But convicted terrorists in the Middle East are getting raises to deal with that.
Palestinian Median Watch explains in a new report, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, in meeting with Joe Biden this week, held hopes of convincing him to renew U.S. aid to the PA.
At issue are raises he’s awarded to convicted terrorists who are given salaries under the PA’s “pay-for-slay” policy.
“In essence, Abbas is going to ask President Biden to abolish the Taylor Force Act, or at the very least, bypass it and thereby desecrate its spirit,” the report said.
The PMW explained, “The terrorist murderers Fahmi and Ramadan Mashahreh are just two of hundreds of Palestinian terrorist prisoners who have recently received or are about to receive a rise in salary from the Palestinian Authority. Arrested in July 2002, the Mashahreh brothers are 2 of the terrorists responsible for the bus bombing on June 18, 2002, in which 19 people were murdered and tens were injured. The Mashahrehs are members of Hamas – the internationally designated terror organization – and were residents of Jerusalem, who used the freedom of movement enjoyed by Israeli residents to carry out their attack. Having now been in prison for 20 years, the PA considers the Mashahrehs to be ‘veteran prisoners.’
“According to Palestinian ‘prisoners’ institutions,’ the number of Palestinian terrorist prisoners held in Israeli prisons as of the end of June 2022 was ‘approximately 4,650,'” the report explained.
The results of the attacks on Israelis – and others – have been horrific.
“From September 2000 through March 2002, Palestinian terrorists carried out approximately 14,000 terror attacks. During that period alone, more than 600 Israeli citizens and residents were killed and more than 4,500 were wounded,” PMW confirmed. “In the month of March 2002 alone, over 120 Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists, in dozens of terror attacks. The most lethal of these attacks was the suicide bombing on the evening of the Passover festival in the Park Hotel in the Israeli city of Netanya, in which 29 people were murdered.”
In 2004, the PA adopted a rule that assures every Palestinian terrorist arrested by Israel a monthly salary “simply as a reward for their participation in terror.”
Those who have served from 25-30 years, for example, are paid $3,215 a month, plus $96 extra for each wife, $16 extra for each child, and another $250 a month if they lived in Jerusalem. Raises are similar for convicted terrorists whose sentences involve other terms.
Under President Trump, the U.S. adopted the Taylor Force Act, named after an American caught up on the deadly terrorism, that conditions the bulk of U.S. aid to the PA on the abolition of those payments to terrorists.
Abbas, in response, has consistently explained there is no more important a priority for the PA that the payments to convicted terrorists – or the families of terrorists who are killed during their terror attacks.
WND reported only months ago that the PA, which because of international agreements providing funding, is supposed to be publishing its annual budgets.
But it has stopped.
PMW said the effort is “to hide its practices and prevent any external scrutiny.”
The move actually is that the “PA has blocked access to all the financial reports it used to publish. Since 2008, as part of an agreement to receive funding from the World Bank, the Palestinian Authority has been required to publish a range of financial documents, including its annual budget and monthly budget performance reports,” the PMW report revealed.
“While the PA temporarily honored the commitment to publish its annual budget, it has not done so since 2019. In contrast, with the exception of a few minor incidents (exposed by Palestinian Media Watch and then rectified), the PA had been relatively meticulous in publishing its monthly budget performance reports,” PMW reported.
The report said the last PA budget performance report was dated January 2022, but now “even this option has been blocked.”
The watchdog group explained the action came “after PMW used the reports to demonstrate how the PA spent 841 million shekels/$270.75 million, in 2021 alone, paying financial rewards to imprisoned terrorists, released terrorists, wounded terrorists, and the families of dead terrorists.”
That’s the PA’s well-known “pay-for-slay” program that rewards those terrorists who attack and/or kill innocent civilians, including Israelis and Americans. They or their families are paid a monthly salary if they go to prison. If they commit suicide during their terrorism, their families are given that monthly payment.
America’s Congress adopted the Taylor Force Act, named after PA terror victim American Taylor Force, several years ago halting funding for the PA as long as that “pay-for-slay” spending was still alive, but Joe Biden resumed funding the PA as soon as he took office, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in what the New York Post described as “end-running” the federal law.
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