President Trump is at pains to assure the victims of Palestinian terrorists that they have his deepest “sympathy.” Thank you. They can, and we can, live without your sympathy, Mr. President. However, we cannot live with your contradictory policy over at the Justice Department.
“The US condemns acts of terrorist in the strongest terms and the Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting those who committed terrorist attacks against innocent human beings to the fullest extent . . . ” Blah, blah, blah. Who cares if the Department of Justice prosecutes Palestinian terrorists if, once the verdict and the judgment are handed down, the Department of Justice rejects them, and goes to court to cancel them?
Guess what, the prosecutions have proceeded. The verdicts are in. The terrorists are guilty. The judgments are awarded — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Enough to rob the Palestinian Authority of every last penny it uses to pay the families of Palestinian terrorists, which, because the payments continue, so does the terrorism. But if the payments were to stop, the perverse glamor and allure of terrorism, such as it has developed in Palestinian society, may drastically diminish.
And so, what does President Trump and his Department of Justice do? He plans to step up to the Supreme Court of the United States next week and tell it that it is wrong to enforce these judgments against the convicted terrorist murderers. It is wrong to extract the hundreds of millions of dollars from the guilty party — mainly, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (the “partner for peace”). The Palestinian Authority and its terrorists must be allowed to keep their hundreds of millions of dollars, duly awarded to the families of American victims in American courts — the very arena that Trump says he wants to use to prosecute the terrorists. Talk about circular reasoning!
The Supreme Court on March 29 will rule on an appeal by the litigants in a case of a victim’s family against the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The plaintiffs won a $656 million verdict in an American federal jury trial in 2015. The verdict was overturned by an appellate court. Guess who will be right there at the Supreme Court telling it to uphold the appellate overturning of the verdict? Guess who will tell the court, let the Palestinians keep their $656 million for distribution to the families of terrorists — “pay for slay”? None other than the solicitor general of the Trump Department of Justice. Oh, but not to worry, “the US sympathizes deeply with the American families who, in 2004, sued the PA and the PLO for acts of terrorism committed against their loved ones between 2002 and 2004.”
Keep your sympathy, Mr. Trump. We want deeds, not words.
Go back to 2002. The terrorists murdered an 81-year-old man. The other plaintiffs are families of victims of other attacks in Israel that killed 33 people — including several Americans. Guess what the plaintiffs argued in court: that then chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat, had paid the attackers and paid their families — just the kind of immoral act that Trump himself has raged against in a meeting with current Palestinian Authority head and Arafat successor Mahmoud Abbas.
Yet, when it comes time for Trump to act against this — not to tell someone else (Mahmoud Abbas) to do so — Trump backs down. He sends his solicitor general to tell the US Supreme Court that the families of the victims of terrorism should not collect the judgment they won in the very courts where Trump says he wants to prosecute the terrorists. The hypocrisy reeks!
Guess what. There is something called the Anti-Terrorism Act, passed by Congress in 1992, which specifically targets the perpetrators of terrorist attacks overseas. In effect, the Trump administration, including its president and its Department of Justice, want to gut that act; want, in effect, to repeal it via the courts.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, sees it this way. The Zionist Organization of America, otherwise a big defender of Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers, sees it this way.
Schumer knows how to state the obvious: “Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism Act to hold accountable dangerous entities for acts of terrorism. . . . Despite this, the Trump administration has urged the Supreme Court to not take up this case — a move that goes against the well-decided verdict that would hold accountable the PA and PLO for this repugnant terror attack.”
The Zionist Organization of American knows how to state the obvious: “[The Trump administration’s argument] hurts the American terror victims, aids and comforts terrorists, and makes them less concerned about facing the consequences for their hideous actions.”
Amen.
Copyright © 2018 by the Intermountain Jewish News
