(The Center Square) – An ongoing lawsuit alleges President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are facilitating the funding of Palestinian terrorism that is killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, Israelis and Americans, and using U.S. taxpayer money to do it.
But it’s not just the Biden administration, the lawsuit alleges the U.S. government has sent more than $6.3 billion to the Palestinian Authority, which includes funding terrorism.
The case is before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division after attempts by the administration to dismiss it failed. America First Legal sued in December 2022 on behalf of U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, and two others.
The president “is breaking the law by allowing our tax dollars to fund terrorism in Israel, and he must be stopped,” Jackson argues.
He’s referring to the Taylor Force Act, which Congress passed, and former President Donald Trump signed into law, in 2018. It’s named after a U.S. Army Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran and West Point graduate, Taylor Force, who was stabbed to death by Palestinian terrorists during a wave of violence targeting civilians in Israel in 2016.
The act prohibits U.S. funds from benefiting the Palestinian Authority (PA) unless it terminates its prisoner and martyr fund. The PA, the governing body of Gaza and the West Bank, is run by the Palestinian Legislative Council, controlled by a Hamas majority since 2006.
Hamas was designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. “It is the largest and most capable militant group in the Palestinian territories and one of the territories’ two major political parties,” according to the National Counterterrorism Center.
The fund pays salaries to imprisoned terrorists, rewards to family members of deceased terrorists and pays members of several terrorist groups, the brief explains.
Congress blocked U.S. funds from being sent to the PA, arguing its “practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror,” according to the brief.
Since 1993, U.S. taxpayers have subsidized the PA to the tune of more than $6.3 billion, according to the brief. Under the Trump administration, no funds were sent because the PA refused to halt its martyr fund.
Between 2013 and 2020, the PA made more than $1.5 billion martyr fund payments “under the guise of ‘diplomatic’ salaries to terrorists ‘working’ in Palestinian Authority embassies and ministries, developed a payment system to circumvent banks that refused to move money to terrorists, and scrubbed evidence of the payments from its financial reports,” the brief states.
In an amended complaint filed in March, the lawsuit alleges Biden knowingly sent $1.5 billion, including $500 million for “Economic Support Funds” in Gaza and the West Bank, and $1 billion to the United Nations Relief Works Agency “to directly benefit the Palestinian Authority.” It was later discovered that the UNRWA was housing a Hamas headquarters under a hospital, prompting 23 U.S. attorneys general to demand that Congress halt all UNRWA funding.
The administration “knew that by spending $1.5 billion in Gaza and the West Bank, it was violating the Taylor Force Act and subsidizing Palestinian terrorists.” It “knew that UNRWA and the PA were both corrupt and facilitated, supported, and celebrated Palestinian terrorism. Yet it funded them anyway,” AFL Senior Vice President Reed Rubinstein said. “It also knew that Hamas’s tunnels, weapons, and rockets were supported by international ‘humanitarian’ aid, including aid from the United States. Yet it poured money into Gaza.
“The October 7 atrocities were, in part, a natural, ordinary, and predictable consequence of Biden’s illegal, irrational, and disgraceful policies.”
The Biden-Harris administration argues U.S. taxpayer money isn’t funding terrorism. Last week, the Department of Justice also filed terrorism and murder charges against six Hamas leaders nearly one year after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel. In it, 1,200 people were killed and another 240 were taken hostage; 97 remain in captivity; 33 are confirmed dead, according to the Times of Israel. The administration has failed to negotiate the release of remaining hostages, including six whose bodies were found by Israeli forces last week.
Of the six Hamas leaders charged, two are reportedly dead and four remain at large, the DOJ said. The charges were viewed as too little, too late, critics argue, especially since the administration has sought to squash Jackson’s lawsuit for nearly two years.
The court has required the administration to comply with several demands and said it was plausible it circumvented the Taylor Force Act.
While the president and others have supported a two-state solution, Hamas’ 1988 charter argues “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it;’” and “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad,” referring to Islamic holy war, which includes killing Jews.
In addition to funding the UNRWA, Biden ignored calls by House and Senate Republicans to rescind visas of pro-Hamas individuals in the U.S., Senate Democrats blocked attempts to deport Hamas sympathizers, and Biden expanded measures to prevent “certain Palestinians” from being deported, The Center Square reported.
