Barry Shaw | October 17, 2024
And Part One. Punishing Israel – and not the Palestinians.
Kamala Harris’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict has drawn criticism for perceived bias, particularly regarding U.S. sanctions against Jews who desire to live in Judea & Samaria due to of their firmly held beliefs that this is an integral part of an ancestral Jewish Homeland.
These crippling economic sanctions are imposed on Jews in many cases based on dubious claims of violence when, under close examination, violence was a defensive reaction to provocations by Palestinians or supportive agitators who do not live in the territories in question but come from outside, often outside Israel, in order to provoke a counter reaction which they then film to make false cases against individuals who are then targeted by the Biden-Harris Administration.
Or, in rare cases, Israelis whose friends have been killed by Palestinians and, in their anger, expressed their grief and rage by destroying Arab property.
On the other hand, the same Biden-Harris Administration has failed to impose any crippling Executive Sanctions against Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, or the hundreds of Palestinians who have murdered Israelis.
The Biden-Harris Administration is familiar with the financial reward system of the Palestinian Authority, commonly known as their “Pay to Slay” policy in which Palestinians are gifted monthly payments based on the number of Israelis they kill, the importance of their victims, and the length of jail time they receive after their obligatory trials in which these killers are afforded lawyers to act in their defense.
In the event of Palestinians killed executing their murders, the Palestinian Authority pays suitable compensation to the families of the killers.
The Palestinian Authority does not differential between which terror group the recipient killer belongs. It has a self-imposed obligation to pay all the killers whether they acted in the name of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the PLO, or no terror group at all. Simply killing Israeli Jews is sufficient grounds to be rewarded for their crimes. They all receive reward money from the Palestinian Authority.
Biden and Harris are familiar with this gruesome phenomenon yet have never imposed sanctions against these killers, nor against the Palestinian Authority that encourages and pays for this gruesome cultural abomination. This despite the fact that the United States has the Taylor Force Act on its statute books.
Named after a US citizen who was murdered on 8 March 2016, by a 21 year-old Palestinian terrorist as he strolled along the Tel Aviv, the Taylor Force Act is an act of the U.S. Congress to stop American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA ceases paying stipends through their obnoxious Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund to individuals who commit acts of terrorism and to the families of deceased terrorists.
The Act was signed into law by U.S. President Donald Trump on March 23, 2018.
In February 2019, the US confirmed it stopped all USAID to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, in line with the new anti-terrorism legislation, until the PA stops financing this “Pay to Slay” reward system.
This is something the Palestinian Authority adamantly refuses to do.
Critics point out that U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority resumed under the Biden-Harris administration, raising concerns about their lack of compliance with the Taylor Force Act.
As Lt. Col (ret) and former military lawyer, Maurice Hirsch, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Director for the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform, pointed out in his report for JNS, the estimated annual payment to Palestinian killers amounts to more than $350 million annually.
Hirsch further claims that the US State Department under Anthony Blinken, deliberately, as a matter of policy, ignores US law as reflected in the Taylor Force Act, and that the Biden-Harris Administration lacks the moral clarity that requires them to unequivocally demand an immediate end to the P.A.’s “pay-for-slay” policy as a non-negotiable precondition to establishing any form of revitalized Palestinian entity.
The Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs appointed by the Department of State, Hady Amr, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has met on multiple occasions with P.A. chairman Mahmoud Abbas, both before and after the horrendous genocidal attack by Palestinian Hamas and by unaffiliated Gazan Palestinians in which over 1,200 Israelis and others were tortured raped and murdered in the October 7 massacre but, from their public statements and published reports, it appears that the subject of the P.A.’s “pay-for-slay” never arose.
Neither has the Biden-Harris Administration included the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, or any individual Palestinian killer in their Executive Orders and Sanctions.
This only applies to Jews living in Judea and Samaria.
Following a February 7 meeting between Blinken and Abbas, the State Department statement made no demand that Abbas and the PA stop this iniquitous payment. There was no threat of US sanctions should the PA continue this gruesome welfare scheme of rewarding killers.
On the contrary, Biden-Harris-Blinken gave a nod and a wink to Mahmoud Abbas, and a slap in the face of every Israeli, by officially stating that Secretary Blinken “conveyed the United States’ commitment to increasing the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza…reiterated the United States’ support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state…discussed the benefits of revitalizing the Palestinian Authority” and “ reinforced the United States rejection of any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.”
Kamala Harris has made no statement of intent to cancel this iniquitous and unbalanced punishment against Israel if she becomes the next US President.
On the contrary, her pro-Palestinian views are as open as is her antipathy to Israel and its current leader.
Kamala Harris has faced criticism for her framing of the conflict in Gaza in which she has placed significant blame on Israel for a humanitarian crisis caused by Hamas, in which she calls for restraint and ceasefires rather than support Israel’s efforts to eradicate the military capability of Hamas to threaten the people of Israel and to nullify the stranglehold that Hamas has over the people of Gaza.
She publicly conveys the United States’ commitment to increasing the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza, reiterated the United States’ support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, discussed the benefits of revitalizing the Palestinian Authority, and reinforced the United States rejection of any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
But she and Biden failed to impose any sanctions against any Palestinian killer, let alone against the sponsoring Palestinian Authority.
These are not the qualities of an affirmative ally that Israel looks for in a potential US President.
Barry Shaw is the Strategic Affairs Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
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