The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has pointed to Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA)’s  glorification of a Jew-killing terrorist as further indication of the PA’s refusal to seek peace and end terrorism and as an additional reason for the swift passage of the Taylor Force Act. After a Palestinian terrorist, Nimr Mahmoud Ahmed Jamal, murdered an Israeli border policeman and two security guards in Har Adar, a township north of Jerusalem, before being killed himself, Fatah’s Nablus Branch gjlorified the attack with the following post:

“What is the homeland? It is the longing to die in order to return the right and the land that were stolen. A morning scented with the fragrance of the Martyrs (Shahids).” 

Also, Fatah’s official website honored the murderer by posting his picture, saying “The one who carried out the operation in Jerusalem [actually Har Adar, north of Jerusalem] is Martyr (Shahid) Nimr Mahmoud Ahmed Al-Jamal” (‘Fatah glorifies this morning’s murderer: “A morning scented with the fragrance of the Martyrs,”’ Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) bulletin, September 26, 2017).

The PA pays salaries and stipends to jailed Jew-killers and to their families if they have been killed in the course of committing terrorist acts. Accordingly, Jamal’s family will receive annual compensation for life of approximately $9,000, based on the PA’s sliding scale that adds extra funds for each wife and child of a dead or convicted terrorist. Jamal is reported to have had one wife and four children.

The Taylor Force Act, named after a US citizen and former US army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist during a visit to Israel, would curtail some US funding to the PA if the PA does not verifiably cease its routine practice of spending $355 million a year on salaries and pensions to Arab terrorists and families of Arab terrorists who murder Jews or Americans in Israel.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It is repulsive and sickening that Mahmoud Abbas’s PA receives any international funding at all while it glorifies terrorists and terrorism and incentivizes terrorism by paying rewards to the terrorists and their families for murdering Jews. 

“Any civilized society would ostracize and condemn terrorists and their foul deeds, not idolize, glorify and financially reward and incentivize them.

“As this latest incident of terror glorification by Abbas’ PA makes clear, the Taylor Force Act should be passed without delay so as to enable the PA to be financially penalized for promoting and exalting terrorism against Israelis.”