Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gives almost $42,000 to the family of a Palestinian terrorist who brutally stabbed two Israelis to death in 2015.
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
On October 3, 2015, a Palestinian terrorist attacked a Jewish family in Jerusalem’s Old City, killing the father and a Jewish bystander who rushed to help, and wounding the mother and her young infant as Arab residents watched and either did nothing or laughed, while telling the mother to “drop dead.”
Police shot and killed the murderer Muhannad Halabi, 19. After an investigation, his home was demolished, which is standard protocol when for terrorists who kill Israelis.
Under the Palestinian pay-for-slay policy, the killer’s family receives a monthly cash payment because Halabi was a “hero” resisting “the occupation.”
And this weekend it was announced that the Palestinian Authority donated an extra 30,000 Jordanian Dinars ($42,000) to the Halabi family to help them buy an even nicer home to live in, the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch reported.
It is the first reported payment to a terrorist’s family since President Joe Biden took office in January and comes as the Biden administration has resumed sending hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians, despite American laws that restrict aid while the pay-for-slay program operates.
Those aid payments must comply with the Taylor Force Act, a U.S. law that makes pay-for-slay illegal, and the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA), which prohibits aid to entities that fund terrorism.
The Taylor Force Act was passed in a majority bi-partisan vote by Congress in 2018 to halt American aid to the PA unless it stopped the pay-for-slay program. It is named for Taylor Force, a young American graduate of West Point who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in 2016 while in Israel as part of his graduate studies.
Force’s attacker was killed by police, but the Palestinian terrorist’s family is still receiving monthly payments because their “hero” son was killed by Israeli police during an act of “resistance.”
Returning to the October 2015 attack in Jerusalem, Halabi killed Aharon Banita and Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi who came to his aid. Banita’s wife Adele was so seriously wounded she could not attend her husband’s funeral because she was being treated in the hospital.
“For the PA, murderer Halabi is a hero,” Palestinian Media Watch Senior Analyst Nan Jacques Zilberdik said Monday. “Right after Halabi’s murderous attack, PMW documented the PA and Fatah’s praise and admiration for the murderer. The gestures of appreciation of the killings included naming a street and sports tournaments after the murderer, bringing soil from the Al-Aqsa Mosque to his grave, and repeated honor and approval expressed by top PA and Fatah officials.”
PMW monitors Palestinian discourse in Arabic and translates it into English, so that policy makers and the public get a true picture of Palestinian policy and climate.
A few months after the Old City attack, Fatah leader Jibril Rajoub said in a official Palestinian television interview that he and the Fatah movement “bless and encourage” Palestinian killers of Israelis. Such murderers are “heroes and a crown on the head of every Palestinian.”