08-Jul-19: The BBC and Pay to Slay

Frimet and Arnold Roth with BBC's Yolande Knell

After several years of being below the media radar, we appeared on BBC News last week.

Its Middle East correspondent, Yolande Knell, prepared a report that examined how Israelis - in this case, the two of us (Frimet and Arnold Roth) view the Palestinian Authority's relentless program of incentive payments to imprisoned terrorists and to the families left behind by dead Palestinian Arab terrorists.

Being the BBC, the report then focused on how the same appalling payments are viewed within Palestinian Arab society. Or at least among that segment which benefits in a personal sense from those payments.

Note also - again, this being the BBC - that the word "terrorist" - is not mentioned once.

BBC_World_News-2019-06-28_12-14-16 from BBC Middle East on Vimeo.

There's a scene in this which shows a rent-a-crowd assembly of Palestinian Arabs, mostly women, holding up placards with the faces of 'prisoners' while telling the interviewer "we're all in  prison". One of those faces, unmentioned, belongs to a convicted killer for whom we have especially low regard. Read about him here: "18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?"

A related story by Ms Knell went to air on BBC radio some days earlier. We are heard in that too, but it has somewhat different content compared with the video. Click to hear it now.

We don't claim to be dispassionate observers. The Hamas savages responsible for executing the Sbarro pizzeria massacre in which our daughter Malki and fifteen other innocents were murdered in 2001 have collectively pulled in more than a million dollars in the years since their act of barbarism turned so many lives upside down. We provide the details here: "24-Aug-18: What aid funds handed to the Abbas regime ($1 million and growing) have done for savages who kill Jews".

The United States and the European Union are the major sources of the foreign aid cash that makes those Abbas payments possible. But Norway is prominent in the list as well as are the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.

We have posted a stream of background pieces about their culpability and lack of good sense. For instance (and these are from four months of 2016 alone) -

• 27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad 
• 27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in 
• 28-Mar-16: Is it time yet for UK's foreign aid office to come clean on their part in funding Palestinian Arab terror?
• 31-Mar-16: More on UK funding of Abbas' Reward for Terror scheme
• 02-May-16: Norway's polite and cautious funding of Palestinian Arab terror
• 04-May-16: The PA's Rewards for Terror scheme: Abbas, fobbing off Norwegian criticism, incriminates self
• 13-May-16: Ongoing gullibility: UK foreign aid and the Palestinian "Rewards for Terror" scheme 
• 25-May-16: Wall-to-wall agreement at last: The Pal Arab kleptocrats and the devastation they wreak
• 14-Jun-16: In the UK, law-makers (some) worry over the bloodshed funded by their taxpayers

As we said, there are many others. Click on "Rewards for Terror" to see dozens more.

(Illness is the main reason why our posts have been so few these past two months. Hopefully, that's behind us now.)

23-Dec-18: In the UK, what we used to know about airport safety suddenly looks so 1990s

Massive disruption at Gatwick this week [Image Source]

As the UK deals with the strange and unsettling experience of one of its most strategically important airports being left in a state of total paralysis as the holiday travel season reaches its peak, thoughtful Brits will be contemplating some even fresher - and certainly no less disturbing - news.

Gatwick Airport, the UK's second-busiest, was the scene of a still-perplexing series of massive anxiety attacks this week:

After rogue drones forced it to close for 32 hours this week, the airport, one of Europe’s busiest, reopened Friday morning and had a nearly 12-hour uninterrupted run of takeoffs and landings. Then came an unconfirmed drone sighting, forcing the airport to close yet again, although briefly, leaving planes circling above and travelers fuming in the terminals. And by the time flights resumed Friday night, many questions remained: What was behind the incursions? Why couldn’t they be stopped more quickly? And is Britain doing enough to keep the devices away from airports and other sensitive spots? Early Saturday, the police in Sussex announced that they had arrested a man and a woman on suspicion on the “criminal use” of the drones... ["Two Arrests, and Many Questions, as Gatwick Reopens After Drone Threat", New York Times, December 21, 2018]

The answers, when they come, are unlikely to calm the fears of rational Brits. It's clear enough that the huge disruption at Gatwick, whatever its actual details (which at this stage are sketchy) can be reproduced and exacerbated at will by any trouble-minded copy-cat; sustainable protective and defensive measures are almost certainly on the agenda of the authorities but in the nature of things, are unlikely to be implemented as rapidly as they are needed.

But then what if people with serious and deadly malice on their minds, let's say, read the news reports and decide to test those not-yet-in-place defences? And not necessarily in the UK, or in the UK only, but elsewhere?

The issue is far from speculative and not at all fanciful. Underscoring the potential for serious trouble, a Times of London report under the byline of its political editor, Tim Shipman, this morning makes that painfully clear. 

Highlights to mull:

• The UK's Minister of State for Security and Economic Crime Ben Wallace met with senior UK airport managers a week ago, prior to the Gatwick chaos, in order to to discuss what's now known about threats to their facilities including the “insider threat” of jihadist sleeper agents working undercover at airports.
• "Al-Qaeda is resurgent and seeking to carry out new terrorist atrocities against airliners and airports, [he] warned last night. The terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks in 2001 poses a growing threat that is keeping ministers “awake at night”, he told The Sunday Times... They have reorganised. They are pushing more and more plots towards Europe and have become familiar with new methods and still aspire to aviation attacks.”
• "...The decline of Isis meant al-Qaeda would seek to reassert itself as the world’s leading terror group and an aviation spectacular would be its calling card.... al-Qaeda is developing technology to bring down passenger jets using miniaturised bombs and drones packed with explosives." 
• "Security sources say sketches of drones designed to deliver bombs were discovered during a recent terrorist investigation in the UK. British businesses have also been warned that Islamist terrorists are seeking to mount attacks using a drone armed with explosives or chemicals."
• "British intelligence chiefs are concerned that Donald Trump’s decision last week to withdraw US troops from Syria will create a new safe haven for Islamists to launch attacks on the West. The UK found out about his decision only when he tweeted it on Wednesday."
• Especially depressing is his advice about how useful current, and very intrusive, security arrangements directed at ordinary travelers are. "Wallace said improvements in airport security meant terrorists were less likely to smuggle explosive through terminal security systems: “They have explored other ways of getting bombs on planes. We’ve talked publicly about an insider threat issue. If you can’t get in the front door, you’re going to try to get in the back door.”" ["Al-Qaeda terror group returns to target airliners and airports", Times of London, December 23, 2018]

Meanwhile, UK travelers are still absorbing the scale of the impact on their lives from what, at least at this moment, looks like a criminal offence at worst with no immediate connection to terrorism:

The drone sightings had forced the cancellation or diversion of more than 1,000 flights over three days, affecting some 140,000 people, officials said. On Saturday, Gatwick warned passengers to expect still more delays and cancellations and to check their flight status before going to the airport... [British] officials identified the two [suspects] as Paul Gait, 47, and his wife Elaine Kirk, 54... from Crawley, a town just south of the airport. The couple are suspected of disrupting civil aviation services and endangering people or operations — offenses that carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, according to the police. They have not been formally charged and are still in custody, but the police did not release further details. The incident exposed the vulnerabilities of the airport to outside interference and drew attention to the limitations of security officials responding to such a threat at a peak travel time... ["Married Couple Arrested Over Drone Incursions at Gatwick Airport", New York Times, December 22, 2018]

It's evident that whatever the solution, technology will be part, but only part, of fighting back. We noticed some reporting in a Russian source about the things technology can potentially do in ameliorating the drome threat:

UK authorities could use an Israeli-made "Drone Dome" system that the British army acquired in August 2018 to take down the drones, which had been disrupting Gatwick Airport's operations for the last two days. The equipment, seen on the rooftop of a building near the airport and operated by the UK police looks just like the "Drone Dome" components in the photos, published in 2016 by several media platforms. The DJI system is capable of not just detecting drones and hijacking their controls, but also of tracking down the person, who controlled it. Its major downside is that it is not compatible with all drones. On the other hand, "Drone Dome" can take down any drone, by either hacking and landing it or by shooting it down with powerful laser. ["What is 'Drone Dome' That UK Could Have Used to Take Down Gatwick UAV", Sputnik News, December 22, 2018]

What the Russian report calls "Drone Dome", a system developed by two of Israel's major defense firms Rafael and RADA, is described in this recent Times of Israel report: "UK army said to use Israeli-made system to end drone chaos at London airport".

UPDATE Sunday December 23, 2018 at 2:30 pm: So who is actually behind the drone assault (if that's what it was) on Gatwick? At this point, and despite the certainty generated by a proliferation of news reports referring to a specific couple, it seems ["Gatwick drones pair 'no longer suspects'", BBC, this afternoon] no one actually knows:

A man and woman arrested in connection with drone sightings that grounded flights at Gatwick Airport have been released without charge. The 47-year-old man and 54-year-old woman, from Crawley, West Sussex, were arrested on Friday night on suspicion of "the criminal use of drones"... Sussex Police said the pair were no longer suspects. Det Ch Supt Jason Tingley said: "Both people have fully co-operated with our inquiries and I am satisfied that they are no longer suspects in the drone incidents at Gatwick... "Our inquiry continues at a pace to locate those responsible for the drone incursions, and we continue to actively follow lines of investigation."

17-Jul-18: Prayers for the dead, prayers for the living

There's going to be a public discussion this evening in London about the events we mention below. What we write in this blog post will, we hope, reach the people gathered at JW3 and be understood as a constructive contribution to a fraught but important dialogue:

Devastation at Sbarro pizzeria, Jerusalem, August 9, 2001

We’re living in morally confused times.

The handful of young British Jews, a few dozen according to reports, who assembled in Parliament Square in mid-May and solemnly said Kaddish for 62 dead Palestinian Arab Gazans, surely didn’t see themselves as compromising any principles or betraying any values.

They likely felt they were on moral high ground by being in solidarity with unfortunate, peaceful, unarmed, aggrieved protesters who clashed with Israeli army bullets on Gaza’s side of the Hamas/Israel border.

Our fifteen year old daughter Malki was murdered in Jerusalem by a woman foot soldier in the Hamas fighting forces. This happened in the Battle of Sbarro Pizzeria. That female terrorist saw herself as unarmed too - as a protestor, as aggrieved.

This she expressed by planting a bomb – a walking, breathing human bomb – in the pizza place.

After the massacre was done, she said she chose that site because at two in the afternoon it attracted children. She needed dead children. Lots of dead Jewish children.

We now know that just a few hours before the London Kaddish, a Hamas insider owned up to how at least 50 of the 62 deceased “protestors” were in reality Hamas fighters. Another Gazan terror group immediately piped up and claimed several more of the dead as their fighters. Most, maybe all, of the Gazans who passed on in that ‘demo’ were there to fight. And - at almost any price - to bring extreme harm to Israelis.

Hamas’s Salah Bardawil acknowledges 50 Hamas fatalities among the
62 killed on Israel-Gaza border, May 16, 2018 (Screenshot) [Source: MEMRI]

It’s unfair to blame the Kaddish-sayers for not knowing the truth about them - those rioting, murder-minded Gazan jihadists. The news professionals at the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian evidently didn’t know either. Some still don’t know it even now.

But we can ask those youngsters, some of whom had had some instruction in the basics of Judaism, if they know what Kaddish means. 

Beyond the fact that it’s said for the dead, do they recognize these words?

May there be abundant peace from heaven. And life for us and for all Israel. And say, Amen. May the Maker of peace in His celestial heights make peace for us and for all Israel and say, Amen.

Kaddish doesn’t mention the dead at all – not even once. It’s a central Jewish prayer for goodness. An expression of gratitude for Heaven’s power to bring peace and beneficence into our lives and into the world.

At the heart of the Kaddish is something that has been at the top of my mind constantly since Malki’s life was stolen from us. It’s not peace. Heaven knows, we haven’t had much of that.

No. It’s the importance of us, of our side: Hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu – May He make peace for us. 

Losing a child to triumphant, barbarous murder is an experience – I can tell you from first-hand knowledge – that fiercely concentrates a person’s mind. It forces you to look very closely at what the enemy wants. And then to decide what our side wants. 

I don’t believe we Jews are better than other people. I don’t suggest for a moment that peace is something only we, our side, ought to have. On the contrary.

Malki Z"L, on her way to

a Passover hike when she was 14

Some of us knew before the Hamas thug admitted it that the Gaza mob was there at the fence to do as much harm to us as humanly possible. Those who didn’t know it then must surely know it now, even as the BBC and its ilk conceal this reality. 

The Gazan side want to win, to triumph. And to destroy us. Peace isn’t on their minds at all.

The moral confusion I mentioned just now is what causes some young Jews to lose their sense of us. Feeling part of us doesn’t, mustn’t, mean wishing bad to the other side. But it does mean understanding that if we want good – for us and also for them – we have to protect our own side first: our own homes, our own children, our own lives.

And be vigilant because we face a real, shooting, incinerating, bombing foe who means to wreak the greatest possible harm on us.

If the shocking display of Jews saying Kaddish was meant in the same way we say it for our deceased grandparents and family members, then it signifies a failure by all of us in preparing young Jews for a life that sadly includes unwanted confrontation with an unfathomable evil that targets us – all of us.

But if it was intended as a cry for more peace, then I wish those young people knew, and maybe they do, that on the Israeli side, the passion for peace is real and easy to find.

If we want a passion for peace to take root among the Gazans, we owe it to ourselves to first acknowledge that calls for peace – as opposed to calls for victory, self-sacrifice and triumph – have completely gone from Gaza and not only from Gaza. And for now at least, they don't seem to be coming back soon.

That’s something worth praying for.


Postscript: The families of Malki Roth הי"ד and Michal Raziel  הי"ד invite friends of the two girls, murdered together in the Sbarro massacre on the 20th day of Av, seventeen years ago, to pray with us at their gravesides in Jerusalem's Har Tamir cemetery (part of the Har Menuchot complex) on Wednesday August 1, 2018 starting at 5:30 pm. We will be glad to provide more specific details [click].

09-Jan-18: Money, deception and terror: Israel is taking some concrete steps

Image Source: "The Palestinian Dream"

Over at the Jerusalem Post this afternoon, there's an important summary of information placed before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this afternoon ["Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017", Lahav Harkov, January 9, 2018].

If you're not already familiar with them, the data are simply eye-popping. In a society where the average income is about US$580 per month, the PA regime headed by Mahmoud Abbas gives that sort of money to anyone sentenced by the Israeli court system to three to five years in prison.

But since serious terrorist offences often come with sentences stiffer than 3-5, it's worth understanding what those offenders get paid by their perennially-broke government and what other benefits they can expect to get.

• A terrorist sentenced to 20 years or more in prison is paid five times the average salary. It starts to flow while he or she is still in prison. And it then keeps coming - for the rest of the recipient's life. Does anyone think there might be some subtle message here about where the PA and Abbas are placing the emphasis in the vision they offer their citizens?
• Then the fine print: If the imprisoned terrorist holds Israeli citizenship (there were about 1.8 million such Arabs in 2017 according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, meaning they represent 20.8% of Israel's total population), then they qualify for a US$145 bonus.
• The sum paid each month by the PA for what the article calls "the most severe crimes" exceeds US$2,900 which is larger than the average Israeli income (currently about US$2,700 per month according to the article and about US$2,955 according to another source). 
• Being married gets a terrorist a further increment, and there are add-ons for each child parented by the convicted terrorist.
• There are also specific pay increases for (a) being married and (b) each child a terrorist parents.
• If and when the terrorist beneficiary of all this largess gets out of prison, the PA law entitles him or her to a prestigious civil service post in its government

And as we observed not long ago ["25-Jul-17: The scale of the PA's terror-funding scheme keeps growing"], it's all getting worse, not better. 

At various times, advocates for the Palestinian Arabs contend that this is nothing more than social welfare and the Israelis are making a big deal out of nothing. But that's not so: the fact that you get more money according to the severity of the crime and/or the length of the sentence means that the payments are there to encourage serious crime - the more serious the better. And as Palestinian Media Watch has pointed out, the PA defines the entitlement to these payments in terms that ensure PA salaries do not go to Palestinian Arabs convicted of crimes such as theft - who may very well be social welfare cases - but do go to terrorist murderers in the service of Hamas and Fatah. Further elaboration is really not needed: anyone taking a dispassionate look at the realities knows the PA scheme has one clear purpose, and it's not the alleviation of poverty.

From a recent US summary of the scheme's impact:

The PA spent an estimated $300 million last year, roughly seven percent of its total budget, on these payments to more than 30,000 terrorists and their families. It does so at the direct expense of helping provide a better future for its own citizens, and despite its heavy dependence on foreign aid for income. Much of that aid comes from the United States - an average of $335 million annually over the last five years. The lion’s share, roughly $280 million per year in that span, is economic assistance to cover the PA’s significant debts, freeing up funds for their “pay-to-slay” system. The issue has not gone unnoticed by Congress. ["Passing the Taylor Force Act will mark a vital step in the War on Terror", TheHill.com, November 15, 2017]

We also noticed. See "08-Jul-16: Violence, terror, cash and the PA Rewards for Terror Scheme: Congress takes a look". And before that, we had posted dozens of reports and analyses [click here for more of them.)

The report delivered today to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, is part of the current efforts to create a new law that will deduct the total of what the PA pays its terrorists and their families from the taxes Israel collects and until now has handed across to the PA. There's more money at stake there than most people would guess. A July 2016 Reuters report estimated the scale of Israel-to-PA transfers at between US$130 and US$155 million per month. Translating this to annual figures, it's something between US$1.5 and US$1.9 billion.

The new Israeli bill, says the Jerusalem Post, "will likely go to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation in three weeks, with a first reading in the Knesset in the ensuing days". It's said to be largely inspired by the Taylor Force Act, a United States law that will stop all US aid to the Palestinian Arabs as long as the PA keeps paying salaries to terrorists and their families. (Our take:
"11-Jul-17: Incitement to terror: Sometimes it really is all about the money") The House of Representatives passed the bill in December 2017. It's now awaiting Senate approval.

The US is of course not the only state giving aid to the Abbas regime. Others include [according to this source] UNRWA and the EU through the European Commission [see "02-Jun-15: The obvious, petty lies that keep European money flowing into the hands of the PA's terrorists"], Japan, Canada, Norway [see "02-May-16: Norway's polite and cautious funding of Palestinian Arab terror"], Germany, Sweden, Spain, France and the United Kingdom [see "14-Jun-16: In the UK, law-makers (some) worry over the bloodshed funded by their taxpayers"].

The deep and corrosive damage on Arab lives and on ours depends on the unquestioning passivity of ordinary tax-payers of (mainly) Europe and North America, leading us to ask some years ago: "20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?" 

It also depends on much less innocent, faceless government bureaucrats who silently and with little-to-no publicity (especially to their own citizens) sign the wire transfers behind closed doors and pay next to no attention to how those funds are spent or what's done with them. Darkness, secrecy and deception [see "6-Oct-06: Crying poor: The terror-laden rise and rise of the Palestinian national payroll and the men who allow it to happen"] have been part of the whole story pretty much from the outset.

19-Sep-17: The UK has more consumers of jihadi web content than anywhere else in Europe

Today's British report, online here

While thoughtful parts of Western society ponder the need to find the right balance between personal security and personal liberty, and how and whether governments should interfere with the flow of information and ideas on the Internet, reality keeps intruding.

Like for instance the attempted bombing of an underground train in London in the last few days ["Bucket Bomb’ Strikes London’s Vulnerable Underground", New York Times, September 15, 2017] and the sheer good luck that explains why it did not end up as a massacre of innocents.

Not so surprisingly, public opinion gets impacted by encounters with the lethal bigotry that forms a core part of such barbaric assaults.

So - a brief update here on one of the rootest of root causes of jihadist terror in Europe and especially the United Kingdom:

Online jihadist propaganda attracts more clicks in the UK than any other country in Europe, a report has found | Britain is the fifth-biggest audience in the world for extremist content after Turkey, the US, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Policy Exchange's study said. The think tank suggested the UK public would support new laws criminalising reading content that glorifies terror. The government has told internet companies like Facebook and Google to do more to to remove jihadist material. Former US military chief General David Petraeus, who wrote a foreword to the report, said efforts to combat online extremism were "inadequate". He said the bombing of a London Tube train last week "merely underscored once again the ever-present nature of this threat." "There is no doubting the urgency of this matter," he said. "The status quo clearly is unacceptable."
...Under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, it is currently an offence to possess information that could assist a would-be terrorist, but not material which glorifies terrorism... [BBC, September 19, 2017]

The Policy Exchange report itself [here], published today, is considerably more revealing than the BBC summary and worth delving into.

More than 130 pages long, it challenges the idea that the impact of ISIS as an online force is in decline. It notes that the "the death of key figures, loss of territory and ongoing fighting" have not prevented its production and dissemination from churning on and influencing the audiences it addresses:

The spate of terrorist attacks in the first half of 2017 confirmed that jihadist radicalisation is a real and present danger to the national security of the UK and its allies... ISIS is producing extremist content online at a consistent rate and this is spread across a vast information ecosystem: it is disseminated to core followers via Telegram, before being pumped out into the mainstream social media space (via Twitter, Facebook and other leading platforms). For this reason, we argue that more must be done to force jihadist content out of the mainstream. It is clear that the status quo is not working; it is time for a new approach... [W]e argue that society as a whole must act to overcome this serious threat to the security, vitality and prosperity of western societies. ["The New Netwar: Countering Extremism Online" (PDF), Policy Exchange, September 19, 2017] 

And this not exactly unrelated news snippet from a July 26, 2017 article in Independent UK:

A record number of anti-Semitic incidents have been recorded in the UK as monitors warn of “unprecedented” reports of attacks, abuse and harassment. The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 80 violent assaults targeting Jews in the first six months of this year, as well as verbal abuse, graffiti, vandalism, hate mail and abuse via social media and the internet. A total of 767 incidents were reported between January and June – a rise of almost a third on the same period in 2016 and the highest since the CST’s records began in 1984... Gideon Falter, chairman of Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said the CST’s report corroborates its own research, indicating that 2017 was “likely to be the worst year on record for anti-Semitic crime” and the fourth record-breaking year in a row. “The reason for this rise appears to be a failure to enforce the law,” he argued. “Over the past several years, anti-Semitic crime has been rising dramatically whilst there have only been a paltry number of prosecutions. This emboldens anti-Semites who increasingly fear no consequences for their actions.”
["Anti-Semitic attacks hit record high in UK amid warnings over rise of 'hatred and anger'", Independent UK, July 26, 2017]

As for current British attitudes towards Jews, a new report on anti-Semitism in the UK

caps the ‘hardcore’ anti-Semite population at five percent [but] detects a further 25 per cent who feel negatively about Jews and hold one or two viewpoints that most Jews would consider anti-Semitic. These include traditional Judeophobic tropes of undue influence, divided loyalty, and ill-gotten wealth... The study, a joint enterprise by the Community Security Trust and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, is an in-depth exploration of anti-Jewish attitudes, the role of animus towards Israel, and the prevalence of prejudice in 2017... It is a sober analysis and the researchers tend towards restraint – sometimes a little too much restraint – in drawing conclusions from their data. It is this very interpretive modesty that makes the findings all the more concerning. The far-right remains the most anti-Semitic demographic but the far-left, by the force of numbers and its new-found influence over British politics, is roughly on an even keel with reactionaries when it comes to hating Jews... ["Britain has an anti-Semitism problem. Here are the numbers that prove it", Stephen Daisley, The Spectator, September 13, 2017]

And finally two related sound-bytes about how Britain's Jews view the political landscape. One:

The vast majority (83%) of British Jews believe the Labour Party is too tolerant of anti-Semitism among its MPs, members and supporters, a poll suggests. This compared with 19% for the Conservatives and 36% for the Liberal Democrats, according to the YouGov survey for Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). [Jewish News UK, August 20, 2017]

and two: how they are translating this into personal life-changing decisions:

Almost one in three British Jews has considered moving abroad in the past two years, a survey [of] nearly 4,000 members of the community during 2016 and 2017 [has found.] One in six British Jews (17%) reported feeling unwelcome in Britain and over a third (37%) said they had felt the need to conceal their Judaism in public... 31% of British Jews had considered moving abroad, a rise from 28% during their last survey two years ago. ["More British Jews considering move abroad as anti-Semitism fears grow - poll", SKY News, August 20, 2017]

27-Aug-17: On British and Belgian streets - terrorist attacks, religious declarations, fast responses

The child is Palestinian Arab, and so is the incitement. But the message
has reached Europe and European targets and it's not directed just at Jews or Israelis

Everyone in this incident is of course innocent until determined by law to be guilty, and there's no terrorism involved until the police say there is, and no one should draw inferences about the role that this or that or any religious doctrine played in the events of this past Friday.

A terror suspect drove at police outside Buckingham Palace and yelled 'Allahu akbar' while reaching for a 4ft sword before he was arrested by three unarmed officers. The 26-year-old from Luton was wrestled to the ground and incapacitated with CS gas by the officers, two of which suffered injuries, at about 8.30 pm... Metropolitan Police said the suspect had been arrested under the Terrorism Act and was currently in custody in a central London police station... As three unarmed PCs exited the van and approached the blue Toyota Prius, the suspect reached for a 4ft sword in the footwell. [Daily Mail, August 26, 2017]

A lone wolf? Of course:

Commander Dean Haydon, the head of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, said: 'I would like to pay tribute to the bravery and professionalism of these officers who quickly brought this incident under control... Officers from the Counter Terrorism Command are now investigating and searches are being carried out in the Luton area today.
'We believe the man was acting alone and we are not looking for other suspects at this stage. 'While we cannot speculate on what the man was intending to do - this will be determined during the course of the investigation - it is only right that we investigate this as a terrorist incident at this time. [Daily Mail, August 26, 2017]

That was then. Today it looks different:

A second man has been arrested over a suspected terrorist attack outside Buckingham Palace, during which police were attacked by a man armed with a sword. A 30-year-old man was apprehended by officers at an address in west London on Sunday morning, Scotland Yard said. Police are carrying out a search in the area...  The second man was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism and was taken into custody. The arrest was carried out by officers from the Met’s counter-terrorism command... Police initially believed the 26-year-old man acted alone and said their investigation would look into the first arrested man’s mental health. Some other incidents thought to have been terror attacks have later turned out to have been driven by mental health problems.["Second man held after sword attack at Buckingham Palace", The Guardian, August 27, 2017]

It's been a busy weekend:

The assault in London came just two hours after a knifeman attacked patrolling soldiers in Brussels in what authorities said was an "attempted terrorist murder". Belgian prosecutors said the attacker yelled "Allahu akbar" when he rushed at the soldiers from behind and struck them with a knife, prompting one of them to open fire. The assailant -- a Belgian national of Somali origin born in 1987 -- was shot and died shortly afterwards in hospital, a prosecutors' statement said. Granted Belgian nationality in 2015 after arriving in the country in 2004, he was not known for any terror-related activities, although he had an assault and battery charge from February on his record, authorities confirmed. Police later raided his home in Bruges, in northwest Belgium. One of the soldiers was slightly hurt in the attack which Brussels Mayor Philippe Close said had been carried out by a "lone individual"... [AFP (France), August 27, 2017]

The Independent UK on Saturday adds that the Brussels stabber

"was in the possession of a firearm replica and two Quran books... The federal prosecutor’s office has handed the investigation to a specialist anti-terrorist judge and the case has been classed as “attempted terrorist murder”.

From Gaza, a religious leader who preaches the kind of attack
Europeans are now experiencing [Image Source]

The same article goes on to speculate on root causes:

Isis has been intensifying calls for terror attacks on the countries bombing it as part of the US-led coalition, issuing detailed advice on carrying out stabbings, vehicle rammings and making explosives.
Officials, including [British] security minister Ben Wallace, have warned that the threat is increasing as Isis loses territory in Iraq and Syria, with the group turning to attacks as a means of maintaining momentum and publicity. “I think the threat is still increasing, partly driven by the fact Isis is collapsing in Syria and people are either unable to get out there to fight for Isis and so they look to do something at home, or also because people have come back and tried to inspire people with their stories and tales of the caliphate,” Mr Wallace said last week, echoing concerns raised by analysts across Europe.
Brussels was the location of the first Isis-linked attack in Europe, where a militant killed four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in May 2014. [Independent UK]

A handful of tentative conclusions.

• Lone wolf attacks, it's increasingly clear, often turn out to be anything but. 
• And attacks of the kind which began with massive incitement among Palestinian Arabs - in their schools, in their mosques and in the chambers of their political leaders - against Jews in Israel over the past 3 years more and more appear to be replicated on the streets of Europe. The range of their targets has greatly widened.
• For Israelis, it's hard not to notice how quick-witted, fast moving security officials on those European streets are being (entirely correctly) praised while the equivalent actions done in Israel by Israeli security officials have come in for withering criticism in previous years... from Europe.

07-Jul-17: Symantec's classification tool now calls our blog a hate site

Silencing unwanted voices in a previous generation [Wikipedia: Nazis burn
books]

[Five updates appear at the foot of this post.]

Elder of Ziyon has just posted an alarming piece [Symantec categorizes numerous pro-Israel blogs as "hate", July 4, 2017] which reports on what appears to be the systematic mis-characterization of certain websites with a pro-Israel orientation as "hate" sites.

This classification means some major Internet Service Providers (who use server-based filtering supplied by Symantec Corporation) will prevent access to those sites, effectively silencing them. The indications till now are that the gag applies principally or only to British ISPs. But it's not hard to see this malicious craziness spreading more widely.

It's a censoring process that has no clear published rules as far as we know. Symantec, the US supplier that provides this service to ISPs, allows for the classification of websites by reference to a long list of categories defined in an on-line document called "URL filtering categories" dated June 8, 2011. You can inspect it online at https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO100317.html But you can't know from there what logic goes into the classification itself.

That Symantec document defines a filtering category called "Hate" as

"Sites that promote hostility against particular individual or group on the basis of race, religion, color, gender, and origin."

If you are defined this way, large numbers of unsuspecting Internet customers of those ISPs will not be able to get access to your site. It's a serious issue.

Yesterday, thanks to a tweet [here] from a British source, we discovered that our blog is now classed by that Symantec filter, and its many ISP and corporate users, as a hate site:

Click for the source tweet (and an archived version)

(We appreciate very much the leg-work and the tip-off which made us aware. His longer analysis is here: http://edgar1981.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/blog-by-parents-of-murdered-israeli.html)

Here's the little we know about Symantec's "classification" service. It's called RuleSpace and in Symantec's market-speak it

incorporates proven and globally respected URL Web categorization databases with real-time analysis to multiple markets. RuleSpace offers a unique combination of database lookups and real-time analysis for accurate categorization of unknown or dynamic web sites, especially useful in dealing with sites containing user generated content. Symantec provides superior service quality with a dedicated engineering and technical support team, powering dozens of 3rd party web filtering solutions, serving more than 350 million end-users worldwide.

Elder of Ziyon mentions several others that have gotten the same treatment: his own Elder of Ziyon site, Israellycool, Israel Matzav and Abu Yehuda. The website of the British gentleman we mentioned above, called Confronting antisemitism and Israel hatred is also ridiculously classed as a hate site.

There are bound to be others.

To be sure, we checked our site's status (using this address: thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.uk, since the problem seems to be focused on the UK) with Symantec's online classifier and confirmed that the report is right: ThisOngoingWar: A Blog is now, in its British address version, indeed classed as a hate site by the Symantec classification commissars:

Screen shot of Symantec's online classification tool [here] and the result we got: "Hate, English"

We clicked the "submit" button to request what Symantec calls a "review" and we're waiting for that dark and unexplained process to run its course.

We plan to dig further to try to understand how easily a malicious individual (a "lone wolf"?) or an organized gang of haters ("cognitive warriors"?) can have voices unfriendly to their viewpoints silenced and essentially removed from public discourse.

From what we see so far, it's chillingly easy.

Is the gagging of our site connected to our recent efforts to have Twitter shut down the account of an undoubted hater/bigot, the murderer of our daughter, as we wrote here ["25-Jun-17: A voice of lethal, bigoted hatred is silenced... for a while"] a few days ago?

We might find out. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 10:45 am July 7, 2017: A few additional insights to share.

1. We Googled for lists of self-avowed hate sites, antisemitic sites and Holocaust-denial sites. (Sadly, they're not hard to find.) We fed those names into the Symantec tool and roughly half of them came up classified as "hate". The other half from Symantec's stand-point are fine. (Interested to know which hate sites we found that Symantec approves? Glad to answer you by email.)
2. Symantec comes up with a "hate" label for the British URL of our blog, meaning thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.uk, every time we checked this morning. However if you enter the same site via its US or Australian or German or any non-UK version of its address (again, the very same site but via a slightly different Blogspot URL), Symantec classifies it as "Dynamic Site" and/or "Blogging, English". If the stakes weren't so high - and they surely are - this would be funny.
3. The only thing for which we express hate in our blog is terrorism and those who do it. So we're not at all interested in a discussion about "well, maybe you really are hateful". We're not and the blog is not. Which leads us to say, with all the respect and understanding we have for complex technological challenges and algorithm-based solutions - after a long career managing serious tech companies on three continents - that if we held stock in Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC), we would certainly be wondering about the quality of its technology and be thinking about calling our broker right about now. 

UPDATE 10:15 am July 11, 2017: With no word of explanation, apology or notification to us of any sort from them, we have just discovered - by going online and once checking once again via Symantec's online classification tool [here] - that the site you are currently reading is now re-classified by Symantec. It's no longer a "hate" site. (Of course, it never was a hate site at any stage.)

Our treatment at the hands of this major public company with a global reputation has been shabby and unacceptable. We intend to learn more about what goes on under their sheets.

UPDATE 10:00 pm July 17, 2017: Not one word from anyone at Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ SYMC) - not before they called us a "hate" site; not during; and not after they removed the classification and disappeared. Does this say something about how their management runs the company? Possibly.

UPDATE 3:30 pm July 30, 2017: No one from Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ SYMC) has bothered to make contact with us since we became aware that they were absurdly branding our blog a "hate" site. They silently removed the gag (being branded a hate site means millions of users cannot access it) with no explanation after receiving numerous complaints from our readers. What sort of process or algorithm or polling or black-magic do they use to come up with their "hate" site calculations? Does it stand the test of being reviewed by intelligent and objective outsiders? It's a tremendous amount of power - the power to silence - for a non-regulated Internet services provider. Perhaps government offices ought to be looking into this.

UPDATE 12 noon August 7, 2017: Not a word from Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ SYMC), though we did get two Tweets from a Norton support account identifying itself as"Steffi", offering to do something incoherent on our behalf. In any event, nothing was done, the Symantec stonewalling continues and the cloud over Symantec's hate-classifying business grows ever darker. We do believe the authorities ought to be looking into the unregulated power this company has to gag voices in the social media with zero explanation and zero transparency. Meanwhile we're pleased to note that the post you are reading at this moment has remained the most read of all our posts for thirty consecutive days. We sincerely hope it continues to hold people's attention.

23-May-17: Condemning terror is so easy to do, even Jordan can do it - and no news reports will criticize them

Jordan's Minister for Media Affairs and Government Spokesperson
Mohammad Momani [Image Source]

We were pretty sure this was going to happen, and it has.

The Jordanian government of King Abdullah II has just issued a condemnation of last night's Manchester Arena massacre, a terror attack that has strong similarities to the one engineered at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 by a Jordanian woman, Ahlam Tamimi.

Tamimi, who has proudly confessed her role as mastermind of the massacre that took the life of our daughter and 14 other people (mostly children), currently lives in total freedom in Jordan's capital, Amman, despite an Interpol arrest warrant and a United States extradition request that calls on Jordan to send her to the US to face charges.

The Jordanians have treated her as a national treasure since she arrived back there (the country where she was born and lived until shortly before she masterminded the Jerusalem atrocity) in October 2011. Did you ever see that statement in a mainstream news report? It's certainly true.

If the Jordanians, from the king on down, have any sense of irony or of the deep hypocrisy that stains their denunciation of the Manchester savagery, there's no sign of it in the announcement. And if any news analysts have torn into them, we haven't seen it:

Jordan condemns terror blast in Manchester | MENAFN - Emirates News Agency (WAM) |  AMMAN, 23rd May, 2017 (WAM) -- The Jordanian government today denounced the terror attack that took place at the Manchester Arena last night, killing 22 people and injuring more than 50. According to the Petra News Agency, the Jordanian Minister of State for #Media Affairs and Communications, Mohammad Momani, said that this "heinous and inhumane act represents the real face of terrorism and extremism, which is implemented by coward terrorists aim to destabilise nations and intimidate innocent civilians". Mr. Momani, who is also the government's spokesperson, reaffirmed Jordan's firm and constant stance in fighting terrorism, extremism and violence in all shapes and forms, stressing the need for concerted efforts to counter terrorism in a holistic approach wherever it rears its head. He also extended his condolences to the British government and to the families of the victims, wishing the injured a speedy recovery.

The real face of terrorism and extremism? We think Tamimi fits that bill exceedingly well.

23-May-17: Abbas on Manchester and Sbarro

Bethlehem this morning: Trump and Abbas [Image Source]

In 2008, President-for-life of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas announced he was awarding the PA’s highest medal, the Al Quds Mark of Honor, to Ahlam Tamimi, who masterminded the massacre at the Sbarro Jerusalem pizzeria. (Abbas' decision to make the award was widely criticized by outsiders and was eventually overturned.) The blood-drenched act of terror which Abbas was so anxious to honor was, like last night’s Manchester atrocity, an attack directed specifically at children by means of nail-enhanced explosives delivered by a human bomb.

Our daughter Malki, just 15, was one of those murdered in the pizzeria. We're acutely aware of how Abbas thought to honor Tamimi because of Malki's death and the deaths and horrible injuries of the other innocents caught up in the bombing.

This morning, that same President-for-life, Mahmoud Abbas, said in Bethlehem to the US President:

"Allow me… to condemn the horrible terrorist attack that occurred in the British city of Manchester… I do offer my warm condolences to the Prime Minister of Britain, families of victims, and the British people."

It's time for people who understand brazen hypocrisy when they encounter it, and especially members of the news reporting industry, to say openly what should have been said years ago: that in the community of civilized nations and people, condemnations mouthed by those deeply engaged in terror - like Mahmoud Abbas and those who report to him - are illegitimate and should be neither heard nor tolerated.

There are situations where the condemnation of terror is as morally indefensible as the terror itself.

15-Apr-17: On the heart-breaking Good Friday murder of a decent young woman on a Jerusalem tram

Kay Wilson was hacked almost to death in an earlier vicious
Arab-on-Israeli attack [Source]

The victim of Friday afternoon's knifing attack on a Jerusalem tram ["14-Apr-17: The urge to stab erupts again: In Jerusalem, a young woman is knifed on a tram"] is a young British student, Hannah Bladon. 

Details of the circumstances around her violent, tragic death at the hands of a middle-aged Palestinian Arab man from the notorious Tamimi clan are captured in a Times of Israel report which we have extracted below. 

Those circumstances highlight the unbridgeable moral chasm between inspirational lives like Heather's and the profound amorality of the Palestinian Arab killer. And not only of him but also of the many who stand with him, urging attacks of the sort he perpetrated.

It's high time people recognized the need to be judgmental.

The moral blame for Hannah's death rests with the anonymous civil service officials and politicians in far-off European and North American government offices who routinely rubber-stamp foreign aid payments to the supremely corrupt Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas. Those payments, funded by ordinary and unwitting taxpayers, provided the means by which the PA continues the unspeakably evil Rewards for Terror scheme about which we have written with rising fury for years.

Hannah Bladon, 21, of
blessed memory [Image Source]

UK student was standing near killer because she gave up her seat for woman with baby | Times of Israel Staff | April 15, 2017, 8:52 pm  

Hannah Bladon, the British student who was stabbed to death on the Jerusalem light rail on Friday, was standing by the exit doors of the train, near to the murderous Palestinian assailant, because she had given up her seat to enable a woman who was holding a baby to sit down, Israeli TV reported Saturday. 

The Palestinian terrorist, Jamil Tamimi, 57, told investigators that he attacked her because he wanted to die and hoped the soldier who was standing next to her on the train would kill him, Channel 2 news further reported, describing the killing as “an attempted suicide attack.” 

Tamimi was on his way from a mental hospital in northern Israel when he carried out the fatal stabbing. He had telephoned his family when he reached Jerusalem, and spoken to one of his sons, who told him that the family wanted no contact with him, in part because he had previously been convicted of sexually abusing his daughter. 

He told investigators that he felt he had “nothing left to lose.” He purchased a knife in the Old City and boarded the light rail at Damascus Gate shortly before 1:00 p.m. Seeing an armed soldier on board, he decided to attack the young woman — Bladon — who was standing nearby. He took out the knife he had just purchased and stabbed her multiple times, critically wounding her. 

“I attacked her so that the soldier would shoot me,” the TV report quoted Tamimi as saying to investigators. Tamimi has been remanded in custody and is being sent for psychiatric tests. 

In a statement on Saturday, her family in the UK said Bladon “was the most caring, sensitive and compassionate daughter you could ever wish for.” Her “final act of kindness,” the TV report said, was to give up her seat on the train for the woman who was holding a baby. Bladon had previously been sitting further back in the carriage, but got up for the woman, and went to stand near the exit door. 

Bladon’s family said they were “devastated” by her death in a “senseless and tragic attack.” The statement noted that Hannah was “a talented student,” an “enthusiastic rugby player” and “a keen Derby County supporter. “She was driven and passionate and her death leaves so much promise unfulfilled.” 

Bladon had been studying religion, theology and archaeology at the University of Birmingham since 2015. As part of her studies she began a program in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University in January, which she was set to complete in September. 

Her family said she had been returning from an archaeological dig when she was killed.
The Hebrew University sent its condolences to the family, saying in a statement that it “condemns such acts of terror that harm innocent people, and especially a student who came to Jerusalem to study and widen her academic horizons.” 

In a Facebook post in January, Bladon wrote that she was doing okay in response to some concerns for her safety amid an ongoing wave of terror attacks that had largely subsided since beginning in October 2015. “Thanks guys. I’m ok thanks!” she posted. “Security is really tight on campus so no worries at mo[ment]! Managed to see a lot of sites before starting my classes today so defo (definitely) having a great time! Xx”.
The comment accompanied a picture of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

After Bladon was stabbed an off-duty police officer and a passerby wrestled Tamimi to the ground before he could harm anyone else...  

Tamimi, from the Ras al-Amoud neighborhood of East Jerusalem, apparently “suffers from mental problems,” a police spokesperson said Friday. Earlier this year, he tried to commit suicide by swallowing a razor blade, according to the Shin Bet. He was also found guilty of sexually abusing his daughter in 2011. 

“This is another case, out of many, where a Palestinian who is suffering from personal, mental or moral issues chooses to carry out a terror attack in order to find a way out of their problems,” the Shin Bet said in a statement...

It's evident from British news reports that it was not because of any personal Jewish connection that Hannah came to Israel. (The stabber almost certainly thought his victim was Jewish.) Will this aspect, along with the timing of the murderous stabbing - Good Friday - spark a few moments of soul-searching on the part of the highest-level officials at the World Council of Churches?

We have drawn attention to the disgraceful public statements they have issued, and their encouragement of terror, for more than three years. Three years of active contribution to the enraging lethal madness that now thoroughly infects every element in Palestinian Arab life.

In an earlier blog post ["17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?"], we wrote about how

the World Council of Churches went public today with a statement of solidarity with what it calls "some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". The WCC's chief executive, Olav Fykse Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran, is quoted in its press release saying that the members for whom he speaks "are called to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past..."

The horrifying reality of the WCC's highly-publicized 2014 call is that they want their member churches to be praying for the depraved Jamil Tamimi and all those other murder-minded Palestinian Arab stabbers, shooters, bombers and vehicle-rammers for whom Hannah Bladon and other innocents will always be legitimate targets.

What kind of theology is that?

01-Mar-17: Washington may be launching a long-overdue assault on Abbas' lethal Rewards for Terror scheme

Abbas' Rewards for Terror scheme, chiefly and lavishly funded by the United States and the European Union, is said to hold a "sacred" position in today's Palestinian Arab public opinion. Time that changed. [Image Source: AP]

Money has always played an under-appreciated enabling role in the rise and spread of Islamist terrorism, even as those doing the actual channeling to the terrorists have doggedly denied the connection.

Channeled is the right word because the actual money for this sort of funding is never coming from the facilitators' pockets. It always originates with ordinary, unwitting taxpayers. Those doing the allocating and delivering are invariably paid functionaries in a publicly-funded European, Australian or North American government office.

This is infuriating. We have been writing about it since before we started our blog. See for instance this June 2004 contribution by Arnold Roth to the website of EU Funding (mission: "An Independent Look at the Role of European Funding in the Middle East") in which he addresses the British political figure who headed the EU's foreign ministry at the time, Christopher Patten [for background, see our post "9-Sep-13: Snouts and troughs"].

A news article had appeared earlier that day, providing what Roth called:

the clearest possible indication that Arafat and his regime have at all relevant times funded the Palestinian Arab militants. Not to mince words about it, this - for those who actually need such things - is "the smoking gun". It connects the PA to terrorism, and by extension, implicates the European Commission which has continued to shovel vast amounts of money into the very same PA pipeline against reams of evidence that to do so is to fund murder. Depending on how one looks at it, today's story is either a revelation, or a very, very good reason for you and your staff to pick up the phone and make some urgent calls.

Brussels, May 2001: Patten in the company of Yasser Arafat, 
Romano Prodi and Nabil Shaath [Image Source]

Naturally Christopher Patten (honored these days to be called Baron Patten of Barnes) never made that call.

Nor was he moved by an op-ed in Wall Street Journal that had appeared in September 2003 under the title "Blood, Money and Education", also written by Arnold Roth. (It's behind a WSJ paywall. Another version is archived here.) Or by an open letter delivered to Patten that same month and published here.

We began blogging here in 2006. About a hundred of our posts in the years since then are key-worded "Funding". It's continued to be one of major preoccupations.

Having lost a dearly-loved child to the satanic work of Hamas, and then watching in horror as the mastermind of the plot that took her life and the lives of fifteen other innocents walked free with a phenomenally fat pension made possible by US and European funding of the unspeakable Palestinian Authority, we more than most understand the extent of the evil that aggressively imbecilic management of so-called foreign aid funds can wreak on the lives of innocent people.

So no one should be surprised that we are delighting to learn today of new developments in the US government that, if carried through, will significantly reduce the evil, the imbecility and the lethal amorality exemplified by the Christopher Pattens of international relations and governance.

An Adam Kredo report in Washington Free Beacon yesterday says legislators in the House and Senate of the US Congress met yesterday (Tuesday) to introduce legislation

that would cut all U.S. funding to the Palestinian government, which has been criticized for providing financial incentives to terrorists who kill American and Israeli civilians. The White House signaled its support for the legislation in a vast departure from the Obama administration, which worked against similar efforts when in power... "The Palestinian Authority's use of its resources to provide material support for terrorism—indiscriminately targeted at American and Israeli civilians—is a grotesque example of how well-intentioned U.S. generosity can be turned against us," a senior White House official told the Free Beacon... "This legislation highlights practical steps the PA can take to demonstrate a real commitment to ending the vicious cycle of hatred and violence that has prevented the Palestinian people from the prosperity and security they could otherwise be enjoying," the official said... [WFB, February 28, 2017]

The effort is entirely led by Republicans: Roy Blunt, Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton in the Senate; Doug Lamborn and Lee Zeldin in the House of Representatives. A , R-N.Y., are carrying the companion legislation in the House. A CBS News report added that it is cosponsored in the Senate by Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, John Boozman, Ted Cruz, Richard Burr and John Thune: again all republicans.

Strikingly (at least to us), the Washington Examiner said yesterday that

only Republican lawmakers attended the press conference...

Kredo, quoting that unnamed White House official, writes that the new law seeks

to tighten the financial noose on the Palestinian government and force it to abandon its practice of paying terrorists, is a first step to reforming the notoriously corrupt government, the official said. "The new legislative effort... cuts off all U.S. aid to the Palestinians as a direct response to its longstanding policy of paying salaries to terrorists and supporting those imprisoned for terrorist attacks" "...We shouldn't allow killers and ruthless attackers to become recognized as martyrs in a system that we're part of," Blunt added... "Most Americans have no idea this is a problem," Graham said. "Not only are Israelis victims of this practice, Americans are victims of this practice. We're going to change this. We're going to get the Palestinian Authority's attention by withholding their money."

Did we mention that not a single Democrat attended the Congressional
press conference yesterday? [Image Source]

It's a scheme we have for years termed "Rewards for Terror".

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), who has long backed similar efforts, told the Free Beacon it is long past due for Congress to take the lead on this effort now that Obama administration officials can no longer lead efforts to block it. "After eight years of the Obama administration, the U.S. must take long overdue action to hold the Palestinian leadership accountable for incentivizing and rewarding acts of terrorism," Cruz told the Free Beacon. "Roughly $300 million annually is provided in monthly salaries and benefits to terrorists jailed in Israel, their families, and the families of those who died committing such horrific atrocities against Israeli and American citizens, including Taylor Force [we wrote about what was done to him here.] Enough is enough. We must stand up for victims of Palestinian terrorism. No more U.S. taxpayer dollars should be provided until the Palestinian leadership stops engaging in this heinous practice. The incitement and glorification of terrorism must end." ["Trump Admin, Congress Behind Effort to Cut U.S. Aid to Palestinians", Washington Free Beacon, February 28, 2017]

No one working the halls of power in Washington can honestly claim to be unaware. David Feith one of the Wall Street Journal's editorial writers [quoted in our post], wrote last year ["Your Tax Dollars Fund Palestinian Terror", August 11, 2016] that none of this could happen but for the willful blindness of governments, foremost among them the United States. What's needed, he wrote, is

a broader reassessment of American aid to the Palestinian government... [since] the Palestinian government has used U.S. and other foreign taxpayers’ money to pay generous rewards to the families of terrorists. The deadlier the crime, the larger the prize, up to about $3,100 a month, or several times the average salary of a worker in Palestine’s non-terrorist economy... No U.S. official can plead ignorance. Palestinian law has sanctioned these payments since at least 2004, specifying how much money is earned depending on the circumstances of the attacker and the body count. [WSJ, August 11, 2016]

A fine op ed in the Wall Street Journal five weeks ago [and quoted in our post "29-Jan-17: What's the exchange rate for American dollars into Palestinian Arab terror killings?"] stated bluntly how US funding is central to the PA's loathsome scheming which an Arab source quoted in the same post called "sacred in Palestinian politics":

Over the past 10 years, Washington has provided more than $4 billion in foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. The goal has been to promote a government in the Palestinian territories capable of assuming the responsibilities of a sovereign state, including the recognition of the state of Israel as a legitimate member of the community of nations. The aid has focused principally on security and criminal-justice programs, U.S. Agency for International Development sponsored assistance for schools, health clinics, water and economic development, and generalized support for the Palestinian Authority’s budget. But unlike the many nongovernmental organizations that contribute charitable funds to the region, American assistance programs, while obliged to vet how the money is spent, have yet to ensure effectively that taxpayer dollars are not diverted to support acts of terror... ["Stop American Aid to the Palestinians Until the Terror Ceases", David Aufhauser and Sander Gerber, Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2017]

Efforts are underway in Europe - including the UK, Norway and possibly via the EC's own auditors - to curb the European Commission's ongoing funding of the PA Rewards for Terror scheme. But in terms of lives blighted and destroyed, such efforts and those of the Americans will be meaningless if they fail to block the blood lust of the Palestinian Authority's inner circle of enthusiastic murderers. Only stemming the flow of tax-payers' funds into their malevolent clutches can do that.

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Waszyngton może rozpocząć atak na zabójczy system “Nagród za Terror” Abbasa – co należało dawno zrobić") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]