Normally rows and columns of financial data hardly make for a riveting read. But this case is a striking exception.
By JPOST EDITORIALUpdated: OCTOBER 10, 2015 22:19Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses UN General Assembly(photo credit: REUTERS)
One of the most significant recent scoops came from Israel Radio’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Gal Berger, who managed to lay his hands on actual Palestinian Authority spreadsheets that show precisely which convicted terrorists behind Israeli bars the PA subsidizes and at what level.Normally rows and columns of financial data hardly make for a riveting read. But this case is a striking exception.Here are comprehensive statistics that illustrate exactly how the PA uses its resources – including moneys handed over monthly by Israel as well as contributions the PA solicits from international donors. The analysis of the figures is singularly enlightening despite the fact that the bottom line is hardly astonishing or unanticipated.It has long been known that the PA rewards the perpetrators of some of the most heinous atrocities against Israel civilians for their deeds.Apprehended, convicted and incarcerated terrorists – including the linchpins of the ghastliest of mass murders – are paid substantial monthly stipends while they do time. Similarly compensated are their family members on the “outside.” Until now, however, there was no blackand- white breakdown of the specific disbursal of financial sustenance to a gamut of sadistic slayers and to the behindthe- scenes masterminds who conceived the homicidal plots and dispatched their executors.The newly uncovered evidence, moreover, shows that the PA ’s largesse isn’t limited to Fatah terrorists but that most of its outlays are earmarked for Hamas members convicted for some of the second intifada’s most gruesome carnage and now doing time in maximum security penitentiaries.Organizational rivalries and political affiliations are no bar for PA generosity toward terrorists.This encourages bloodletting, and is part and parcel of the glorification of terrorism in the purportedly moderate Mahmoud Abbas’s Ramallah-ruled jurisdiction. The glorification – indeed near-deification – of mass murder is an integral component of incitement to terrorism by Abbas’s top hierarchy.The message to routinely indoctrinated and inflamed PA youth is that slaughtering Jews has unstinting societal sanction. The wherewithal lavished on the killers and their kin is the tangible expression of their community’s and officialdom’s gratitude for spilling Jewish blood.Such incontrovertible sponsorship and promotion of terrorism is hardly novel in the PA context. It was never a secret that the PA financially underpinned the prisoners’ relatives, a fact that helped boost their heroic status.
Now, however, we know exactly who gets what, down to such details as how much is deposited when into which particular account in which particular bank. The rule of thumb is that those sentenced to the longest terms, get more. In other words, the greater the crime, the higher the remuneration.For example, Abdullah Barghouti, Hamas’s notorious bomb-maker – serving 67 life sentences for killing 66 people and wounding some 500 others – has already amassed more than six figures in PA “salaries.”Also building an impressive financial portfolio is Ibrahim Hamad, who headed Hamas’s military wing in Judea and Samaria. He was sentenced to 54 life sentences for killing 46 people and wounding more than 400 others.The aforementioned duo had a hand in some of the most heinous terrorist outrages, such as the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001, the nightclub bombing in Rishon Lezion on May 7, 2002 and the Hebrew University cafeteria bombing on July 31, 2002.They aren’t the only ones making money in prison.Muhammad Arman, who is doing 36 life sentences, has also “earned” hundreds of thousands of shekels courtesy of the ostensibly cash-strapped PA .The infamous, mind-blowing list goes on and on.The PA ’s own paperwork shows unambiguously that tens of millions of dollars are shelled out every month to imprisoned terrorists and their relations – at a time in which Abbas moans that Ramallah can’t make ends meet.It’s the same Abbas who poses as a frustrated peace partner but cannot bring himself to condemn the premeditated stabbings of Israelis by his incited henchmen.The impression he deliberately imparts is that terrorist convicts and/or casualties were arbitrarily and unjustly martyred. The latest crop of Abbas’s homegrown killers likewise expects to be officially celebrated as idols instead of castigated as villains.