The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted today 17-4 to pass a bill that would suspend all US financial aid to the Palestinian Authority until they agree to end social programs which Congressmen described as providing a “financial incentive” for terrorism.
The Palestinian General Delegation to the US says the bill is “misinformed,” and that the social programs in question are not intended to reward terror, but rather to provide bare minimum support for Palestinian families who lost their breadwinners to the occupation, noting that the vast majority of those in question were “unduly arrested or killed by Israel.”
That’s not really going to play well in Congress, as Israel has long presented these programs as essentially pay for terror attacks, and of course doesn’t account for the large number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons held without charges, or just on broad suspicion of “incitement.”
Complicating matters is that the term “martyr payments” is commonly used, which is being interpreted in the US as evidence that they’re being paid for suicide attacks, when in reality the term “martyr” is broadly used in the Middle East for dying in general.
The bill not only requires the Palestinians to end payments to those killed during accused “acts of terrorism,” but would also require the Palestinians to outlaw any provision of aid to the families of anyone held in Israeli prisons. Given the scope of Israel’s detentions, that would effectively bar the PA from providing any aid at all to the population, as virtually everyone has a family member under detention on some pretext or another.
“acts of terrorism,” does not include resistance to illegal occupation, but the USA refuses to recognize international law, and with Israel was the ONLY nation to vote against a definition of terrorism in the UN years ago which specifically excluded this important reason for reaction to violence. The support by nearly every Congressperson for Israel no matter what is not reflected in polls of the US public, or in any moral or ethical examination of the behavior of Israel or the Palestinians.
“‘acts of terrorism,’ does not include resistance to illegal occupation”
Resistance to illegal occupation might or might not take the form of terrorism. Terrorism isn’t defined by the cause it’s committed in support of.
In the US political sense, whether the term “terrorism” is applied to armed resistance, is determined whether the government in opposition to that terrorism is one of our SOBs.
That seems to be the sense in which Rosemerry is applying it too: Is it for a cause I support or a cause I oppose?
Terrorism is cause-independent. It is a tactic (attacking civilian non-combatants for the purpose of creating terror).
Of course it is, but the political term “terrorism” is only used for those we are against, not our “terrorists”.
attacking civilian non-combatants
Which describes precisely what Israel does to the Palestinians on a regular basis.
Dumping its wastewater into Gaza, cutting off electricity, water, medical supplies and building materials, not to mention targeting and murdering teenage stone throwers and myriad other permutations of collective punishment … Sounds like a whole lotta terror goin’ on.
I didn’t say that Israel doesn’t commit terrorism. Of course it does (so does the US).
What I said was that “resistance to illegal occupation” being the cause does not make an otherwise terroristic act non-terroristic.
“Terrorism isn’t defined by the cause it’s committed in support of.” Actually, according to the resolution adopted by the UN in December 1987, it does matter. There was a specific exclusion in the definition of terrorism of acts by people under racist or colonial regimes or deprived by force of their rights, fighting for self-determination, liberty,independence. The vote was 153 to 2, and the only ones against were the USA and Israel. Terrorism DOES depend on the definition, and the USA and Israel cannot admit anyone opposed to their definition could have rights.
OK, so 153 countries decided to dispense with the meanings of words and just play politics. I always knew that EVENTUALLY there would be a case in which the US and Israel were right while everyone else was wrong. Thanks for pointing out that case.
“a case in which the US and Israel were right while everyone else was wrong” – maybe in thieves’ court. It is not just the harsh occupation, it is also the outright theft of Palestinian land. How the Hell do you justify that? And, we all know that Israel will EVENTUALLY just expel the native Palestinians into Jordan, or crowd them into “reservations”, or simply kill them – one prominent Israeli official wants standard policy to be to kill 5,000 Palestinians for every Jewish Israeli killed by “terrorism”. The Nazis occupying Europe had the much more reasonable policy of ten for one for revenge.
US aid “to Palestine” is just aid to Israel, propping up the occupation.
End it. Let the Israelis pay for their own occupation.
So they are cutting aid to their own puppets?
Hmm that’s great . . ,. the terrorized get blamed for being the “terrorists”. What else is new? Can anything be blamed on a people under a repressive illegal military occupation? I don’t think so! If Israel wants to continue their occupation dance, thanks to USA protections, let them also face the music that this type of atrocity brings back to them! The US Congress is a total sellout to Zionism and this chapter in American history will one day(hopefully) be remembered as a group that sold out the REAL soul of America to a tyrannical apartheid monster!
The Senate are that little lump in Israel’s back pocket.
Corrupt load of ………….
But billions of YOUR money for the terrorist Jewish state.