On Thursday, the Trump administration said it will support a bill that would suspend America’s financial aid to the Palestinian Authority until it ends a longstanding practice of “pay to slay” which rewards Palestinians for killing Israelis and Americans.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has rejected the United States’ demand that they stop paying convicted Palestinian terrorists, labeling the request as “absurd.”
“The Trump administration strongly supports the Taylor Force Act, which is a consequence of Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization’s policy of paying terrorists and their families,” the State Department reportedly said.
According to the Associated Press, the State Department also noted that President Donald Trump “raised the need to end any part of this program that incentivizes violence against Israeli and American citizens with President Mahmoud Abbas last May in both Washington and Bethlehem.”
The Taylor Force Act was named after a former U.S. army officer who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in March 2016 while visiting Tel Aviv.
The PA rewards terrorists with up to $3,500 per month.
In May, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) wrote a letter to President Trump in which they detailed, “The Palestinian Authority spends around $300 million a year – about eight percent of its budget – paying salaries and benefits to convicted terrorists and their families, including to those who have killed Americans, such as U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force.”
Breitbart Jerusalem has documented several examples of the PA’s attempts to incite violence against Israel through its official media and educational mediums. Breitbart Jerusalem Chief Aaron Klein noted:
- A leading Islamic cleric appointed by Abbas claimed in a PA TV sermon this week that Israel is waging war against the Muslim world with drugs and “sex mania.”
- Official PA TV broadcast a special edition of a TV show from the family home of a terrorist who murdered his Israeli employer 15 years ago, referring to him as a “hero” and a “source of pride for Palestine.”
- On Abbas’s Fatah TV, a Palestinian woman declared that the real meaning of “The Promised Land” is the place where Allah will fulfill his promise to exterminate all the Jews.
- Abbas’s Fatah party published an anti-Semitic cartoon comparing Israel to the Islamic State terror group.
- An official PA daily newspaper published a cartoon last week depicting the message, “Water the soil with your blood.”
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.