The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia will consider testimony on stopping Palestinian efforts to murder Jews.
A hearing set for Sept. 27 titled “No Incentives for Terrorism: U.S. Implementation of the Taylor Force Act [TFA] and Efforts to Stop ‘Pay to Slay’” will take place at 10 a.m. in Room 210 of the House Visitor’s Center, available on a live webcast.
Speakers will include Elliott Abrams, who previously served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor; Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; and Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at Israel Policy Forum.
The pay-for-slay policy associated with the Palestinian Authority, led by its leader Mahmoud Abbas, incentivizes terrorism by financially rewarding those who attack Jews, and if killed in the process, fiscally rewarding their families.
“This hearing is important because the administration has been continuously deviating from the spirit of the TFA, ultimately forcing aid to the P.A. as a condition of a Saudi peace deal,” Sander Gerber, a fellow and board member of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told JNS. “It’s a total end run around that act: The U.S. can’t give money to the P.A., so force the Saudis.”
Gerberg pointed out that implementation of the Taylor Force Act requires annual reports to Congress regarding where “pay for slay” stands, but the U.S. State Department “submits it with a classified annex to prevent distribution.”
Lastly, he noted, the legislation urges the State Department to make known in international forums that the P.A. is rewarding and incentivizing terror; and still, he said, U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken “still meet with Abbas and make no public statements of condemnation.”
