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Abdullah Barghouti built and delivered the guitar-case bomb that killed our daughter and fourteen other innocents. He was sentenced to 67 life terms. The Palestinian leadership has now determined that he and his family will receive a monthly stipend. The symbolism is powerful. And sickening. |
According to yesterday's Palestinian Media Watch report by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik:
A law published in the official Palestinian Authority Registry last month grants all Palestinians and Israeli Arabs imprisoned in Israel for terror crimes a monthly salary from the PA. Although the EU, U.S. and other donors are not intentionally funding salaries for terrorists, their funding of other PA salaries and the general budget makes money available to pay terrorist salaries. [Source: "PA to Pay Salaries to All Terrorists in Israeli Prisons"]We checked - the imprisoned terrorists who carried out the bombing of the Sbarro restaurant in central Jerusalem on 9th August 2001, the massacre that cost the life of our daughter Malki, 15, and many other innocents, are included on the payroll [JPost]. (In case you don't know, we honor Malki's memory through the work of the Malki Foundation - please visit www.kerenmalki.org to get a sense of what we do.)
Who funds the PA? Who provides the PA's insiders with the means to channel money at the terrorists and their families? The colossally wealthy Arab oil states? No. Malaysia? No.
"The majority of aid to the Palestinian Authority comes from the United States and European Union. According to figures released by the PA, only 22 percent of the $530,000,000 received since the beginning of 2010 came from Arab donors. The remainder came from Western donors and organizations. The total amount of foreign aid received directly by the PA was $1.4 billion in 2009 and $1.8 billion in 2008. [Source]"There is a powerful symbolism at work here. The PA is chronically short of funds, and is perpetually requesting handouts. Yet it has sufficient disposable cash to make the decision this week to channel funds to the terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons. Evidently Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts have a sound understanding of the message they want to convey to their people, and how best to deliver it.
It's humiliating that we, victims of these convicted jihadist terrorists, parents of murdered children, have to raise our voices about this - and evidently we are alone in doing so. Where are the European, American and Australian voices of outrage at what is being done with taxpayer funded aid money, and in their names? Where is the sense of shame on the part of those who sign the aid cheques to the Palestinian Arabs? And where is the fury of those voters in Western, aid-giving countries whose political representatives allow this to go on without so much as a whimper?
