On September 16, at a shopping mall south of Jerusalem, a Palestinian teenager fatally stabbed Ari Fuld, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel and father of four. After his assailant stabbed him in the back, Fuld pursued and fired at him before falling to the ground. His attacker was arrested, but Fuld was soon pronounced dead.
In keeping with the Palestinian Authority’s practice, the family of the murderer, Khalil Yusef Ali Jabarin, is eligible to receive a monthly stipend. The PA routinely pays the families of those who murder Israelis and maintains a “Martyrs’ Fund” for that purpose (though this “martyr” is still very much alive). Soon after Fuld was murdered, according to one report, the PA transferred $3,350 to the assailant’s family.
A Palestinian Authority prisoner affairs’ spokesman denied that Jabarin’s family had already been paid, but told the Times of Israel that the family “would be eligible to receive a monthly salary of NIS 1,400 ($390), if their son is not freed by Israel.” “We are not bashful or secretive about our support for our prisoners,” he said. According to the Israeli defense ministry, the PA paid out nearly $350 million dollars in this manner in 2017.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas pays lip service to nonviolence and says (when in the right company) that violence can’t lead to peace. Yet his government openly funds the families of kids who kill Jews, a policy Abbas vocally supports. His political rivals from Hamas pay no homage to nonviolence, and they simply praised Jabarin’s attack.
In March, Congress passed and the president signed the Taylor Force Act, which restricts U.S. funding of the Palestinian Authority as long as it continues paying stipends to families of convicted terrorists.
It was a necessary step. But the foreign policy establishment in Washington and some in the mainstream news media are criticizing the Trump administration for taking the Israeli side in ongoing disputes—it has sharply decreased funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, a welfare agency that promotes the ludicrous idea that millions of Palestinians are “refugees”; banished the PLO’s office in Washington; and moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The death of Ari Fuld reminds us that the Palestinian Authority isn’t so much a legitimate government as an official death cult. No government that urges the young to ruin their lives by murdering the innocent can be trusted to act in good faith.
