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A federal judge in Texas is allowing the discovery phase of a lawsuit to proceed in a case accusing President Joe Biden and his administration of knowingly providing aid to Palestinian terrorists.
According to Fox News, the lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration continued to illegally fund the Palestinian Authority even as it continued its “Pay for Slay” program that encourages attacks against anyone living in or visiting Israel.
“America First Legal (AFL) first filed the lawsuit in 2022, alleging that President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken resumed payments to the Palestinian Authority (PA) that former President Trump ended in order to be in compliance with the Taylor Force Act—a federal law that prohibits the government from sending American taxpayer dollars to the PA until it stops supporting terrorism,” Fox News reported.
“The lawsuit claims the Biden administration has transferred nearly half a billion American taxpayer dollars ‘to directly benefit and subsidize the Palestinian Authority’ while admitting that the PA still operates its” program, the outlet continued.
U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, found last week that AFL’s “recent production of records shows that the Government knew its economic support fund (ESF) funding in the West Bank and Gaza was benefiting Palestinian terrorists, thereby ‘increasing the risk of terrorist attacks against the Plaintiffs and others similarly situated.’”
“And they aver that the government’s ‘admission that its activities in the West Bank and Gaza benefit Hamas suggests, with reasonable particularity, the possible existence of other facts, currently hidden, establishing traceability,’” the order says.
“These reasons, in concert with Hamas’s recent attack on Israel that killed fourteen Americans and resulted in others being held hostage, provide a sufficient basis for Plaintiffs Request,” Kacsmaryk added in his ruling.
Fox News noted further:
AFL asked the court to grant what is called expedited and limited jurisdictional discovery, which will require the Biden administration to produce related documents and testimony for the court.
The legal group represents Congressman Ronny Jackson, R-Texas; Stuart and Robbi Force, parents of West Point graduate Taylor Force murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv – after whom the Taylor Force Act was named; and Sarri Singer, the survivor of a suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus.
“This case is about the Palestinian Authority’s decades-long program of financial payments, social services, misinformation, and indoctrination to incentivize terrorist attacks against persons living in or visiting the State of Israel. The program is known as ‘Pay to Slay,’” the lawsuit says.
“Under Pay to Slay, the Palestinian Authority rewards terrorists and/or their families with increased rewards in proportion to the casualties inflicted. Terrorists who are married, or have children, or are Israeli residents/citizens receive an additional payment. Terrorists who spend more than 5 years (in a single term or cumulatively) in prison are paid a guaranteed salary by the Palestinian Authority for the rest of their lives,” the lawsuit noted further.
“The Palestinian Authority pays every terrorist, regardless of their affiliations or the identities of their victims. This includes members of designated terror organizations, such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who kill U.S. citizens,” the lawsuit claims.
The suit also alleges that the “Pay to Slay” program benefited the family of Bashar Masalha, who stabbed 11 people and murdered Tayor Force, 28, a U.S. Army Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, on March 8, 2016. Force was visiting Israel at the time as part of a graduate program he was enrolled in. Not long after his murder, Congress passed the law in his memory, Fox News reported.
Per the law, Congress determined that “the Palestinian Authority’s 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.”
