As EU Funds Palestinian Terrorists, Holland Says "No."
by Abigail R. Esman • Jul 18, 2014 at 6:13 pm
For seven years now, the European Union has paid regular salaries to Palestinian terrorists serving time in Israeli prisons for murder. The way it works is simple: the more Jews each terrorist murders, the harsher the sentence; the harsher the sentence, the higher the pay. It's a repulsive system, rewarding Jew-killers for the lives they take, and paying financial reward to terrorism.
Now the Dutch, at least, have had enough of it. Earlier this month, Holland's Parliament passed a motion to end subsidies to the Palestinian Authority, which had openly used these funds to provide financial rewards to former officials convicted of terrorism – including, as one Dutch report pointed out, the murder "of a Dutch family with three young children in a pizzeria in Jerusalem in 2001."
Noted the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, citing the Dutch Telegraaf newspaper, "The Netherlands gives $88 million annually to the Palestinian Authority in addition to about $24 million that it donates to UNRWA."
That this is now coming to an end is laudable. But what about the rest of the European Union?
According to a document issued by the EU Representative of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, "The EU is the largest provider of aid to the oPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] with an annual average of €480 million since 2007. Since 1994, the EU has committed approximately €5 billion [roughly U.S. $6.75 billion] in assistance to Palestinians." Of this, and through what is known as the PEGASE Direct Financial Support program, "The EU makes annual contributions to the PA's expenditure for salaries and pensions."
But the "salaries" the PA pays to its officials (along with social support such as health insurance) includes payments to those who are not working, according to the European Court of Auditors. Many of these, Israeli officials say, are serving time for terrorist activity.
The PA itself makes no secret of this. According to Palwatch:
"In April 2011, the Palestinian Authority Registry published a Government Resolution granting all Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israel for security and terror-related offenses a monthly salary from the PA (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 15, 2011). This new resolution, called PA Government Resolution of 2010, numbers 21 and 23, formalized what has long been a PA practice ...
According to the PA definition, more than 4,500 Palestinian prisoners (as of December 2012) serving time for terror-related offenses are recipients of PA salaries. This means that Palestinians convicted of crimes such as theft do not receive a salary, but Hamas and Fatah terrorist murderers do."
According to the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), of the €2.9 billion that the EU has provided the Palestinian Territories since 2007, €1.5 billion has directly subsidized these salaries. And, notes the Wall Street Journal, "These salaries are up to five times higher than the average salary in the West Bank."
Moreover, as Dutch blogger Filantropius points out, "payouts to jihadists in Syria who attack Christians and Shiites have long since been stopped. But still we go on paying the ones who kill the Jews."
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