U.S. Tax Dollars Still Funding TerroristsIT’S WORTH CONSIDERING
The Palestinian Authority, which has jurisdiction over Palestinian cities in the West Bank, has come under fire lately for its restrictions on anything resembling a “free press.” One report tells how PA police have been aggressively monitoring the Facebook profiles of ordinary Palestinians in an attempt to uncover and stop any comments critical of the PA. Some Palestinians have been warned to write only good things about the PA or they would be arrested and/or fired from their jobs. Anyone keeping up with the exploits of the PA over the years should not be shocked by the revelation. What is shocking to many Americans is the fact that the U.S. government is backing the PA and the tactics of the PA police by funding the PA’s general budget.

But wait, there’s more. You may remember an article I posted last year regarding our PA aid money going to terrorists in prison. According to a 2011 report from an Israeli research institute, as of August of that year, the Palestinian Authority had spent more than $5 million per month in salaries for 5,500 convicted and alleged terrorists imprisoned in Israel (despite supposed “rules and restrictions” regarding U.S. funding to the PA). Palestinian Media Watch released a report last year that found that all Palestinian and Israeli minority Arabs in Israeli prisons for terror acts had been “legally” receiving a monthly salary from the PA under a law passed last April that simply “formalizes what has long been a PA practice.”

According to the report, by funding the PA, the U.S. is paying the salaries of terrorist murderers in prison and funding the glorification and role modeling of terrorists.” To add insult to injury, the average salary of these prisoners is greater than Palestinian civil servants – prisoners on average receive 3,200 shekels a month in Israeli compared with 2,800 for civil servants.

AS I SEE IT
While the prisoner payoff is “old news,” it hasn’t changed U.S. support for the PA. According to the report, the U.S. government provided nearly $600 million to the PA last year, including $225 million in direct budgetary assistance to the PA. Under a 2010 funding legislation that lays out the rules for supplying money to the West Bank and Gaza, the Secretary of State “shall take all appropriate steps to ensure that such assistance is not provided to or through any individual, private or government entity, or educational institution that the secretary knows or has reason to believe advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in, or has engaged in, terrorist activity.” Those who have confronted the State department regarding apparent violations have been stonewalled.

With our national debt growing each second, what possible justification could there be for continuing this aid?

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ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
All the waterfowl kept their eyes closed except for one. He was a Peking Duck.