Question. Where are the missing billions of the Palestinian Authority? - by Maurice Hirsch, Adv.

The requirement that the PA adhere to even basic standards of financial transparency is only useful if something is actually done with that information. If the countries that donate considerable aid to the PA do not demand that the PA explain why it squandered billions of shekels of aid - including by providing funding to non-functioning bodies and terrorist organizations - as it cries poverty and begs for aid, then the PA will continue to use and abuse the goodwill of the donor countries. Allowing the PA to continue these practices does nothing to achieve any peace related goal. The opposite is true. When the international donors turn a blind eye to the PA’s obvious abuses, they simply embolden and facilitate the PA to deepen the rifts.

Maurice Hirsch, Adv..
Palestinian Media Watch..
04 November '19..

Since its creation, the Palestinian Authority has received tens of billions of dollars of international aid. Just since 2011, the European Union, the United States, and other countries have provided the PA with hundreds of millions of dollars and euros of aid.

While the PA has constantly complained about its financial difficulties, scrutiny of the PA’s own financial records for the years 2011 - 2018, shows that the PA transferred from its coffers over 7 billion shekels to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), some of which was then given to terrorist organizations. In that same period, the PA also spent over 440 million shekels to fund its non-functioning institutions.

Funding to the PLO and internationally designated terrorist organizations

The PLO, which is also headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is an umbrella organization for several Palestinian groups. The largest and most dominant member is Abbas’ Fatah party. Other members include groups designated as terror organizations by the US and the EU such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Liberation Front. PLO members are entitled to and receive funding from the PLO.

While international donors have demanded that the PA show financial transparency, the PLO is not subject to any financial regulation or demands of transparency. Accordingly, it is impossible to know what happens with billions of dollars of donor money the PA has given and continues to give today to the PLO.

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Terrorists in Suits: New Study Reveals Extensive Links Between BDS and Terrorist Organizations - by Vijeta Uniyal

The boycott movement is part of the war on Israel: “Terrorist operatives assist NGOs in fundraising, share human resources and jointly promote public campaigns.”

Vijeta Uniyal..
Legal Insurrection..
04 February '19..

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs released a report titled Terrorists in Suits: The Ties Between NGOs promoting BDS and Terrorist Organizations that shows operational and ideological ties between the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, and Palestinian terrorist organisations, including Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

According to the report, at least 30 active and “retired” terrorists were on the payrolls of BDS-linked NGOs. Some of these prominent terror figures cited in the report include Palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled, former Hamas “military” operative Muhammad Sawalha and convicted terrorist Shawan Jabarin.

Arab and Islamic terror organizations tied to the BDS Movement were “utilizing a network of NGOs promoting boycotts against Israel as an additional tactic in their ultimate goal of dismantling the State of Israel,” the report said.

“Terrorist organizations and the BDS campaign have united in their goal of dismantling the Jewish State, with the former viewing boycotts as an additional tactic to their armed attacks against Israel,” Minister of Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, said referring to the findings of the report. “Following the exposure of the ties linking boycott organizations to the terrorist groups, I urge the governments of Europe to rethink the legitimacy and stop the funding they provide to Israel-boycott organizations.”

Legal Insurrection reviewed the 79-page report. Here are some of the key findings:

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Follow the Charity Money: BDS Umbrella Group Linked to Palestinian Terrorist Organizations - by Armin Rosen and Liel Leibovitz

Connections between an American charity and Hamas, PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad

Armin Rosen/Liel Leibovitz..
Tablet Magazine..
01 June '18..

Over the past decade, as the prospects of peace between Israelis and Palestinians became ever slimmer, there has been a growing attention to—and, in some quarters, acceptance of—the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, or BDS. Those drawn to the cause have likely come across the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that serves as the American umbrella group of the BDS movement and is arguably the most prominent promoter of BDS in the United States. The US Campaign, which is officially called Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, coordinates the efforts of 329 different pro-BDS organizations “working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy … bound by commonly shared principles on Palestine solidarity as well as our anti-racism principles,” according to the group’s website.

But as Tablet confirmed , the group also helps facilitate tax-exempt donations to a Palestinian coalition that includes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other groups the U.S. State Department designates as terror organizations.

The US Campaign, Tablet has learned, is the fiscal sponsor of a group called the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the main West Bank and Gaza-based cohort advocating for sanctions against Israel. The BNC was created in 2007 in Ramallah with the intention of serving as the Palestinian arm of the international BDS campaign. According to the BNC’s website, one of the group’s members is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, commonly known as PNIF. Among PNIF’s members are five different groups designated by the US as terrorist organizations, including Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front – General Command (PFLP-GC), the Palestine Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Since its founding, the BNC has frequently and openly collaborated with known leaders of these terror organizations:

(Continue to Full Article)

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This may be the launching of a long-overdue assault on Abbas' lethal Rewards for Terror scheme

...Efforts are underway in Europe - including the UK, Norway and 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 stopping the flow of tax-payers' funds into their malevolent clutches can do that.

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]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
01 March '17..

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.

(Continue to Full Post)

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With a Smile and a Laugh: Welcome to the World of Western-Funded Terrorism

...The terrorist had good reason to laugh in the face of the judge. He knows that Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, or some other entity will look after his family and him while he is sitting in prison. He knows that thanks to Western donations to the Palestinians, his family and he will enjoy monthly payments. The family will even be exempt from paying school and university tuition, as well as their electric and water bills, which will be fully covered by the PA government, directly or indirectly. He also knows that if and when he is released from prison, his chances of finding a job in the public sector are much higher than those of someone who did not kill a Jew or spend time in an Israeli prison.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
19 December '16..

Killing Jews has become a profitable business. Palestinians who think of launching a terror attack against Jews can rest assured that their well-being and that of their family will be guaranteed while they are in Israeli prison. Here is how it works:

The Western-funded Palestinian Authority (PA) government, through its various institutions, provides a monthly salary and different financial benefits to jailed Palestinian terrorists and their families. Upon their release, they will continue to receive financial aid, and are given top priority when it comes to employment in the public sector. Their chances of getting a job with the PA government are higher than those who went to university, because by carrying out an attack against Jews they become heroes, entitled to a superior job and salary.

For the record, these people have not been imprisoned for running a red light. Most of them are behind bars because they have masterminded suicide bombings and other terror attacks that have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent civilians during the past few decades. In the U.S., these convicted Palestinian terrorists would have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty. What they would not be receiving are the privileges offered to them by Abbas and the PA leadership.

Ready for a dose of linguistic reality? In addition to his title as president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas is also chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). So it makes no difference at all whether the PA or the PLO is paying salaries to the terrorists: the same man is authorizing the funds. In reality, the PA and the PLO are one and the same. Israel signed the Oslo Accords with the PLO, and as a result of these agreements, the PA was created. We are dealing with the same people and same ideology.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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World Vision's terrorism-centered scandal and a toxic ideological background - by Arnold Roth

...Moon goes on to make the case that World Vision's alleged failure to identify the lethal corruption (our term, not his) in their Gaza office stems from three sources: Willingness to overlook terrorist atrocities, institutional antagonism toward Israel, and hostility towards Christian Zionism...

More than just "humanitarianism", World Vision's
engagement in this area includes what it calls
"advocacy". Its partners include "Breaking the
Silence", Btselem and other far-left Israel-based
opponents of government policy. Sabeel is not
named. The word "terror" appears nowhere in
this brochure [check here]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
07 December '16..

The terrorism-centered scandal at the multi-billion dollar global Christian charity World Vision ["06-Dec-16: World Vision and terrorism: Hazy accounting is the last thing this scandal needs"] has brought some even larger issues out of the dark.

A wide-ranging article seeking to put the current allegations, now under scrutiny in an Israeli criminal court, into a broader context has just been published today. In "World Vision’s Decades-Long Hate Campaign Against Israel" that appears online and in the December 2016 issue of The Tower Magazine, Luke Moon, deputy director at the Philos Project ("the network hub for leaders and future leaders who are committed to promoting positive Christian engagement in the Middle East") provides some background we have not seen elsewhere.

He refers to the criminal charges we mentioned yesterday and to the charity's problematic reaction:

(Continue to Full Post)

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World Vision, terrorism and hazy accounting? - by Arnold Roth

...But there's another side and it's that a charity of World Vision's scale ["active in more than 90 countries with a total revenue including grants, product and foreign donations of $2.79 billion", according to Wikipedia] ought to have been doing somersaults in the air to avoid even the slightest taint of scandal, let alone find itself accused of allowing millions of dollars to be siphoned out of its operations and applied to funding terrorist warfare against innocents.

The man in charge of World Vision's Gaza
operations inside an Israeli criminal court
 [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
06 December '16..

The trial of a top-level World Vision manager got underway in an Israeli criminal court in Beer Sheva a few days ago. Fresh revelations disclosed today in an Australian newspaper (and below) suggest the credibility of the global Christian charity is going to be as much on trial as the man himself.

Mohammad El Halabi, who held a leadership role in World Vision's Gaza office, is charged with

funnelling tens of millions of dollars to Hamas... [He's] alleged to have led a double life as a senior figure in the Islamist organisation and used his position “to divert the humanitarian organisation’s funds and resources from the needy to benefit of Hamas’s terrorist and military activities”. According to the allegations from Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, the money given by British donors was used to build a military base, dig military tunnels and pay salaries in Hamas’s military wing. Other donations were allegedly transferred to buy weapons for Hamas in the Sinai during the period that Mohamed Morsi was president of Egypt. The announcement of Halabi’s arrest followed a raid on World Vision’s office [in August 2016]... [H]e was indicted on a number of charges, including funding terrorism. ["Israel accuses World Vision's Gaza director of diverting cash to Hamas", The Guardian, August 4, 2016]

It amounts to an appalling set of suspicions: Christian charity in service of the murder and maiming of Jews?

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Your Tax Dollars Fund Palestinian Terror? Willful Blindness Helps. - by David Feith

...As long as Palestinian political culture remains unchanged—as long as Palestine’s liberal friends excuse its every illiberal offense—expect the glorification of terrorism to continue. This is a political scandal far greater than any single charity funneling funds to Hamas.

David Feith..
Wall St. Journal..
11 August '16..
Link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/your-tax-dollars-fund-palestinian-terror-1470957628

With an indictment unsealed last week, Israeli investigators have sounded an alarm over the illicit use of global aid money to fund Palestinian terrorism. Prosecutors in the city of Beersheba allege that Mohammed El-Halabi, Gaza Strip director of the California-based charity World Vision, transferred tens of millions of dollars to Hamas to buy weapons and build underground attack tunnels. Although World Vision denies fault, the governments of Australia and Germany have halted donations pending investigations.

This revelation should spur a broader reassessment of American aid to the Palestinian government. For two decades 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.

Recall that 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel was murdered in her bed by a knife-wielding Palestinian in June. She was a dual Israeli-American citizen, making her the 11th American killed by Palestinians since 2014. Other victims include 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz, a student from Sharon, Mass., and 28-year-old Taylor Force, a West Point graduate and two-tour U.S. Army veteran from Lubbock, Texas. The families of the killers now receive regular payments from Palestinian leaders—funded partly by U.S. taxpayers.

Terrorist Aid Hijacking: Learning from the World Vision Case

..."World Vision's failures in Gaza highlight the problems of a multi-billion dollar NGO industry that remains largely unregulated and unexamined. While World Vision is currently the focus of attention following the arrest of El-Halabi and the scale of the allegations, this should be a cautionary moment for many other international aid organizations that have similar operations in Gaza, such as Oxfam, Care, Christian Aid, and UNRWA - the United Nations Relief and Works Agency."

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..









NGO Monitor August 7, 2016
Terrorist Aid Hijacking and NGO Oversight Failure: Learning from the World Vision Case

On August 4, 2016, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed that Mohammed El-Halabi, manager of the Gaza operations of the international humanitarian NGO World Vision, funneled 60% of the World Vision Gaza budget to the terrorist group Hamas. The Israeli indictment and media reported that these funds were used in the construction of Hamas tunnels, military installations, and other terrorist activities.

In response, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, President of NGO Monitor noted, "To avoid enabling murderous Hamas attacks, and compounding the suffering of people in Gaza, aid groups need to apply surveillance and intelligence technologies, particularly regarding employees and their activities."

NGO Monitor identified World Vision as susceptible to aid diversion in its 2015 book, Filling in the Blanks, concluding that there is "little doubt as to World Vision's willingness to negotiate and coordinate with armed groups. This raises questions as to whether the group would prevent components of its aid from being misappropriated by terrorist organizations, if it felt that taking a stand would jeopardize the organization's ability to continue its operations in a given area."

Is Facebook now a pipeline for funding Hamas terrorism?

...As a target audience, foreign activists are perfect. They are concentrated in a small space. Many are obsessive and almost none check the veracity of the message they are being given. The term ‘like shooting ducks in a barrel’ comes to mind.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
31 July '16..

Arabs in Gaza are swarming social media platforms and sending private messages to pro-Palestinian activists looking for donations. Is it just one massive scam? Or are Hamas utilising social media platforms, not just to spread propaganda, but as a pipeline to raise funds for their terrorist activities?

Hamas are one of the most brutal terrorist organisations on earth. Some of their attacks, such as the Passover massacre in 2002 or the Dizengoff Centre attack in 1996, highlight an undiluted strategy of barbarism. All terror attacks are difficult to digest, but deliberately targeting elderly people at a religious service, or children partying in fancy dress at Purim, leaves a particularly bitter taste.

In more recent years, Hamas have held Gaza’s entire population hostage. They seek conflict through firing indiscriminate rockets at Israeli population centres, thus deliberately placing their own civilians in harm’s way. Hamas then use the inevitable result as propaganda material for their cause. A calculated, callous and inhumane act.

Because of Europe’s blind inability to connect the dots (a blindness that is tragically coming home to haunt them), Hamas has always worked hard on public perception. The Hamas propaganda machinery learnt to utilise social media platforms to perfection. The vast majority of distorted, manipulated imagery that is used by the anti-Israel squad in the west, emerges from the hands of Hamas in Gaza.

With its military arm recognised as a terrorist organisation in most civilised nations, the more responsible charities have a difficult time trying to ensure funds do not become diverted towards terrorist activity. The Syrian civil conflict complicated matters further for Hamas, as it found itself alienated from its main sponsor, Iran. Hamas are currently handing out land to civil servants because they are unable to pay the wage bill. Hamas is a terror group desperately seeking both friends and funding.

Enter Facebook.

I have been active on Facebook for years, and apart from the odd scam, I don’t think I have ever been privately approached for money. Yet in discussion with some anti-Israel activists, I found that ‘being approached for money’ was almost a daily occurrence for them....

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Channeling donor funds to reward and compensate acts of terror - by Amb. Alan Baker

...While ordinary prisoners, such as car thieves do not receive a salary, every person committing acts of terror are on the PA payroll. The salary goes directly to the terrorist or the terrorist’s family, and prisoners receive salary from the day of arrest.8 More than 5,500 Palestinian prisoners serving time for terror-related offenses are recipients. This situation, in effect, constitutes a manipulation of international funding for the PA, through channeling donor funds to reward and compensate acts of terror and as such to encourage continued terror, in clear contravention of national and international norms and obligations.

Amb. Alan Baker..
jcpa.org..
Vol. 16, No. 10..
14 July '16..

There has recently been considerable media coverage of the transfer of donor funding from foreign governments (including the United States, the UK, Denmark and other EU countries) to official Palestinian governing bodies, and its use for salaries and other benefits to Palestinians serving prison sentences for acts of terror.

Clearly, the channeling of donor funding to compensate terrorists and thereby to encourage further terror raises serious legal and moral questions, both for the governments contributing the funds, but also in the context of international law and practice.

Current Palestinian Practice

According to the Guardian and Daily Mail newspapers:

About 6 percent of the Palestinian budget is diverted to prisoner salaries. All this money comes from so-called ‘donor countries’ such as the United States, Great Britain, Norway, and Denmark.”2 (The Guardian)

British aid money is helping to pay ‘salaries’ to Palestinian prisoners – some of them convicted terrorists – serving time in Israeli jails, according to a report.

The Palestinian Authority is paying them up to £1,957 a month – more than the average salary of a UK worker.

The Department for International Development spends around £80million a year in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, of which around £30million goes to the general budget, which funds prisoners’ allowances.”3 (Daily Mail)

Britain gives £72 million a year to Palestine, more than one-third of which goes straight to the PA. It openly admits supporting terrorists whom it hails as heroes for fighting illegal occupation, awarding lifetime payments that rise depending on time spent in jail and the seriousness of crimes.

One Hamas master bomber has reportedly been given more than £100,000. Other ‘salaries’ go to the families of suicide bombers and even teenagers involved in the latest upsurge of deadly attacks on Israel.”4 (Daily Mail)

In his recent testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on July 6, 2016, Yigal Carmon, President and Founder, of the “Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI),” provided detailed statistics on the extent of the Palestinian payments to terrorist prisoners. In his testimony, he stated:

This financial support for prisoners is anchored in a series of laws and government decrees, chiefly Laws No. 14 and No. 19 of 2004, and Law No. 1 of 2013. The prisoners are described as ‘a fighting sector and an integral part of the weave of Arab Palestinian society’ and it is stated that ‘the financial rights of the prisoner and his family’ must be assured.

According to the laws, the PA must provide prisoners with a monthly allowance during their incarceration and salaries or jobs upon their release. They are also entitled to exemptions from payments for education, health care, and professional training. Their years of imprisonment are calculated as years of seniority of service in PA institutions. It should be noted that whoever was imprisoned for five years or more is entitled to a job in a PA institution. Thus, the PA gives priority in job placement to people who were involved in terrorist activity.5

Official legislation of the Palestinian Authority from 2010 places all Palestinians and Israeli Arabs imprisoned in Israel for terror crimes on the PA payroll to receive a monthly salary from the PA.6 Earlier legislation defines “prisoners” benefiting from this requirement, as “Anyone imprisoned in the occupation’s prisons as a result of his participation in the struggle against the occupation.”7

While ordinary prisoners, such as car thieves do not receive a salary, every person committing acts of terror are on the PA payroll. The salary goes directly to the terrorist or the terrorist’s family, and prisoners receive salary from the day of arrest.8 More than 5,500 Palestinian prisoners serving time for terror-related offenses are recipients.

This situation, in effect, constitutes a manipulation of international funding for the PA, through channeling donor funds to reward and compensate acts of terror and as such to encourage continued terror, in clear contravention of national and international norms and obligations.

(Continue to Full Article)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The PA's billion dollar foreign aid fraud

The Palestinian Authority is deceiving Western donor countries, falsely claiming to have stopped paying salaries to terrorist prisoners, and reaping more than a billion dollars/year in return

Itamar Marcus..
Palestinian Media Watch..
27 April '16..

This special report by Palestinian Media Watch reveals a major fraud by the Palestinian Authority, through which it is reaping more than a billion dollars in foreign aid yearly.

In 2014, the PA announced that in order to continue receiving more than a billion dollars in financial support annually, it was acceding to US and European donor countries' demands that the PA stop paying salaries to terrorist prisoners. The PA claimed the money for prisoners salaries would no longer be paid by the PA but instead by the PLO.

Even though PMW warned at the time that this was a "ploy," the US and EU countries accepted the PA's assurance, and continue to give the PA over a billion dollars in financial aid every year.

This PMW special report cites numerous official PA sources and statements by officials, showing that the PA is violating the trust of the US and EU donor countries. According to all these sources, the PA Ministry of Finance continues to make the decisions and remains the source of the money for paying salaries to terrorist prisoners.

In addition, PMW has studied records of the PA Ministry of Finance that show money transfers the PA made to the PLO in the years 2012 - 2015. These transfers show a noteworthy money trail used to transfer money that is needed for terrorist salaries from the PA to the PLO. In 2015, after the PA had assured Western donors it was no longer paying the salaries, and after it had closed the Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, it suddenly transferred more than double what it had transferred to the PLO in previous years. The additional amount transferred by the PA to the PLO in 2015 was almost identical to the budget the PA Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs used to have. This extra money the PLO received from the PA in 2015 matches the amount the PLO now needed to pay the salaries of terrorist prisoners.

The payments may be made by the PLO, but the money is still PA money.

Since it continues to fund salaries to terrorists, thereby clearly violating its promise to donors, the PA should be ineligible to receive Western donor money. However, through this deception the PA is still reaping over a billion dollars in foreign aid.

Click here to view the full report in PDF

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Rewards for Terror scheme. Wasted lives, stolen futures, obfuscatory answers.

...If you are a member of the British parliament, or know someone who is, please feel free to share our fury. This scandal, and the reams of open-source information that documents it, has been going on for far too long with too many innocent victims and far, far too many unjust beneficiaries. They include the members of the Palestinian Arab terror squad, one woman and several men, who were convicted of multiple murders including our daughter's in 2001, and who have for years received lavish payments under the Mahmoud Abbas Rewards for Terror scheme. It's time to shut this obscene disgrace down.

This Ben Wiseman illustration accompanied a
New Yorker article "Trafficking in Terror",
published December 14, 2015

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
12 April '16..

If you have been following the media coverage of rising British outrage over evidence of the wanton abuse of the substantial sums of British taxpayers' funds handed over by the UK as foreign aid, you will know that the Daily Mail has focused on

"the absurd new legislative requirement to give away 0.7 per cent of national income... [and in particular] payments to Palestine [that] seem a classic example of the core aid problem of "fungibility" - when foreign cash supporting public services frees up a regime to spend money in other questionable areas, which all too often fuels conflict or corruption."

A parliamentary question touching on pretty much the same issue was asked in London on March 24, 2016.

Yesterday in Westminster, it was answered and with everything that's wrong with the response, it actually tells a lot. The enquiry was directed at the UK's Department for International Development and from the transcript [hat-tip to MH for directing us to it], it concerned "Palestinian Authority: Overseas Aid: Written question - 32482". Here's the verbatim text of the to and fro [online source]:

John Howell:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what reports she has received on the use of aid disbursed to the Palestinian Authority for purposes related to terrorist activity.

(Read Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Will the UK's foreign aid office come clean yet on their part in funding Palestinian Arab terror?

...We noted a while back that there was one aspect of the European/UK saga of PA-centred corruption and dishonesty that was truly beyond our comprehension. It still is, and it's this: how can the members of the news media who cover the EU and the Middle East conflict have allowed this decade-plus financial scandal (one that everyone knows about and that few will discuss in public) to get so little media coverage? How much of the conspiracy of silence is based on intimidation? Perhaps we're finally going to find. Or perhaps not.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
28 March '16..

A couple of years back, we wrote ["9-Sep-13: Snouts and troughs"] that there has been an active EU cover-up since 2003 to conceal the hideous things done with European foreign aid funds delivered to the Arafat- and Abbas-controlled PLO/PA regimes in Ramallah.

During the years since then, torrents of European funding, billions of Euros, were channeled to the terrorism-addicted Palestinian Authority. Throughout that time, the Eurocrats managed to avoid carrying out even a single financial audit until the one whose results were published in December 2013 [full text here].

The astounding policy of hands-off "see no evil", mismanagement happened while the EU "provides 20% of the direct financial support for the PA", making it "the biggest multilateral donor to the Occupied Palestinian Territories".

So what did that audit find?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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How US Taxpayers Funded the Murder of an Iraq Vet in Israel - by Daniel Greenfield

...It’s clear that this administration will not do the right thing. But if its successor does not stop paying terrorists to kill, then Taylor Force will not be the last American victim of taxpayer subsidized terrorism. And their blood will be on his or her hands.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
14 March '16..

Taylor Force had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, he had served at Fort Hood in the year of the infamous Islamic terrorist attack on the base, but a Jihadist finally caught up to the veteran, whose father and grandfather had also served their country, in civilian life during a visit to Israel.

Bashar Masalha, the Islamic terrorist who murdered Force, was shot dead by Israeli police around the time that Biden was hanging out a mile away at the Peres Center for Peace. But Biden and his boss signed the checks to Iran and the Palestinian Authority that motivated and rewarded Force’s killer.

Masalha came from Qalqilya which is under the civil control of the Palestinian Authority. Its mayor, Othman Dawood, is a member of Fatah, the core political organization behind the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. Fatah celebrated the murder of Taylor Force and other victims of the attack, praising Masalha as a “heroic martyr”. It named him and two other terrorist attackers as “the pride of all of the young Palestinians” and urged future terrorists to go on killing in their name. Palestinian Authority television called the terrorist who murdered an American, a Shaheed, a martyr for Islam. And the Palestinian Authority’s support for the murder of Taylor Force doesn’t just end there.

The Palestinian Authority pays terrorists based on the amount of harm they caused and the resulting jail sentence. Had Masalha survived his attack on Taylor Force and the other victims, he would have likely been paid $2,000 a month for his act of terror. That’s pretty good money in a place where $2,000 is more like an annual income. It’s so good that that there’s no shortage of terrorists eager to kill for cash.

And the Palestinian Authority has no shortage of money to pay Muslim terrorists to kill Americans and Israelis because the terror organization which claims to be a state is subsidized by the United States with billions of dollars. In 2014, the PA spent $144 million on payments to convicted terrorists. Its terror budget benefited from Obama boosting 2014 foreign aid to the PA to $440 million. For “peace”.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Swedish delights? Not really.

...Lofven and Wallstrom have drawn attention recently to themselves with their insane comments about terrorism against Israelis. First up was the foreign minister, who on Friday accused Israel of conducting "extrajudicial executions" while defending itself against Palestinians committing terror attacks. Israel slammed these remarks with the Foreign Ministry responding that her statement was "delusional, rude and detached from reality. The foreign minister is suggesting the citizens of Israel simply present their necks to the killers seeking to stab them with knives. The citizens of Israel and its security forces have the right to defend themselves. In Israel, every person who commits a crime is brought in front of a judge, including terrorists. The citizens of Israel have to deal with terrorism that receives support from irresponsible and false statements like that."

Judith Bergman..
Israel Hayom..
10 December '15..

"We have to temporarily adapt to reality," said Swedish Environment Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Asa Romson recently, inadvertently delivering the truth about Sweden and its politics over the past decades while involuntarily making herself sound like a pathetic fool at the same time.

Swedish top politicians are on the wrong kind of roll right now, delivering a grotesque kind of theatrics that are at times sinister, at times very entertaining to watch from the outside, but most of all plainly embarrassing to many Swedes, who are increasingly shaking their heads at a leadership gone very awry. It should be added that Swedes are a stoic and extremely consensus-seeking lot who will go to great lengths before uttering any kind of dissent, but even they seem to be fed up with a leadership that is so inept, as is evident from the soaring support that the Sweden Democrats have been getting recently.

A YouGov poll from mid-September showed that the anti-immigration party holds 27.3% of voter support, making it the biggest political party in Sweden. In comparison, Swedish Social Democratic Party is trailing behind at 21.3%. Both Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and his foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, are from the Social Democratic Party.

Lofven and Wallstrom have drawn attention recently to themselves with their insane comments about terrorism against Israelis. First up was the foreign minister, who on Friday accused Israel of conducting "extrajudicial executions" while defending itself against Palestinians committing terror attacks. Israel slammed these remarks with the Foreign Ministry responding that her statement was "delusional, rude and detached from reality. The foreign minister is suggesting the citizens of Israel simply present their necks to the killers seeking to stab them with knives. The citizens of Israel and its security forces have the right to defend themselves. In Israel, every person who commits a crime is brought in front of a judge, including terrorists. The citizens of Israel have to deal with terrorism that receives support from irresponsible and false statements like that."

The Swedish Foreign Ministry then issued a meaningless statement on Saturday morning, clarifying that "the foreign minister did not say that Israel conducts 'extrajudicial executions.' The foreign minister made a general statement about international law and the right to self-defense and the importance of proportionality and distinction. What she stated applies to all parties."

That statement is particularly meaningless, because Wallstrom has demonstrated the particulars of her ignorance of international law and the principle of proportionality by falsely implying that the latter has to do with how many casualties there are on each side.

Enter Lofven. While trying to do some much needed damage control regarding Wallstrom's disastrous forays into international law and obvious anti-Semitism, he actually managed to deteriorate things by claiming that stabbing attacks are actually not terrorism at all! "No, it is not classified as that. There is an international classification when it is, or is not. What I know is not classified as terrorism," he told Swedish news agency TT.

Excellent Question. Who’s Funding Pro-Palestinian Israeli ‘Human Rights’ Groups?

...But the Palestinians themselves claim the West Bank and Gaza constitute a single Palestinian entity, which means that in their own understanding, the Birzeit faculty who decided to award those grants to B’Tselem and BTS were on Hamas’s side in this war. Effectively, therefore, these two groups solicited and received money from an enemy during wartime in order to produce propaganda against their own country. It might be legal, but morally, it stinks. And it ought to put both B’Tselem and BTS permanently beyond the pale.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
27 August '15..

Granted, everyone is (justly) preoccupied with the Iran deal right now, and, granted, the original scoop was in Hebrew. But I still can’t believe this news has gotten so little attention: During last summer’s war with Hamas in Gaza, two Israeli “human rights” organizations – B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence – requested and received special grants from Palestinian middle men in order to finance reports accusing Israel of war crimes.

Under most circumstances, taking money from the enemy in wartime to produce propaganda against your own side would be considered treason. In this case, legally speaking, it definitely isn’t. But morally speaking, it’s not merely skirting close to the edge; it’s well over the line.

The news was first reported by Gidon Dokow on the Hebrew-language news site NRG. But you needn’t take Dokow’s word for it; he helpfully included a link to the funding organization’s English-language annual report.

The organization goes by the unwieldy name of the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat. According to its annual report, it is “a project implemented by NIRAS NATURA AB – Sweden, and the Institute of Law, Birzeit University, Birzeit, Palestine, with generous support from the governments of Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland.”

In other words, the money itself is European. But the ones who decide what to do with it are Niras Natura – which describes itself as an international consultancy firm in the field of sustainable development – and the faculty of Birzeit. And since the Birzeit people are the ones actually on the ground, they presumably have considerable influence over how the money is spent.

The Secretariat’s main job appears to be funneling money to other organizations. According to the annual report, it had 24 “core grantees” and 19 “project grantees” last year. Nine of the former and two of the latter are Israeli; the rest are Palestinian.

When the war broke out in July 2014, the Secretariat put out a call to its core grantees soliciting emergency funding requests. “The emergency funding call focused on activities related to monitoring and documentation of IHL [international humanitarian law] and human rights violations in the Gaza Strip, arising from the then ongoing war,” the report said. Requests were received from 11 organizations, including three Israeli ones, and the Secretariat decided to fund nine of them, including two Israeli groups – B’Tselem and BTS.

But the money was intended for “monitoring and documentation” of alleged violations by one side only – Israel. That’s crystal clear from the report’s summary of its emergency grantees’ “achievements”: Not one of the nine says a word about the massive Palestinian violations of international humanitarian law.

The section on Breaking the Silence is particularly blatant. The Secretariat would have considered its money well spent, the report declared, had BTS managed to scrounge up even a single anti-Israel testimony from Israeli soldiers:

Some Thoughts on ‘Jewish Terrorism’

...The real connection between the two events is therefore a rottenness not in Israeli society but in the commentariat, which persists in pretending that Arab violence represents nothing but isolated whim and that Jewish violence by lone individuals or tiny groups is demonstrative of some elemental malevolence in the Jewish State. If these commentators were honest, they would find that the bigotry they see in the attacks is no less present in their reactions.

Jonathan Neumann..
Times of Israel..
11 August '15..

The recent immolation of an Arab infant and the injury, even fatal, of other members of his family when their house was set alight by Jewish “price taggers” venting their grievances against other parties, is deplorable. The fact that it took place in the same week as the monstrous Samir Kuntar was reportedly assassinated by the Israeli Air Force infuses the symbolism of the episode with even greater poignancy.

However, the commentary on the attack – and the responses have been multitudinous in number but uniform in substance – has been illuminating. Contrast the reaction to this incident with those typically engendered by Arab terrorism, and a rank, if also comic, hypocrisy is evident. For one thing, this attack was universally designated as Jewish terrorism. Muslim terrorism, by contrast, is never so described, for the motivation is never Muslim but a “distortion of Islam” and it is never terrorism but, at best, “militancy”. One might ask why this attack is not excused as a “distortion of Judaism” and mere “militancy” too.

Behind the diminution from terrorism to militancy is a tacit acceptance of the legitimacy of the act. So whereas the response to this attack is untempered condemnation, by contrast in the case of Arab terrorism the condemnation is mitigated; the common response is: “We condemn these acts in the strongest terms, but we also have to look beyond the attacks to ask why the perpetrators felt the need to carry them out.”

Looking beyond means looking to justify. How, then, is Arab terror justified? Either American/Western or Israeli foreign policy is blamed, with Arabs being portrayed as having legitimate gripes and, without recourse to conventional armaments and warfare, understandably resort to “militancy” to try to force a change. Or economic factors are blamed, the argument being that if only the murderers and suicide bombers had greater economic and employment opportunities, they would not be so desperate as to commit such heinous acts. Obviously these purported rationales are absurd: the first adds nothing to the debate over the acceptability of terrorism in principle and the second is patently unfounded (Osama bin Laden and Yasser Arafat could be accused of many things, but pauperism is not among them).

Yet when it comes to price tagging, nobody is interested in asking similar questions. One might suggest, if flippantly, that adverse American/Western and at times even Israeli foreign policy toward the settlements is the reason this small number of settlers feels the need to resort to violence – indeed, the settlers in general are undoubtedly the most vilified demographic in the world. Or perhaps one might argue that the rising boycott movement, ostensibly focused on the settlements, is making economic life there difficult hence a few settlers are predictably lashing out. These arguments are, of course, no less and no more spurious in this case as when applied to Arab transgressions. But it remains remarkable, if unsurprising, that whereas so many hurry to the defence of Arab murderers, conjuring rationalisations however preposterous, Jewish murderers are not granted the same indulgence.

BTW, Iran is Also Funding Hamas Preparations for War

...That means that contrary to Kerry’s belief about Iran having no plans in place to eliminate Israel, the entire process that will unfold from the deal is part and parcel of just such a plan. The only difference is that unlike past efforts, what will follow will happen while it has become America’s diplomatic and business partner.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
11 August '15..

When asked repeatedly by Republicans about Iran’s repeated threats to destroy Israel during Congressional testimony about the Iran nuclear deal, Secretary of State John Kerry sighed and looked at his questioners the way an exasperated teacher regards dumb students. Yes, he admitted, they say that but he explained patiently, he’s seen no evidence of them planning anything to put that into effect. Kerry repeated that answer, though no doubt without the look of disdain on his face, to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg saying “I haven’t seen anything that says to me” that their “ideological confrontation with Israel at this moment” [my emphasis] will “translate into active steps.” For all intents and purposes, President Obama says the same thing when he dismisses threats to Israel from Iran’s Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even if he just published a book outlining his plans. But, as Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency made public today, Iran is taking active steps toward war with Israel. The Israelis revealed that information obtained from a prisoner as well as from other sources showed that Iran is taking an active role in allowing Hamas to rebuild its military infrastructure as well as terror tunnels aimed at facilitating murder and kidnapping. Though the administration pretends that its negotiations with Iran are proof that the Islamist regime is moderating, evidence on the ground shows that its role as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror is unchanged. So, too, is its role in aiding the ongoing war on Israel’s existence.

As Haaretz reports:

During his interrogation, [Hamas operative Ibrahim] Sha’er also told of the links between Iran and Hamas, under which Iran has transferred military support into the Gaza Strip to strengthen the organization. The Iranians provide funds, advanced weaponry and electronic equipment such as equipment for disrupting radio communications to bring down Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles over Gaza, Sha’er told the Shin Bet. Iran has also trained Gaza fighters in the use of hang gliders for the purpose of penetrating into Israel, he said.

Perhaps to Obama and Kerry, these efforts should be considered minor annoyances to Israel. After all, what possible impact can terror attacks or giving Hamas the ability to wage and sustain a new war against Israel have to do with Israel’s existence? The Israeli military is strong and presumably is capable of dealing with anything that Hamas can come up with. Perhaps, the same is true of Hezbollah, which even Kerry admitted to Goldberg, had 80,000 rockets pointed at Israel.

A step closer to making the PA unable to keep funding its terror addiction

...Back in 2011, Palestinian Media Watch presented data to US Congressional lawmakers showing the monthly PA outlay on salaries to convicted and imprisoned terrorists came to more than $5 million per month. Assume it has not shrunk since then, and we are talking of about $65 million per year at least. Now terminate that illegal and immoral policy immediately and the PA will have been able to set aside enough in the next decade to satisfy its liability under the verdict. (But holding breaths would probably be a mistake.) The day their financial condition renders them unable to keep making those payments (may it come soon!) will be one of celebration for those Palestinian Arabs who understand the corrosive effect on their lives of the Arafat/Abbas/Hamas circles' addiction to terror.

Aftermath of a January 27, 2002 human bomb
attack on central Jerusalem's Jaffa Road,
directly across the street from the Sbarro pizzeria, 
[Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
25 February '15..

Many readers will already know about the major legal victory ["Palestinian Groups Are Found Liable at Manhattan Terror Trial"] achieved on Monday when the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable by a jury in Federal District Court, Manhattan, for the roles they played in knowingly supporting six terror attacks in the Jerusalem, Israel, area between 2002 and 2004.

A relevant terrorism law provides for the automatic tripling of the $218.5 million damages awarded by the jury. (The plaintiffs’ attorney sought an order of $350 million.) So the defendants are ordered to pay $655.5 million. According to the New York Times report,

In at least two previous cases, in which judges entered default judgments against them for more than $100 million, the groups reached confidential settlements, court records show.

So there's some history of extracting money from them. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that if the Palestinian Arab entities fail to pay, the groups’ assets can be seized in the United States and elsewhere.

This case was filed by the plaintiffs in 2004. A decade is a long time for a case to run its course, but the likelihood is there will be still more delays before the court-ordered damages are collected. To no one's great surprise, the PA have said they will appeal. Mahmoud Khalifa, their deputy minister of information, says the PA are

"confident that we will prevail, as we have faith in the U.S. legal system and are certain about our common sense belief and our strong legal standing. This case is just the latest attempt by hard-line antipeace factions in Israel to use and abuse the U.S. legal system to advance their narrow political and ideological agenda..." [New York Times]

But meanwhile, it's clear that several things of enduring importance have been achieved.

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