A prominent pro-Israel organization and a rabbinical group have criticized former vice president and presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden’s proposal to resume funding to the Palestinian Authority, arguing that it may violate U.S. law.
“Money is fungible. Biden’s stated intention to resume sending U.S. tax dollars to the P.A. will enable the P.A. to finance terrorism, and the murder and maiming of more innocent Jews and Americans,” stated ZOA national president Morton Klein and ZOA chair Mark Levenson.
ZOA noted that Biden’s proposals would be “partially illegal” under the Taylor Force Act, which passed in Congress in 2018 and requires the end of the Palestinian Authority’s “pay to slay” program of financially rewarding terrorists or their families.
“It is utterly immoral to fund the P.A. while it continues to incite hatred and terror; glorify Jews killers in the media; and names P.A. schools, streets, government buildings, public squares and sports teams in honor of terrorists,” said Klein and Levenson.
Biden told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week that he would “reopen the U.S. consulate in East[ern] Jerusalem, find a way to reopen the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, and resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump administration stopped.”
“Every American should be outraged,” said Rabbi Dov Fischer, Western regional vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, a group that claims to represent more than 1,500 traditional rabbis. “Joe Biden has just said he would break U.S. law to do something which is also, of course, morally repugnant—to reinvolve the American taxpayer in incentivizing terrorism against innocent Americans like Taylor Force and others.”
