Do US taxpayers know that Palestinian terrorists are on their payroll?
While much of the nation was engaged in grilling various forms of meat in public parks and enjoying an otherwise peaceful Independence Day earlier this week, one immigrant family was busy setting an example of the true meaning of patriotism.
At a ceremony held in Jerusalem, Staff Sergeant Eliezer Menashe ascended the podium as his relatives looked on, and was granted a Medal of Excellence by President Reuven Rivlin along with more than 100 other IDF soldiers.
But unlike the rest of the fine young men and women being honored, most of whom were born and raised in the Jewish state, young Eliezer’s journey to that dais is one that began more than 5,000 km. away in a remote village along India’s northeastern border with Myanmar. And what a journey it has been. Eliezer and his family are members of the Bnei Menashe, an ancient community that is descended from the tribe of Manasseh, one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel that was exiled by the Assyrian empire more than 27 centuries ago at the end of the First Temple period.
Despite being cut off from the rest of the Jewish people for so long, the Bnei Menashe nourished the dream of return, longing to come home to Zion and take part in her rebuilding.
And that is precisely what Eliezer and his family have been doing since the moment they set foot on the soil of Israel, as he and most of his five other siblings have gone above and beyond the call of duty.
Eliezer’s older brother, Yehoshua, was the first to reach Israel, in the year 2000. After studying at a Jerusalem yeshiva, he was determined to serve in an IDF combat unit. Already in his mid-20s, the army looked askance at him, offering to take him in for a grand total of just three months.
Although he hadn’t been in the country very long, Yehoshua had learned a thing or two about how to be assertive. So he marched down to the IDF recruitment center in Jerusalem and asked to be taken to the commander’s office, even though he did not have an appointment.
Not wishing to be bothered with a stubborn immigrant who insisted on volunteering for more than the army was asking of him, the commander refused to see him. So Yehoshua did the unthinkable: he stood outside the door and would not budge. Hour after hour passed, but the young man would not move.
Surely, the commander must have thought, he will eventually give up and just go away so I can enjoy my army-issued Turkish coffee in peace.
But after five or six hours had passed, it was clear that Yehoshua had no intention of leaving empty-handed. So in the end, it was the hardened officer who capitulated, and Yehoshua got his wish: he passed all the necessary physical exams and became a combat soldier in the 51st battalion of the Golani brigade, despite being seven or eight years older than everyone else in the unit.
In 2005, thanks to Shavei Israel, the organization I chair, Yehoshua’s parents were able to make aliya and be reunited with their son, and the rest of his siblings followed. Tragically, his father passed away in 2008, but he did merit to live to see his children growing up in the land of his ancestors and defending the country from its foes.
Inspired by Yehoshua’s example, his sister Avishag and brother Oz told the army that they too wished to enlist, even though they were 28 and 29 years old at the time. But that hardly proved to be an impediment, as Oz battled his way into the elite Sayeret Golani special forces unit, while Avishag became the Bnei Menashe community’s first female IDF combat soldier.
So when Eliezer, the youngest member of the family, received his commendation on Independence Day, it was a moment rich in symbolism and suffused with Jewish pride. He too serves in the Golani infantry brigade, where he obviously excels at his duties, and will undoubtedly motivate others to follow in his steps.
Over the past 15 years, Shavei Israel has assisted more than 3,000 Bnei Menashe to make aliya from India, including a group of 102 immigrants who arrived in February. We have permission to bring an additional 600 people by the end of the year and with God’s help we will do so. But there are still another 7,000 Bnei Menashe in India who want to make aliya and many have been waiting years to do so.
As Yehoshua Menashe said to me, “Isn’t it ironic how the Israeli bureaucracy places so many obstacles in the way of the Bnei Menashe who wish to come here, and yet we produce so many people who give their all to this country and are staunchly loyal citizens?” Yehoshua couldn’t be more correct. The story of the Menashe family, like that of the Bnei Menashe community as a whole, is one of struggle and faith, of overcoming enormous bureaucratic challenges and cultural gaps, to reclaim their rightful place among the Jewish people.
It is a tale of national service and unwavering Zionist commitment and a healthy reminder that even in an age of growing cynicism, there are still many young patriots and pioneers willing to risk everything so that the Jewish people can live in safety.
I join the rest of the nation in saluting Eliezer Menashe and his family and I pray that one day soon, all the rest of the Bnei Menashe will be allowed to join them here in our Land. Let us do everything in our power to make that happen, not merely for their sake, but for ours too.
The writer is founder and chairman of Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), which reaches out to lost tribes and other far-flung Jewish communities and assists them with their return to Israel and the Jewish People.
Iwonder what the reaction of steel-workers in Pennsylvania, coal miners in West Virginia, and produce workers in California would be to the news that their tax money is directly funding Palestinian terrorism.
It’s been known for some time now that the Palestinian Authority celebrates terrorism and lionizes those who perpetrate it. There was no secret made of the heroic homecoming offered by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to freed Palestinian terrorists in 2013, in which he triumphantly held up the hands of brutal thugs such as Abu Musa Atia, who axed Isaac Rotenberg, a 67-year-old survivor of the Sobibor death camp, to death at a construction site.
As for those terrorists who never made it home, they have streets, schools, parks, and competitions named after them. Dalal Mughrabi was just 19 when she led the most barbaric and deadly terrorist attack in modern Israeli history, known as the “Coastal Road Massacre,” in 1978. Infiltrating Israel by boat, the young woman hijacked a bus and began to systematically murder those inside. As the bus careened down the highway, Mughrabi and her accomplices threw the corpses of their victims out of the back door of the bus, so as to obstruct the pursuing security forces. By the time police were able to take over the bus and eliminate the terrorists, she had murdered 38 Israelis, among them 13 children, seven of whom were under the age of six.
Her reception in Palestinian government and society was applause and veneration. Two girls’ high schools, a computer center, a soccer championship, two summer camps and a public square have been named after her. As it turned out, one of those schools – a girl’s school in Hebron – is being directly funded by USAID.
But now we’ve learned something new. The PA does not only celebrate terrorism, but actually funds it. And they do so with American taxpayers’ money.
The facts are straightforward. Every year the United States gives nearly half a billion dollars to Abbas and the PA. About four-fifths of that money is used to provide the payroll for Palestinian terrorists who have murdered Israelis and Americans.
Among those murdered in the most recent wave of terrorism was Taylor Force, a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point and a veteran of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist during a visit to Israel. The man who killed him, the 21-year-old Bashar Masalha, was later killed by police. But his family now receives a monthly stipend of $3,500 – many times the average monthly Palestinian income – all courtesy of the PA, and by extension, their American benefactors.
The brutal thug I mentioned earlier, the one who axed a Holocaust survivor to death: he’s getting that payment, too. Forty-two thousand dollars a year.
These payments are not even hidden, rather they’re stipulated by Palestinian law. Just last year, Abbas – who was in Washington yesterday for a meeting with President Donald Trump – even re-signed this pay-for-slay policy into Palestinian law. The law, moreover, dictates that the deadlier an attack, the richer the reward. The monthly income received by imprisoned terrorists and their families is directly proportional to the length of the prison sentences that they receive in Israeli courts, or – in other words – the number of people they manage to maim and kill.
There are currently two Palestinian government bodies, each with special office space and hundreds of civil servants, dedicated to dispersing funds to terrorists and their families. In the past year, these funds allotted $315 million, or 8% of the PA’s total budget, to this twisted system of terrorist welfare.
To put it simply: if you blow up children, disembowel pregnant women, or stab Jews and American tourists to death, you are legally entitled to an official Palestinian government stipend for the rest of your life. And even if you don’t survive the attack, your family will thank you. They’ll get the money in your stead.
This is all official Palestinian government policy. To call it abhorrent is an understatement. But far worse, it makes every American taxpayer complicit in acts of terrorism.
That this has gone on since the Oslo accords of the 1990s is shocking enough. But even more surprising is how successive American administrations have done nothing to stop it. But President Trump can. From Jared Kushner to Steve Bannon, from Jason Greenblatt to David Friedman, Trump has surrounded himself with tremendous friends and defenders of Israel. It’s time to cut off funding to the PA unless it immediately takes terrorists off the government payroll.
This is not an American issue, or even a pro-Israel issue, for that matter. On the contrary, it’s a moral issue, and it’s what the president owes the American people. It’s not acceptable to have hard-working Americans send their money to imprisoned killers and the families of suicide bombers.
The reputation of president Barack Obama will forever be stained by the Iran nuclear agreement. Not only because he allowed Iran to keep 6,500 centrifuges when North Korea built its bombs with a third of that number. And not because he did not demand that prior to any deal the murderous mullahs first cease their genocidal incitement against Israel and America. But because president Obama actually released $150b. to the terrorist government of Iran knowing full well, and even admitting, that some of that money would be used to murder people in terrorist attacks.
Allowing the Palestinians to do the same, with money that we don’t just unfreeze, but actually give them, is simply unforgivable.
Congress, under the lead of Senator Lindsey Graham, and with support of senators Cotton, Cruz and Rubio, among others, is finally taking steps to cut Palestinian funding so long as they directly fund terrorism. It’s known as the Taylor Force Act, and it’s fitting name. This American hero had his life cut short at the hand of a killer, as have far too many of Israelis.
And, President Trump, after showing incredible leadership on striking at the murderer Assad, we look to you to reverse previous administration’s amorality of allowing hard-earned taxpayer money to go to terrorists.
The author, “America’s rabbi,” whom The Washington Post calls “the most famous rabbi in America,” is the international bestselling author of 30 books including his most recent, The Israel Warrior. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.