Obama Stands with Terrorists Against Terror Victims
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
When Obama took office, his first phone call to a
foreign leader was to the head of a terrorist group.
"This is my first phone call to a foreign leader,"
Obama told the PLO's Abbas. "And I'm making it only
hours after I took office."
Obama
repeatedly bent, twisted and mutilated existing laws
to keep the money flowing to the PLO’s
Palestinian Authority.
When Hamas and the PLO temporarily reconciled, Obama
sent them money anyway. When Congress froze aid
after the PLO defied the peace process by trying to
join the UN, he signed a waiver claiming that aiding
the terrorist network was “important to the security
interests of the United States.” Earlier this year,
when the PLO went after Israel at the International
Criminal Court, Obama defied a Congressional law and
bipartisan demands mandating a cutoff of aid.
If Abbas personally flew a plane into the new World
Trade Center, Obama would find some excuse to keep
the money coming to his terrorist group anyway. But
now his determination to aid terrorists has hit a
new low as he sides with terrorists against terror
victims.
Eleven years ago, ten families who had suffered at
the hands of the Muslim terror network filed a
lawsuit against the PLO, Arafat and assorted PLO/PA
officials. The American families suing the
terrorists included Jamie Sokolow whose eye was
damaged by shrapnel in the Jaffa Street bombing that
injured 100 people and killed a 81-year-old amateur
painter who had been out shopping for painting
supplies.
"I'm 12 years old, I'm from New York, and I’m going
to die," she recollected in court thirteen years
later.
Shayna Gould was a 19-year-old college student
waiting at a Jerusalem bus stop in the rain when a
PLO terrorist opened fire. She had no life signs
when she arrived at the hospital.
Janis Coulter was killed when a PLO terrorist set
off a bomb in the Frank Sinatra cafeteria at Hebrew
University. Her family has been fighting for justice
for a long time.
Dr. Alan Bauer was walking down the street with his
7-year-old son when a PLO terrorist set off a bomb
in the French Hill bus station. “I couldn’t find my
son. I then saw him face down. I picked him up and
heard him moaning, so I knew he was alive,” he said.
A screw had torn through his son’s brain. “He was
put in coma to let fluid drain out and was then left
blind and paralyzed on his left side.”
Some of the killers were part of the “police force”
armed and trained by the Clinton administration.
They were dispatched by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,
which is listed as a terrorist group even though
it’s part of the PLO network whose regime in the
West Bank is funded by the United States.
Finally the families won their case in court. A jury
found the PLO/PA guilty and ordered the terrorist
network to pay $218 million to the families. The
Antiterrorism Act tripled that award. The PLO
appealed, but the terror group was required to post
a bond to show that it was willing to pay the
judgment.
And that’s when Obama came to the rescue. The State
Department stepped in to warn the judge that
depriving the PLO of money would “severely
compromise the P.A.’s ability to operate as a
governmental authority”. This would not necessarily
be a bad thing as the PLO/PA’s operations mainly
involve giving money to terrorists, incitement
against Israel and the United States, and assorted
criminal enterprises.
The PLO doesn’t have an economy. It has the American
taxpayer. It wouldn’t exist without the US, Japan,
the EU and the UN shoving money into its giant
gaping terror hole. The money immediately disappears
into a bunch of foreign bank accounts and the PLO/PA
declares that it’s facing another financial crisis
and needs a few hundred million more to tide it over
or it will collapse.
It’s currently in the middle of another one of those
“financial crises” which somehow prevents it from
posting a bond, but hasn’t stopped it from funding
terrorism.
The
Palestinian Authority is not a government. There are
no more elections. Everything is run by Abbas and
the PLO Central Council. Abbas’ Fatah dominates the
PLO and funded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade which
just claimed responsibility for new terrorist
attacks against Israelis. The Palestinian Authority
is the PLO. The PLO is Fatah. When Obama sends more
money to the PA, he is funding terrorism.
And the United States should not be funding
terrorists. It should not be paying the killers of
Americans. It should not be standing up in a court
of law for Muslim terrorists and against their
American victims.
But that’s exactly what Obama and Kerry did.
"Money is the oxygen of the terrorist," Ron Gould,
Shayna's father, said. "And what we hope to do, is
deplete some of that."
Unfortunately Obama is determined to keep terrorism
alive with a little legal CPR performed on the PLO.
“If my shooter hadn’t been killed, he’d be sitting
in jail, being paid,” Shayna said. “The person who
helped him plan the attack is still being paid.”
“If the PA has enough money to pay convicted
terrorists,” her lawyer said, “it has enough to pay
the judgment in this case.”
The PLO/PA pays out $144 million a year to
terrorists in Israeli prisons and the families of
suicide bombers. The money doesn’t just go to PLO
terrorists, but also to their Hamas terror
colleagues.
President Bush made the case that Saddam’s payments
to the families of suicide bombers, an event that
took place under portraits of Arafat and Saddam,
solicited terrorism. So why is Obama determined to
help the PLO continue soliciting more terrorist
attacks by funding killers and suicide bomber clans?
Obama’s involvement sends the message that terror
victims will be blocked from holding the PLO
accountable. This administration has fought Congress
to keep money flowing to the PLO. Now it will fight
the men and women who survived PLO terror. It will
fight them to keep funding Muslim terrorism.
You
might call it a new low, but as with a lot of
"lows," the Clintons were there first.
Alisa Flatow was a New Jersey college student
murdered in a bus bombing in 1995. When the Flatow
Amendment that would hold Iran accountable came up,
President Clinton’s Secretary of State threatened to
shut down the government if the amendment wasn’t
dropped.
When Congress stood up to Clinton, he instead threw
in a signing statement claiming that allowing terror
victims to collect judgments against Iran “would
encroach on my authority under the Constitution to
‘receive Ambassadors and other public ministers.’"
The Clinton administration fought the Flatows every
step of the way to protect Iranian properties in the
United States. It dispatched fourteen lawyers to
fight the family’s lawsuit. When a US company was
sending money to Iran, Clinton blocked efforts by
terror victims to seize the money. He even blocked
attempts to seize the New York building owned by the
Alavi Foundation, Iran’s arm in the United States.
The Alavi Foundation would later become a donor to
the Clinton Foundation. Congress stood up to Clinton
over Iran. It’s time for Congress to stand up to
Obama and end funding for PLO terrorism once and for
all with no loopholes, excuses or waivers.