The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), a prominent group associated with the right-wing of the Zionist movement, criticized former vice president and presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s suggestion to resume US funding of the Palestinian Authority (PA), arguing that it violates American law, according to a Cleveland Jewish News report. 

“Money is fungible. Biden’s stated intention to resume sending US tax dollars to the PA will enable the PA to finance terrorism, and the murder and maiming of more innocent Jews and Americans,” said ZOA national president Morton Klein and ZOA chair Mark Levenson in a statement.

The organization added that Biden’s proposal may be “partially illegal” under the conditions of the Taylor Force Act, passed in the US Congress in 2018 following the death of US Army officer Taylor Force, who was killed while visiting Israel as a tourist in a stabbing terrorist attack in Jaffa in March 2016.The Act ended US funding of the PA due to the latter’s “pay for slay” policy of financially compensating the families of those involved in terror attacks against Israelis and others. 

“It is utterly immoral to fund the PA while it continues to incite hatred and terror; glorify Jew-killers in the media; and name PA schools, streets, government buildings, public squares and sports teams in honor of terrorists,” Klein and Levenson’s statement said.

In the previous week, Biden said that he may “reopen the US consulate in East Jerusalem, find a way to reopen the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, and resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump administration stopped.”

This article was originally published in The Jerusalem Post.