Biden Illegally Funds Palestinian Payments To Terror Families

Biden's decision to resume aid — totaling $235 million a year — to the Palestinian Authority (PA) is a direct violation of the Taylor Force Law passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in 2018.

The Act prohibits American aid to the Palestinian Authority if it continues its policy of paying "salaries" to the families of dead terrorists.

But the PA continues to pay pensions to the families of those who commit violence against Jews and Israelis, doling out more money if their attack was especially bloody.

During the 2020 campaign Biden criticized the Trump Administration for failing to crack down on Russia for allegedly paying bounties to the Taliban for each American servicemen they killed. It has now turned out that the facts were wrong and that no such payments were made. But how would you distinguish between the theoretical Russian payments for killing Americans and the actual US payments to the PA as rewards for killing Jews and Israelis?

The Taylor Force Act bans such aid unless three conditions are met. The PA must:

1. Take steps to end acts of violence.

2. Completely terminate the payment of "salaries" to the families of terrorists.

3. Investigates and publicly condemn violent attacks. Not only has the PA not terminated its program of salary payments to the families of terrorists, but, in 2020, it paid them at least $181 million. PA president Mahmoud Abbas recently vowed that the PA would continue such payments to terrorists even if it is left with only "one penny" in its treasury. He said that the terrorists are "martyrs" who are "stars in the sky of the Palestinian national struggle."

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Indeed, Palestinian law requires that 7% of its annual budget must go to paying terrorists and their families.

The Biden administration is disingenuously claiming that it is not directly aiding the Palestinian Authority but instead providing economic, development, and humanitarian assistance to the people of Palestine. But the facts clearly prove that the much of the aid will go into the PA treasury to be doled out to terrorist families.

But while the comparison with the alleged Russian bounties is apt, the more relevant comparison would be with President Reagan's payment of aid to the Nicaraguan Contras in direct violation of the Boland Amendment passed by Congress prohibiting such assistance.

At the time these payments were made, there was talk of impeaching Reagan for violating the law. Is Biden's violation any less serious?

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Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.