Category: Middle East

On the 20th anniversary of the suicide bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, Palestine continues to pay off the terrorists

August 9, 2021 • 11:00 am

I’ve talked several times about the Palestinian Authority’s “pay for slay” program (here, here, here, and here), in which Palestinians who commit terrorist acts against Israelis, whether or not they survive, are paid at a substantial rate, and paid so long as they’re in jail. If the killer dies, the money goes to the terrorists’ families. Further, those terrorists who eventually get out of jail are given good jobs by the Palestinian Authority.

This program, odious and reprehensible as it is, seems to be largely unknown (or ignored) by critics of Israel. Perhaps it’s ignored because it’s so much in conflict with the image of “poor downtrodden Palestinians”. After all, what would we think if, say, the Canadian government rewarded their citizens who crossed the border to kill Americans? The fact is that Palestinian authorities pay their citizens to murder Israelis, and that this cruel fact is largely ignored. How can Ben & Jerry, for example, refuse to let Jews sell their ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories while not boycotting a government that not only pays for murder, but deliberately fires rockets at civilians—a war crime.

I write about this again because the Left needs constant reminding of the double standards they apply to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, standards which are hypocritical. As someone called it, this is the “bigotry of low expectations”: different groups are held to different moral standards.

And I write about this again because today it’s been exactly twenty years since Palestinian terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad blew up the Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem (August 9, 2001), killing 15 people (five were members of a single family), and injuring 130. Here is a short video about the massacre, horrendous by any standard. (Click on “Watch on YouTube”).

Of course under the “Pay for Slay” program, the Palestinians reward living or dead terrorists who murder Israelis by giving them and their families money (and jobs if they survive and get out of jail). According to Palestinian Media Watch, this money has now added up to$1,183,257. Click on the screenshot:

An excerpt:

As a reward for carrying out the attack, each month the Palestinian Authority pays a total of US$8,006 (25,800 shekels) to the imprisoned terrorists and the families of the dead terrorists, who were involved in the attack.

By now, the PA has paid Abdullah Barghouti, the terrorist who built the bomb and is responsible for the murder of 67 people in various attacks, a cumulative sum of US$285,571 (921,500 shekels). Every month, the PA pays him a salary of US$2,255 (7,300 shekels). In addition, the PA has paid the family of the suicide bomber US$68,498 (221,400 shekels). Every month the PA continues to pay his family an allowance of US$432 (1,400 shekels). The minimum wage in the PA is 1,450 shekels/month (US$44).

Barghouti is serving 67 life-term sentences in an Israeli prison, but he and his family have gotten nearly $300,000 in blood money.

The monthly PA salary payments to the imprisoned terrorists are not just a whim. Rather, they are codified in the PA Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners, No. 19 of 2004 and regulations promulgated pursuant to the law.

Thus, “Government Decision No. (23) for 2010 regarding a regulation of payment of a monthly salary to the prisoner” sets the salary scale the PA pays to imprisoned terrorists,  including additional benefits for married terrorists, terrorists who have children, and terrorists who are residents or citizens of the State of Israel.

In addition to the issue of payments, section 4 of the Law of Prisoners stipulates that the PA will not sign a peace agreement “without the release of all prisoners”, including terrorists like Abdullah Barghouti and hundreds of other terrorists like him, who are responsible for killing thousands of people.

One of the terrorists who survived, but was caught, was Ahlam Tamimi, a 20 year old female student who escorted the explosive carrier to the restaurant. She got 16 life sentences but was released in 2011 in exchange  for a kidnapped Israeli soldier. After the solder was in captivity for five years, a deal was brokered whereby he was traded for 1,027 Hamas and Palestinian prisoners by Israel. That’s always the way these negotiations go: a gazillion terrorists freed for one Israeli.

At any rate, Tamimi is quoted in Facebook:

In an interview which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on 12 July 2012 (as translated by MEMRI), Tamimi described the reaction of other Palestinians immediately after the bombing:

Afterwards, when I took the bus, the Palestinians around Damascus Gate [in Jerusalem] were all smiling. You could sense that everybody was happy. When I got on the bus, nobody knew that it was me who had led [the suicide bomber to the target]… I was feeling quite strange, because I had left [the bomber] ‘Izz Al-Din behind, but inside the bus, they were all congratulating one another. They didn’t even know one another, yet they were exchanging greetings…While I was sitting on the bus, the driver turned on the radio. But first, let me tell you about the gradual rise in the number of casualties. While I was on the bus and everybody was congratulating one another…

After hearing an initial report that “three people were killed” in the bombing, Tamimi stated:

I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said “three dead,” I said: ‘Allah be praised’…Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn’t. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding.

Remember, these are civilians in a pizza parlor, and this is the kind of policy that the Left is implicitly supporting (or chooses to ignore) when it valorizes Palestine.

From the NYT: click on screenshot to read

Let me rephrase that: “We’re Ben & Jerry. Men of Ice Cream, Men of Hypocrisy.”

Palestinian Authority bans LGBTQ organizing in West Bank

August 20, 2019 • 9:00 am

The first headline below (h/t: cesar) appeared in the National Review. Don’t like the site or trust it because it’s a conservative website? Well, do you think you’d see this in the mainstream of Leftist media? Actually, the New York Times has a very small article on it, which at least notes that “Homosexuality is taboo in Arab countries, many of which criminalize it.”

But don’t worry—there’s more! (Click on screenshots to read the articles).

How about Haaretz, a left-wing Israeli paper often critical of the Israeli government?:

From the left-leaning Times of Israel:

Or how about PinkNews, a pro-gay website in the UK? (It’s woke, and even accuses Israel of “pinkwashing“.)

Here’s part of the story from Haaretz:

Palestinian Authority police targeted the Palestinian LGBTQ community last week, calling on citizens to report “suspicious” activity and vowing to break off community events, even though same-sex relations are not illegal in the West Bank.

The statement the Palestinian police released specifically targeted the al-Qaws organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, after it announced it will hold a “queer camp” at the end of August near the West Bank city of Nablus. According to the organization, the event was to provide an opportunity for young Palestinians to discuss their sexuality and experiences.

The police spokesman said such an event hurts the values of Palestinian society and is organized by “suspicious figures attempting to provoke and harm the Palestinian social fabric.” The spokesman added that the police will pursue the organizers, although it does not have concrete information regarding the place of the event.

. . . Al-Qaws claims that the backlash is a “direct response to the dismantling of societal denial regarding the existence of LGBTQ Palestinians.” Last month, the organization held a demonstration in Haifa, following the attempted murder of a gay teen from Tamra by his brother.

Note that the demonstration was in Israel, not in the Palestinian Territories. It would have been suicidal to demonstrate anywhere where Hamas or the PA has control.  From PinkNews:

The gathering, which was supposed to be held in Nablus, a city in the northern West Bank, was a “queer camp”.

According to the Times of Israel, it would’ve provided “a place for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth from Palestine to meet, learn about the basic concepts of gender pluralism and explore the different sides of our human sexuality”.

Al-Qaws operates in the West Bank and among Arab-Israelis. It was founded in 2001 with a stated goal of “fighting for vibrant Palestinian cultural and social change, building LGBTQ communities and promoting new ideas about the role of gender and sexual diversity in political activism, civil society institutions, media, and everyday life”.

The PA also said it is investigating those involved in organising with Al-Qaws and will arrest those who are caught violating the law.

It urged Palestinians to report to the police any violation of the law they witness.

 

As for the Arab stabbed for being gay? Here’s from the Jewish Press on July 28:

An Arab man who stabbed and severely wounded his homosexual teenage brother on Friday afternoon outside an LGBT youth hostel in Tel Aviv is still at large and the police are still searching for him.

The attacker stabbed the 16-year-old boy in the chest and legs and fled the scene, in an apparent attempt at a family honor killing. The victim told the paramedics that the attacker was his brother

The stabbing took place outside of the Beit Dror center, where the victim was living. The center is a temporary shelter providing home conditions for LGBT members who are endangered in their homes.

Paramedics rushed the victim to Ichilov hospital in serious condition, where he underwent surgery that stabilized his condition.

The victim is from the Arab town of Tamra and has been under attack by his family for being gay. The conservative Arab society often does not accept gay people and often hounds them.

You should have gotten my point already, if you haven’t grasped it before. First, homosexuality is demonized and punished in Palestine, and gay organizing or being openly gay subjects you to to arrest or even honor killing by your family—killing that can even target Israeli Arabs.  This, of course, is part of the general Muslim sentiment that homosexual behavior is immoral (in most Muslim-majority countries surveyed by Pew, more than 80% of people surveyed say homosexuality is “morally wrong”). Further, it is the Palestinian Authority, which rules the Arab West Bank, that is cracking down, and they’re seen as a more liberal and tolerant organization than Hamas, which runs Gaza.

I won’t belabor the hypocrisy of saying that Israel is an “apartheid state” when gays aren’t demonized there, but celebrated, while giving Palestine a pass despite its execrable treatment of both gays and women. (Israeli treatment of women, of course, is far more enlightened than in Palestine). As Amnesty International’s 2018 report on Palestine reports:

Women in both the West Bank and Gaza faced discrimination and violence. Courts in Gaza continued to hand down death sentences. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people were subjected to arbitrary arrest and ill-treatment.

If Israel did this (they’ve imposed capital punishment exactly once since the state was founded: on Adolf Eichmann), it would make headlines in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, and, of course HuffPost. But when Palestine practices “apartheid” against gays and women, well, as they say, “crickets”.

It would be nice to see an article by a paper like the NYT about how the mainstream press has a policy of demonizing Israel while promoting Palestine, but it will be a cold day in July when that happens. Such an article has, however, been written. It’s by Matti Friedman, a former correspondent for the Associated Press, it’s in Tablet, and it would behoove you to read it (click on the screenshot).

Perhaps someone should ask Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to compare and contrast the treatment of LGBTQ people in Palestine versus Israel.

UPDATE: I’ve been informed that Omar has in fact tweeted twice about this. In the first one, she simply ignores the LGBTQ issue and brings up Israel’s transgressions again:

In the second, she says that suppressing LGBTQ organizing activity is an infringement of human rights, but doesn’t condemn Palestine, even though she’s already condemned Israel.

Omar is a master of this kind of doublespeak: pretending to criticize actions of Muslims or of Palestine while at the same time managing to double down on Israel. This is exactly how she acted when the anti-Semitic resolution of the House came up. Why are people taken in by this?

h/t: cesar