“Americans will die” because the Biden administration is sending millions of dollars to Palestinians in violation of a U.S. law that forbids such funding while a “pay-for-slay” program of funding terrorists is in effect.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, issued the warning in an interview with Joel Pollak on “Breitbart News Sunday.”
He said the Democratic president is rewarding “terrorists and their families” and warned there will be fallout.
The Biden State Department announced last week that, despite a 2018 law, it will send hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinians.
“In 2019, the Palestinian Authority expressed its intention to spend $342.6 million on rewards for terrorists and their families. We’re not talking about a few dollars here and there,” Cruz explained. “And now, with Joe Biden’s decision, a significant chunk of that $342 million is going to have come from you and me.”
It is the Taylor Force Act that prevents the U.S. from sending money to Palestinians, with only a few exceptions, while they pay pensions to terrorists or the families of terrorists killed during terror operations.
“We’re sending American taxpayer funds to [the Palestinian Authority] so they can fund terrorists,” the senator said, “and as a result of Joe Biden’s decision, Americans will die. Israelis will die. This money that Joe Biden is sending to terrorists will be used to commit more acts of terrorism, to incentivize terrorists, to murder women, to murder children.
“Joe Biden decided that funding terrorists who kill Americans apparently is a good idea,” he said.
Biden’s administration announced it will send $75 million for development assistance to the West Bank and Gaza, more money for “peacebuilding” and still more for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency.
“We’re just a few months in but [the Biden administration is] already demonstrating the same pattern we saw during eight years of the Obama administration, which is that they support our enemies, they fund our enemies, they fund people trying to kill Americans, and they undermine our friends. They undermine our allies,” Cruz said.
“We have given over $6.3 billion dollars to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority is in a unity government with Hamas, a terrorist group that murders Americans and murders Israelis, and for years the Palestinian Authority has had a policy that’s called the pay-to-slay policy. … When terrorists murder people, the Palestinian government pays their families in perpetuity,” the senator said.
Further, he pointed out that Biden made the announcement in the “dark of night.”
“They were required to make a statutory notification of Congress — which they did — but no explanation other than pablum about, ‘Oh, we want peace,'” he added.
The Associated Press reported Biden was “quietly ramping up aid to Palestinians,” reversing President Trump’s Middle East policy of bypassing the recalcitrant Palestinians to make peace agreements between four Muslim nations and Israel.
State Department spokesman Ned Price confirmed to AP the intent is to provide “financial support” because it’s consistent with America’s “interests.”
Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize after his administration brokered four peace agreements between Israel and Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently indicated another four agreements are in the works.
He did not name the nations but also “did not dispel rumors” about deals with Niger, Mauritania, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
WND reported in September the editor of a Saudi Arabian newspaper said peace agreements with Israel are the only option for Arab nations that have opposed Israel for generations.
Khalid bin Hamad Al-Malik, the editor of Al-Jazirah, wrote two days before the Israel-UAE-Bahrain peace deals that the Arabs “tried war and were defeated; they tried hostility towards Israel and gained nothing; they tried to reconcile [with Israel] on their own terms and failed.”
A Free Beacon report said Israel is “inching toward normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia.”
“Normalization with gulf countries has already borne significant fruit for Israel,” the Free Beacon said. “Tourism and trade continues to grow apace between Israel and the UAE, with some even remarking that they feel safer wearing traditional Jewish clothing in Dubai than in France now.”
Trump’s realignment of Middle East relations was praised by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as “brilliant.” He unsuccessfully urged the Biden administration to stay the course that produced the agreements called the Abraham Accords.
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