Elder of Ziyon: Arab hospital in Jerusalem stops accepting patients because PA leaders prioritize paying terrorists over medicines

The Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem, one of the major hospitals treating Palestinian Arabs, has announced that it can no longer accept patients because of the huge sums of money owed to it by the Palestinian Authority.

The hospital issued a press release today saying that it can no longer receive patients. It has exhausted its stores of medicines needed to do basic medical care.

The hospital urgently requires 23 million shekels ($6.4M) to cover the purchase of medicines and vital treatments especially for those suffering from cancer and kidney disease.

The Palestinian Authority owes the hospital NIS 150 million ($41 million) and the debt has been accumulating at the rate of $4 million every month. 

Some 700-800 patients come to Augusta Victoria for treatment daily.

More Gazans are referred to the Augusta Victoria hospital than any other, with 568 Gazans being admitted there in February, according to the World Health Organization.

The Palestinian leadership pays some $10 million a month to terrorists in prison and who were freed, and nearly $15 million a month to terrorist families. That part of the PA budget is considered sacred, so its citizens are going to literally die so they can pay their terrorist heroes. (My next article goes into more detail.)

The Palestinian Authority is also considering stopping supplying medicines and medical equipment for Gazans altogether.

Elder of Ziyon: Introducing - The Aqsamobile!

A Jordanian of Palestinian descent in Turkey with way too much time on his hands created a replica of the "Al Aqsa Mosque" on a truck chassis.

Majed Abu Namous, 37, spent months putting this together, in order to emphasize the importance of Jerusalem to Muslims.

For some reason, Muslims don't have to be reminded of the importance of Mecca with stunts like this.

Actually, the centerpiece is the Dome of the Rock while Al Aqsa is relegated to being next to the driver.

Namous drives around the town of Antakya and hands out literature about the site, to convince Muslim youth to fight against Israeli control of the city.

The vehicle doesn't look like it would be legal for road use.

SFSU Student Paper Reports on Freedom Center Campus Posters “It exposes the truth about SJP’s ties to terrorism and challenges the SF State administration to defend speech that deviates from the typical anti-Israel narrative."

In a short, remarkably (particularly for San Francisco State University) neutral piece titled "Campus posters allege student group ties to terrorists," the school's student-run Golden Gate Express reported on the David Horowitz Freedom Center campus campaign to distribute posters on campus identifying student group connections to anti-Israel terrorism. The article is reposted below:

The David Horowitz Freedom Center distributed posters on campus today as part of a campaign criticizing Students for Justice in Palestine of being puppets for Hamas terrorists.

The posters, also posted on Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus website run by the Freedom Center, portray the SJP as servants to Hamas.

The campaign comes as part of the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s fight against schools that provide “financial and institutional support” to student members of Students for Justice in Palestine and other capus organizations that “support the agendas of these terrorists and spread their propaganda lies,” according to the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s public statement. Both posters contain the hashtag #NoSupportForCampusTerrorists.

“Our poster campaign has a dual purpose,” said Freedom Center founder David Horowitz in a public statement. “It exposes the truth about SJP’s ties to anti-Israel terrorism and its glorification of terrorists like Rasmieh Odeh and it challenges the administration at San Francisco State to defend speech that deviates from the typical anti-Israel narrative that dominates on campus.”

The David Horowitz Freedom Center ranked SF State seventh in a “Top Ten College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment” list last Fall. The report accused the University of “continuing to promote SJP on their campuses while actively working to suppress speech that exposes the truth about SJP and its ties to terrorism.”

The website claims that the posters will be distributed at all 10 of the listed campuses including nearby University of California, Berkeley.

Abbas Responsible for High Salaries to Terrorists

Abbas, more than anyone else, has elevated the position of the Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails, the PA deputy minister of Prisoners’ Affairs affirms. Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas claimed, in a joint press conference in Washington with US President Donald Trump, that Palestinian children are raised in an atmosphere of peace. Indeed, PA incitement to violence, including the glorification and funding of terrorists, has been documented numerous times. None other than Ziyad Abu Ein, deputy minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, names Abbas as the person responsible for paying high salaries to terrorists.

PA ploy to avoid "international pressure" from donor countries due to terrorist salaries exposed by PMW: PA Deputy Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Ziyad Abu Ein: "Who has elevated the cause of the Palestinian prisoners other than President Mahmoud Abbas? All the laws, the tenfold increase of the budget of the Ministry of Prisoners' [Affairs] -- [all this] was done during the tenure of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and according to the wishes of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas... If we go back to the source, which is the PLO, which will take care of the [prisoner] issue... we eliminate the international pressure and the attempts to tamper with this issue, so sensitive and holy to our Palestinian people. The [Palestinian] leadership wants to keep this holy issue away from the influence of the donor countries, the interference of the donor countries, and the occasional negative influence of the donor countries, by giving it [the prisoner issue] its holiness and assigning it to the leadership of the struggle of our Palestinian people. Who is the leadership of the struggle of our Palestinian people? The PLO... All the authority, all the laws, the budget, the officials and staff will be a part of the Prisoners and Released Prisoners' Commission, which will belong to the PLO, to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and to the Executive Committee of the PLO."

Sandra Solomon Moment: The Hajj in Islam and Sexual Harassment; The nightmare I experienced while circling around the Kaba.

The Sandra Solomon Moment, with Sandra Solomon, an ex-Muslim who grew up in Saudi Arabia who is now valiantly fighting against the Islamization of the West — and of her new home country of Canada in particular. Sandra unveils The Hajj in Islam and Sexual Harassment, sharing the nightmare she experienced while circling around the Kaba. Don’t miss it!

PMW: Mahmoud Abbas is personally responsible for the high salaries to terrorists

Mahmoud Abbas is personally responsible 

for the high salaries to terrorists

Abbas further admitted that he himself gave the kill orders

Click to view on our site

by Itamar Marcus

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer noted yesterday that President Trump brought up the issue of salaries to terrorists in his meeting with PA Chairman Abbas:

"The president raised concerns about the payments to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have committed acts of terror and to their families and emphasized the need to resolve this issue."

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/03/press-briefing-press-secretary-sean-spicer-532017-44]

As international pressure is mounting on Mahmoud Abbas to stop payments to terrorists prisoners, it should be recognized that Mahmoud Abbas himself is personally responsible for the high salaries that terrorists receive. In 2010, Mahmoud Abbas amended the Palestinian Prisoners Law, dramatically raising salaries to terrorist prisoners. Prior to that, salaries ranged from 1000-4000 shekels a month; now they start at 1400 shekels and can reach as high as 12,000 shekels each month.

In 2014, the PA transferred responsibility for payments to prisoners from the PA to the PLO in order to hide the PA responsibility for payments from the international community. At the time, Deputy Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Ziyad Abu Ein again stressed that Abbas himself was personally responsible for the sharp rise in salaries to prisoners: 

Deputy Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Ziyad Abu Ein: "Who else has elevated the cause of the Palestinian prisoners other than President Mahmoud Abbas? All the laws, the tenfold increase of the budget of the Ministry of Prisoners' [Affairs] - [all this] was done during the tenure of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and according to the wishes of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas...

If we go back to the source, which is the PLO, which will take care of the [prisoner] issue... we eliminate the international pressure and the attempts to tamper with this issue, so sensitive and holy to our Palestinian people. The [Palestinian] leadership wants to keep this holy issue away from the influence of the donor countries, the interference of the donor countries, and the occasional negative influence of the donor countries, by giving it [the prisoner issue] its holiness and assigning it to the leadership of the struggle of our Palestinian people. Who is the leadership of the struggle of our Palestinian people? The PLO... All the authority, all the laws, the budget, the officials and staff will be a part of the Prisoners and Released Prisoners' Commission, which will belong to the PLO, to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and to the Executive Committee of the PLO."

[Official PA TV, June 1, 2014]

Click to view 

Not only is Abbas personally responsible for paying salaries to terrorists, by his own admission he is responsible for sending terrorists to kill Israelis. Abbas told official PA TV in 2005, right after the PA's five-year terror campaign (i.e., the second Intifada) had ended, that all the terrorist prisoners must be freed because they did not murder of their own volition but were sent to murder by the PA:

Mahmoud Abbas: "I demand [the release of] prisoners because they are human beings, who did what we, we, ordered them to do. We - the [Palestinian] Authority. They should not be punished while we sit at one table negotiating... This is war. One (i.e., Israel) ordered a soldier to kill, and I ordered my son, brother, or others, to carry out the duty of resistance (i.e., PA euphemism for terror). This person killed and the other person killed... He [the Palestinian prisoner] is a fighter just like any other fighter. We were in a state of fighting. When a truce is reached, in any country in the world, the past is forgotten... [If prisoners are not released] the ordinary citizen will ask me: 'What did you get me? You ordered me - you are responsible for me.'"

[Official PA TV, Feb. 14, 2005]

Click to view

Abbas indicates that, as the person who "ordered" the terrorists to kill, he is just as responsible as the killers in prison. Because of his direct responsibility for sending the terrorists, it is unlikely that Abbas will agree to stop rewarding them financially.

Elder of Ziyon: 50 years of demonization and twisting of the truth

Two recent articles in The Forward about the Six Day War  illustrate how poisonous the false Palestinian narrative has been.

The Forward unearthed a wonderful essay by Elie Wiesel written right after the war. Excerpts:

Future generations will probably never believe it. Teachers will have a hard time convincing their students that what sounds legendary actually occurred. The children will naturally swallow each word, but later on, as adults, they’ll nod their heads and smile, remarking that these were fantasies of history.

They won’t believe that this small state, surrounded by hatred, fire and murder, had so quickly managed a miracle. It will be hard to describe how, amid a sea of hatred, a tiny army drove off and humiliated several well-equipped military hordes of who knows how many Arab countries.

How does acclaimed scholar and Talmudic genius Shaul Lieberman put it? In another 2,000 years, people will consider these events the way we think of descriptions of the Maccabees and their victories.

Did I say another 2,000 years? No, make that: in another year, or even tomorrow.

Last Sunday, the Arabs and their allies were boastfully threatening Israel that if she dared to make another move, she’d pay with her existence. And several hours later, our Jewish heroes advanced, and the entire world, holding its breath, followed their every movement.

You’ll recall the radio broadcasts at the beginning of the week that sounded practically Job-like. Every hour, another Arab government declared war against Israel. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia. And then: Morocco, Tunisia, Algiers. In Tunisia, an incited mob led a pogrom in the Jewish Quarter. Other Muslim — or part Muslim — countries rushed to sign up in [Egyptian president Gamal Abdul] Nasser’s “holy war.” Malaysia, Sudan, Mali, Guinea and more.

We bit our lips, cracked our knuckles and could find no comfortable spot for ourselves. Quietly, we asked if the test was too hard this time. Was too much being demanded from the Jewish people and from their land? How could we expect to be redeemed, knowing that the enemy numbered tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of people, against a mere 2 million Jews in Israel?

And then, between Passover and Shavuot, the Hanukkah miracle occurred. It didn’t take long before the supposedly mighty enemy was rendered speechless and lost its nerve. Even the Soviet Ambassador to the UN, Nikolai Fedorenko, suddenly changed his tone. Instead of worrying about whether Nasser would finally curb his appetite for power, world leaders began looking for ways to make amends to Israeli Premier Levi Eshkol.

It was as though a theater director, unfamiliar with his cast, suddenly switched the parts of his actors: those who had stubbornly opposed us now asked for mercy, as their former protectors now distanced themselves from them. Overnight, the mood at the UN Security Council seemed unrecognizable.

Compare this to the Forward's editor Jane Eisner writing about her conflicted feelings towards the Six Day War today:

I approach this half-century mark with a confusing mixture of wonderment and dread, joy and despair, pride and embarrassment. The crushing military victory that expanded Israel threefold and brought Jerusalem back to the Jewish people has also turned the Israel I love into a sometimes-brutal occupier of an estimated 2.9 million Palestinians, with no end in sight.

I believe many others share this painful ambiguity. The temptation is to turn away, because it feels too damn hard to reconcile, but that shirks our responsibility as Jews.

Why does she feel this way? Because of the major lie that has permeated the world since 1967:

“From the get-go we didn’t view them as Israelis. We coveted their land. We did not covet them,” Danny Seidemann, one of the nation’s top experts on Jerusalem, told me a few months ago. “And they didn’t view themselves as Israeli. Everything derives from that.”

It was a historic victory for Israel, absolutely. It was also a disaster for another people.

At the time, the Arabs in Judea and Samaria weren't considered "Palestinians." They were Jordanians. They expressed loyalty to Jordan, they were Jordanian citizens, and the word "Palestinians" was hardly ever used to refer to them; at best they were "Palestinian Arabs," even in the Fatah 1964 charter.

Their recent transformation into a people - and I agree they are a people today - was a political decision by the Arab leadership to keep them stateless and miserable. 

The entire reason the Palestinian people exist today is to destroy Israel. 

This is the fundamental truth that too few dare to mention. It seems cruel. And it is. But the cruelty is from the Arab world and Palestinian leaders, their cynical and systematic use of human lives as cannon and propaganda fodder against Israel, within and without the territories.

Every single political or military move by the Arab world and the Palestinian leadership vis a vis the Palestinian Arabs is to ultimately destroy Israel. Some are meant to do it sooner and some to do it in stages, but this is the one consistent fact that illuminates the otherwise nonsensical history of the past fifty and 69 years.

Why did Jordan choose to turn millions of people stateless in 1988? Why did Arafat sign the Oslo Accords and claim to renounce terror? Why has the Arab world refused to allow Palestinians, and only Palestinians, to become citizens? Why did the Palestinians reject statehood in 2000 and 2001 and start a terror war instead? Why do they spend so much time on symbolic victories at the UN rather than doing anything to actually help their people? Why do Palestinian leaders refuse to accept European initiatives for grassroots peace initiatives like youth soccer games between them and Israeli kids? Why haven't there been any significant new universities or hospitals built under PA rule despite huge monetary support from the West? Why are there still "refugee" camps in areas under Palestinian control? Why does UNRWA still exist? Why do Palestinians insist that Jerusalem, a city that was largely ignored under a thousand years of Muslim rule,  must be their capital?

Surveys that bother to ask the proper questions uncover the answers: the "Palestinian state" that the world thinks the Palestinians desire is only meant as a stage to destroy Israel, and Palestinians themselves admit it. This is why the "right to return" is still left as an open issue outside of statehood. This is why Hamas "accepts" a state in the territories. This is why there is such resistance to compromise in any negotiations - because compromise means that the claims must end, while waiting for the world to provide 100% of Phase 1 means that there will be a Phase 2.

The sad fact is that every Palestinian with false "refugee" status, within and without the territories, is a pawn. This was recognized since the 1950s but the desire to eventually destroy Israel is what keeps this issue alive today, not "justice." What kind of justice is it to artificially keep people in misery and to pretend that it is being done for their own good?

50 years of propaganda and lies have had a huge effect. The end of Elie Wiesel's essay is now depressing, because the antisemites of the world have managed to spread their propaganda so thoroughly that it sounds like it was written in a different era:

Do you remember how thousands of Jewish youth besieged the Israeli Consulates, pleading to be sent as volunteers to Israel? Do you recall the mass demonstrations in the streets? And the countless Jews, including the poorest of the poor, donating their meager savings to the pushkes [charity boxes] of the United Jewish Appeal?

This new Jewish awakening is part of that miracle, a part of the Jewish victory. Those who thought Jews were frightened by huge armies were mistaken, and those who thought you could separate the Jewish state from the Jewish people around the world clearly underestimated us.

Unfortunately, over fifty years, they have to an extent succeeded, as too many Jews have drunk the Palestinian State Kool-Aid and regard Israel as not a liberal bastion trying to protect the Jewish state in the Jewish ancestral homeland but as a cruel colonial occupier of "Palestinian land" - a phrase that no one ever uttered in 1967.

If Palestinians wanted a state and peace, they would have a state and peace. It is their desire to use such a state as a launching pad to destroy Israel that has left them stateless.

That is the only thread of consistency to explain the entire past fifty years of propaganda, lies, false "moderation" and terror.

Elder of Ziyon: Gazans burn, hang, and beat Abbas in effigy Unity is just around the corner.

UC-Berkeley: Promoting Jew-hatred and Terrorism “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada.”

Editor’s note: The University of California-Berkeley is the latest school to be named to the Freedom Center’s report on the “Top Ten College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.” It joins the campuses of Brooklyn College (CUNY), Tufts University, Brandeis University, UCLA, and Vassar College on the list. These campuses provide financial and institutional support to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech exposing the truth about Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States.

The Berkeley administration has shown great hostility to speech critical of Hamas and SJP. When the Freedom Center previously placed posters on the Berkeley campus exposing the links between Hamas and SJP, Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman labeled them “a tactic of harassment and intimidation.” Last night, the Freedom Center again placed posters critical of Hamas and SJP on the Berkeley campus. These posters disrupt the anti-Israel narrative that dominates on campus and serve as a challenge to the Berkeley administration to uphold its constitutional obligation to honor the First Amendment on campus.

 University of California-Berkeley: Nils Gilman, Associate Chancellor

The University of California-Berkeley has a well-deserved reputation for stigmatizing ideas which don’t fit the extreme left-wing, anti-Israel campus culture. Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman has epitomized this double-standard by failing to condemn outright calls for terrorism and genocide against the Jews from campus anti-Israel groups while denouncing posters putting forth factual information about Students for Justice in Palestine and its links to Hamas.

In a letter sent to the entire campus community in April 2016, Gilman denounced anti-SJP posters hung on campus by the David Horowitz Freedom Center as “a tactic of harassment and intimidation.” He claimed that UC Berkeley “remains committed to combating all forms of bias and discrimination” and asked the campus community to “use this opportunity to reinforce our values as a campus, and to report any further incidents”—in other words, urging Berkeley’s students and faculty to report any speech that challenges the leftist thought control enforced at Berkeley.

 When the Freedom Center again hung posters exposing the truth about SJP at Berkeley in October of 2016, Gilman issued another letter stating that the language in the posters “violates our Principles of Community” and ordered them to be taken down.

The UC-Berkeley Principles of Community which he references state, in part, “We affirm the dignity of all individuals and strive to uphold a just community in which discrimination and hate are not tolerated” and “We are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities.”

But by failing to uphold free speech and intellectual diversity, Gilman’s comments in his letters to the Berkeley community violate these Principles. They also degrade the spirit of open discourse and the exploration of all sides of crucial issues which lie at the heart of the mission of the modern liberal arts university.

The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has not faced similar sanctions despite years of rallies and propaganda displays that directly threaten Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus.

In October 2015, Berkeley’s SJP chapter held a rally to support the “International Day of Action” for Palestine and the BDS movement against Israel at Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza. The Muslim Students Association co-sponsored the event. Speakers and participants chanted pro-terrorist slogans including “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (The Intifada is the Arabic name for suicide attacks on Jews, and “from the river to the sea” means the obliteration of the Jewish state and its replacement by an Islamic totalitarian regime identical to the one that now exists in Gaza.)

In March 2016, Berkeley SJP held a “Die-in, March, and Speakout for Palestine.” The rally included the display of a large mock “apartheid wall” which featured anti-Israel slogans and pro-terrorist propaganda. One panel of the “apartheid wall” depicted all of Israel replaced with a Palestinian flag, a visual expression of SJP’s calls for the obliteration of the Jewish State.

Such displays of brutal Hamas propaganda—like the hypocrisy of the school’s administrators— are commonplace on the Berkeley campus. Students for Justice in Palestine remains a student organization in good standing while Chancellor Gilman spends his energies condemning one of the only forms of campus speech to offer a different—and more accurate—account of SJP’s aims and alliances.  For this reason, Chancellor Nils Gilman and Berkeley deserve their spot on the list of the university administrations “most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.”

PMW: Fatah: Paying terrorists promotes peace

Fatah: Paying terrorists promotes peace

 

• Fatah: "If we do not do this [pay salaries to prisoners], what will be their fate? They are liable to turn to ISIS... [We] say to the donor states [whose money goes to terrorists] that your donations help the PA bring peace to the Middle East."

• "There is a drop in support and funding [of 70%] from all [countries]... [Donor countries are told]: Why are you providing aid to those [the PA] who are paying the prisoners and the Martyrs' (Shahids') families?"

Click to view on site

by Itamar Marcus

 

As PA leader Mahmoud Abbas prepares to meet US President Trump today, many are hoping that Trump will condition US aid to the Palestinian Authority on the cessation of the PA payments to terrorists and their families.

 

Clearly concerned about this, PA leaders have published many statements this month defending their practice of financially rewarding terror. In a strange twist of logic, Fatah is now arguing that donor countries should welcome the PA's paying salaries to terrorists with their money, since this practice promotes peace by keeping the Palestinian terrorists from joining "ISIS or any other extremist party... [We] say to the donor states [whose money goes to terrorists] that your donations help the PA bring peace to the Middle East."

In a recent statement, senior Fatah leader Rawhi Fattouh complained that the PA has lost significant income from donor countries because of international anger over the PA payments to terrorists. Palestinian Media Watch first exposed this issue in 2011, triggering calls in many donor countries to cut funding to the PA. PMW's April 2016 report entitled The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud sparked even greater international outrage, and by now the PA has lost hundreds of millions of dollars of donor funding:

 

"There is a drop in support and funding from all [countries]... the pressures exerted on the decision makers in these countries by supporters of Israel and [Israeli] lobbies with various names. For example, they tell them: Why are you providing aid to those who are paying the prisoners and the Martyrs' (Shahids') families?"

[Rawhi Fattouh, Fatah Central Committee member

and Fatah Commissioner of International Relations;

 Falestinona, the website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, April 5, 2017]

 

The PA Minister of Finance similarly announced that since 2011 (the year that PMW first exposed the PA's practice of paying salaries to terrorists), foreign aid has dropped 70%:

 

"PA Minister of Finance Shukri Bishara announced that the foreign aid to the PA coffers has decreased by about 70% in the last five years."

[Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 8, 2016]

 

Now, Fatah Central Committee member and Fatah Commissioner of International Relations Rawhi Fattouh has written a long detailed PA defense of salaries to terrorists, with arguments based on lies.

 

Lie # 1: The prisoners who receive salaries are innocent civilians who were "living securely in their homes"

Rawhi Fattouh: "Most of the prisoners that Israel arrests are taken while living securely in their homes; in other words, they did not carry out any military activity or self-sacrificing activity (i.e., terror attack)."

 

This of course is a total lie by the Fatah leader. The overwhelming majority of security prisoners receiving PA monthly salaries were arrested, tried and convicted for direct involvement in terror activities or planning terror activities. For example, Abdullah Barghouti, who built the bombs for suicide bombers that murdered 67 Israelis, is in an Israeli prison and has already received hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary payments.

 

Lie # 2: The "Martyrs" whose families receive monthly PA allowances were likewise civilians 

Rawhi Fattouh: "The PA cannot shake off the Palestinian civilians. The wars that Israel waged against the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012, and 2014 left many victims among the families of the civilians, and they were not fighters or military personnel. They were living securely in their homes when they fell victim to Israel's crimes, and they left families behind. Are we allowed to shake off these families?"

 

This is likewise lie by the Fatah leader, with a small grain of truth. Whereas the PA pays monthly allowances to a relatively small number of families of civilians who were killed when Israel fought terrorists, the overwhelming majority of the 35,000 families of "Martyrs" are families of terrorists including the families of murderers.

 

Furthermore, the families of civilians who died in the Gaza war in 2014 have not received payments from the Palestinian Authority. According to all PA sources, the PA has not yet given payments to any of the families of "Martyrs" from the 2014 war, despite their protests, although the PA has stated its intention to begin these payments at an unknown future date.

 

"The issue of the families of the Martyrs (Shahids) of the 2014 [Gaza] War, is on the list of priorities of the committee during its upcoming meeting... 1,943 families of Martyrs are expecting the end of their suffering through the payment of the allowances to the Martyrs' [families], and noted that the sit-in strike tent opposite the Families of the Martyrs Institution building will remain until this issue ends completely."

[Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, Mar. 1, 2017]

 

Lie #3: Donor money going to terrorists promotes peace

 

As cited above, the Fatah leader's final argument was that by financially rewarding terrorists, the donor countries are actually promoting peace because they are preventing Palestinian terrorists from becoming ISIS terrorists:

Rawhi Fattouh: "If we do not do this [pay salaries to prisoners], what will be their fate? They are liable to turn to ISIS or any other extremist party... Therefore, we reject the statements of those who request that we act differently, and say to the donor states that your donations help the PA bring peace to the Middle East, and if you shake off this role you must bear the consequences."

The claim that prisoners receive in total $150 million in salaries is in order to keep them moderate is laughable. Terrorist prisoners receive this money in "appreciation" for their actions, and this has been stated numerous times by PA leaders. One example:

Issa Karake, then PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake: 

"The Europeans want their money that comes to us to remain clean -- not to go to families of those they claim to be terrorists. [They] need to renounce this occupation mentality. These [prisoners] are heroes, fedayyeen (self-sacrificing fighters), and fighters who fought so that we could live in dignity... These heroes, whom you are applauding, must live in dignity, so that we will continue to hold our heads high. We appreciate the people of the revolution and are proud of them."

[Official Palestine Live TV, Nov. 4, 2013]

Click to view

The PA's latest lies to support its practice of rewarding terror make a mockery of international donors. It is time to hold the PA fully accountable.

The following is a longer excerpt of Fatah Central Committee member and Fatah Commissioner of International Relations Rawhi Fattouh's defense of PA salaries to terrorists and their families:

"[Fatah Central Committee member and Fatah Commissioner of International Relations Rawhi Fattouh said:] There is a drop in support and funding from all [countries], even in the Arab arena, and this withdrawal stems from a number of factors. The first is the freezing of the peace process due to the Israeli steps, and particularly the expansion of the settlements. This is in addition to the pressures exerted on the decision makers in these countries by supporters of Israel and [Israeli] lobbies with various names. For example, they tell them: Why are you providing aid to those who are paying the prisoners and the Martyrs' (Shahids') families? In other words, the PLO and the PA - even though this is a natural thing, as the PA cannot shake off the Palestinian civilians. The wars that Israel waged against the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012, and 2014 left many victims among the families of the civilians, and they were not fighters or military personnel. They were living securely in their homes when they fell victim to Israel's crimes, and they left families behind. Are we allowed to shake off these families? The international community held a conference at Sharm el-Sheikh on rebuilding the Gaza Strip, which was destroyed by Israel. Just as you restore a house that was destroyed, you also need to pay the family of the Martyr who was killed unjustly by the Israeli Air Force. Likewise, most of the prisoners that Israel arrests are taken while living securely in their homes; in other words, they did not carry out any military activity or self-sacrificing activity (i.e., terror attack). The number of Palestinians in the Israeli prisons is over 7,000, and we provide material aid to their families because that is our obligation, and if we do not do this, what will be their fate? They are liable to turn to ISIS or any other extremist party. This emphasizes the significance of the inclusion we are providing, not only in the framework of the PA but also in the framework of the Fatah Movement and the PLO since their establishment. Therefore, we reject the statements of those who request that we act differently, and say to the donor states that your donations help the PA bring peace to the Middle East, and if you shake off this role you must bear the consequences."

[Falestinona, the website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, April 5, 2017]

Rabbi Meir Kahane interviewed on CNN in 1983

BLOOMBERG: Why Israel Got Into a Dust-Up With Germany, By Daniel Gordis

Last Monday was Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel. It is a quiet, painful, introspective day, on which even highway traffic comes to a complete halt for two minutes. In his address opening the commemoration, a somewhat belligerent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu berated Europe for not doing enough to stem anti-Semitism. Then the next day, in an apparent breach of diplomatic protocol, Netanyahu snubbed Germany’s foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, by canceling a scheduled meeting. What for? The German envoy had ignored Netanyahu’s demand that he cancel a meeting with Break the Silence, a group deeply critical of the Israeli army’s conduct in Palestinian territories.

Many people wondered why the prime minster chose to pick this fight with Germany. To be sure, his cabinet supported his decision, and he knew that he would earn points with his right flank, on which the future of his government depends. Breaking the Silence, an Israeli grass-roots organization, collects testimonies from soldiers about their military service, mostly in the territories, focusing particularly on alleged abuses by soldiers. The group is seen by many as irresponsible and treasonous. Many of the testimonies it publishes are uncorroborated; some critics say they are false. And because most of Breaking the Silence’s work is done outside Israel, they are seen as trying to sully the Israel Defense Forces in international settings, contributing to the possibility that Israeli soldiers could eventually be charged in the International Court of Justice. Particularly galling to Netanyahu is that most of the group’s funding comes from Europe, which he considers fundamentally hostile to Israel.

Michael Oren, a member of Knesset who was formerly Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., articulated Netanyahu’s position better than even the prime minister: “It’s unacceptable for European leaders to come here to help those who degrade our soldiers as war criminals, and that’s what Breaking the Silence does,” said Oren. Even some Europeans are now questioning the propriety of their support. In 2015, 10 members of the Swiss Parliament chastised their government for funding the group. “Disinformation and the political ideology of hatred are being directed against the Jewish state,” they said, adding with irony that “it is shameful that Switzerland, on whose soil the nucleus of peaceful political Zionism developed in Basel, is participating in such activities.”

Netanyahu’s snub of the German envoy, therefore, was a safe domestic bet. But was there any diplomatic gain to be had? While Gabriel insisted that the episode would not harm Germany’s “special relationship with Israel,” Chancellor Angela Merkel hinted that matters were a bit more complex than that. “The chancellor finds it regrettable that a meeting” did not take place, her spokesman, said. “It should not be problematic for foreign visitors to meet with critical representatives of civil society.”

That statement, while an oversimplification, may have been key to Netanyahu’s rage. Gabriel defended his position by saying, “You never get the full picture of any state in the world if you just meet with figures in government ministries,” but even Ha’aretz, Israel’s left-leaning daily, which rarely misses an opportunity to attack the prime minister, noted that foreign ministers generally do not meet with representative of NGOs in democratic countries. Was the visit an inadvertent indication that Israel is not a functioning democracy?

Netanyahu obviously values Israel’s relationship with Germany, which is Israel’s largest trading partner in Europe, and with which Israel enjoys significant military cooperation. But the prime minister has decided not to ignore what he sees as baseless attacks on Israel or Jews. When Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom accused Israel of extrajudicial killings of Palestinians in 2015, he called her remarks “outrageous, immoral, unjust and just wrong.” He then added “stupid.” When French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said recently that France was not responsible for the killing of Jews under Nazi rule, Netanyahu’s government minced no words and described her comments as “contradicting historical truth.” (Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Marine Le Pen’s just announced pick for prime minister, is a harsh critic of Israel who has compared Netanyahu to Hamas.) When U.S. President Donald Trump recently condemned anti-Semitism, Netanyahu used Trump’s remarks as an opportunity to challenge Europe to do the same.

It is in that context that Netanyahu’s snub must be seen. The dust-up with Germany was surely not his most elegant moment. Yet Gabriel made a series of probably unintentional gaffes. Around Holocaust Memorial Day, Israelis’ sensitivities about Germany are at their height. So is their fear of weakness. In his speech that day, Netanyahu reminded his country, “The simple truth is that in our world, the existence of the weak is in doubt. … The strong survive, the weak are erased.”

Most Israelis are keenly aware that without the IDF, they would not survive. Of all weeks of the year, this was certainly not the moment for a German to come to Israel to meet with an organization that most Israelis believe wants to make Jews vulnerable once again.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Daniel Gordis at danielgordis@outlook.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stacey Shick at sshick@bloomberg.net

Rabbi Meir Kahane's last speech on the night of his assassination by Al Qaeda Muslim terrorists