Israel, Trump and United Nations should boycott Abbas and PLO

[Published 11 March 2018]


Israel’s Prime Minister – Benjamin Netanyahu – has used his address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – to savage the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) policy that rewards Palestinian murderers of Israelis and other innocent civilians with lifetime payments.

Netanyahu’s PLO-onslaught in front of 18000 people attending the annual AIPAC Conference in Washington was unequivocal and unrelenting:

“But to get peace, to get peace President Abbas has to embrace peace and to stop supporting terror. Raise your hands high if you agree with me that President Abbas should stop paying terrorists who murder Jews. You know how much he pays? He pays about $350 million dollars a year to terrorists and their families, each year. That’s about a little less than 10% of the total Palestinian budget. That’s an incredible number. He pays Hakim Awad. Hakim Awad is the terrorist who murdered this beautiful family of Ehud and Ruth Fogel and their three children, including a 3 month-old baby girl, Hadas. So he pays Hakim Awad, this murderer, and over the lifetime of this killer, he will be receiving two million dollars.”

Hakim Awad - aged 18 – and his 19 years old cousin and accomplice Amjad Awad - each received five consecutive life sentences for murdering the five sleeping Fogel family members in March 2011.

Netanyahu’s attack on Abbas comes at a particularly sensitive time politically as:

1. President Trump mulls over the final details of his “ultimate deal” to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict

2. PLO chief – Mahmoud Abbas – has already signaled he will not enter into negotiations with Israel mediated by Trump

3. Abbas has called on the United Nations to convene an international peace conference by mid-2018 to accept the non-existent “State of Palestine” as a full UN member

4. The US Senate is currently considering the Taylor Force Act – overwhelmingly passed by the House in December 2017 - suspending US financial assistance to the PLO, and any successor or affiliated organizations until these payments are terminated. Taylor Force – a US citizen – was murdered on 8 March 2016 by a Palestinian Arab during a stabbing spree in Tel Aviv that also injured ten other people.

5. Israel’s Knesset has passed the first reading of a bill requiring such blood-money presently being paid to 35000 Palestinian families to be deducted from the US$2.1 billion in taxes and tariffs Israel presently collects for the PLO.

6. Abbas - 83 and in poor health – faces challengers to his leadership

Palestinian prisoners serving 20-30 year sentences for these murderous attacks reportedly receive a monthly US$3400 stipend for life.Those receiving a three-to-five-year sentence get a monthly wage of US$570. Palestinian prisoners who are married, have children, live in Jerusalem, or hold Israeli citizenship receive additional payments.

Trump called on Abbas to abandon this immoral and heinous policy during a joint press conference in Bethlehem in May 2017:

“Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded”

Just one month later Jared Kushner - Trump’s son-in-law and chief Middle East adviser - and Trump’s international negotiator Jason Greenblatt – met with Abbas in Ramallah.

According to reports in Arabic media, the Americans then allegedly watered down Trump’s demands – only wanting these payments stopped to some 600 prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli prisons.

Abbas defiantly rejected that proposal.

Abbas seems to believe he can publicly humiliate Trump and escape the consequences.

Monetary retaliation is a totally inadequate response to the indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians.

Israel, Trump and the United Nations should boycott Abbas and the PLO by terminating all diplomatic contact until their vile and repulsive “murder for money” policy is ended.

Obama - Confronting The Killing Culture In Palestine

[Published 17 March 2011]


The brutal murder of five members of the Fogel family including three children aged 11, 4 and 3 months - whilst asleep in their house - could only elicit the following pathetic response from President Obama:

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the murder of five Israelis in a terrorist attack in the northern West Bank, and we offer our condolences to their loved ones and to the Israeli people. There is no possible justification for the killing of parents and children in their home. We call on the Palestinian Authority to unequivocally condemn this terrorist attack and for the perpetrators of this heinous crime to be held accountable.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - in answer to Obama‘s statement - countered by stating:

“They [Israel] are now investigating and there’s no news about who perpetrated this crime. I don’t know why they are insisting on accusing the Palestinian people.”

Not a word of condemnation was uttered by Abbas against Palestinians who celebrated the Fogel family slaughter by handing out candies and sweets to a joyful crowd in Rafah after the news of the massacre became public. They are his people and Abbas should have been appalled at such behavior.

Obama’s call for the Palestinian Authority to unequivocally condemn the murders also received short shrift from Abbas - who reportedly told the Jerusalem Post that the international community must know that settlers are targeting villages, mosques, houses and olive trees every day - and was then quoted as saying:

“The international community and Israeli society need to know about these crimes because this is a crime and that is a crime too,”

There you have it - the slit throats of innocent men, women and children equated to vandalism of olive trees.

For Abbas there is no difference between murder and vandalism as he seeks international support for a Palestinian State within the 1949 armistice lines - without Israel‘s agreement. World leaders clamor in their droves to support him in this proposal that is contrary to international law as embodied in the Montevideo Convention.

There is a widespread culture calling for death to the Jews - and official support for that culture - rampant in Palestinian society as evidenced by the following:

1. Abbas - in January - allowed a presentation of $2000 to be awarded to the relatives of a Palestinian terrorist - reported as follows in Al-Hayat Al Jadida on 25 January:

“The governor of the Jenin district, Kadura Musa, has awarded a presidential grant to the family of the Shahid (Martyr), Khaldoun Najib Samoudy, during a visit that took place yesterday in the village of Al-Yamoun. The governor noted that the grant is financial aid in the amount of $2000 that the President [Mahmoud Abbas] is awarding to the relatives of the Shahid, who was recently killed as a Martyr at the Hamra checkpoint by the Israeli occupation forces”

2. Abbas was the President who did nothing to prevent the indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets, shells and mortars into Israeli civilian population centres from Gaza and the smuggling of weapons into Gaza prior to being deposed there by Hamas in 2007. Hamas continues to maintain its threat to rid the Middle East of Israel - ostensibly as the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people.

3. Both Abbas and Hamas leader - Ismail Haniyeh - head organizations whose Charters call for the elimination of the Jewish State and the denial of any right of statehood for Jews under the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

4. A Palestinian Authority TV tribute to “Martyrs” just three weeks ago included the terrorist who killed three Israelis in a 2002 terror attack in the same West Bank town of Itamar where the Fogel family was murdered.

The video was in honor of the anniversary of the founding of the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and was broadcast on PA TV several times daily for four days. It featured a collage with photographs labeled “Martyrs (Shahids) of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Nablus.” It included the picture of terrorist Habash Hanani, who in May 2002 entered Itamar and murdered three students in the local high school.

5. Abbas sanctioned the inauguration of a square in el-Bireh in March 2010 named after Dalal Maghreb - the Fatah woman who led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in which 37 Israeli civilians and an American photographer were killed, and 71 were wounded,

Three days later the Palestinian Authority launched a four day seminar named after Maghreb - called the “Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Camp,” in Jericho under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority’s Military Science Academy. Its main goal was to discuss the legislative and local elections in the PA territories.

Obama must surely express his abhorrence of such official incitement and extolling of the murder of innocent Jewish civilians and condemn such conduct as being reprehensible, immoral and absolute anathema in any society.

Abbas’s attempt to justify some kind of moral equivalence between land disputes and the murder of Jewish civilians - or to excuse those murders because of the failure to resolve the 130 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs - must be categorically rejected by President Obama.

The President must make it clear that this grossly immoral and heinous conduct and the culture that espouses and encourages it be ended - by publicly demanding that:

1. Abbas return to the negotiating table with Israel within fourteen days or understand that his failure to do so will result in America taking no further part in seeking to implement the Roadmap

2.Any attempt by the Palestinian Authority to circumvent such negotiations will be met with an American veto in the Security Council

3.Any further murders of Jewish civilians in the West Bank by Palestinians will result in America withholding or possibly withdrawing all financial aid and other support to the Palestinian Authority

Hopefully other leaders would be principled enough to follow President Obama’s lead in doing something constructive to try to end the culture that resulted in the murder of the Fogels and countless thousands of Jews before them - other than issuing bland condolences that serve no real purpose.

Such demands might just wipe the smirk off the Palestinian Authority officials laughing all the way to the bank to collect the hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid that continues to come their way.