U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer and close confidant Rudy Giuliani rejected the idea of a Palestinian state in an interview last week in Israel.
During the meeting, Palestinian Media Watch Director Itamar Marcus and head of Legal Strategies Maurice Hirsch showed the former mayor of New York City PMW’s reports on the Palestinian Authority’s payment of salaries to terrorist prisoners, the 31 PA schools named after terrorists, as well as texts presenting terrorists as role models from P.A. schoolbooks.
In response, Giuliani called the P.A. a “murder machine.” He stated that the financial incentives to terrorists and their families, in addition to their glorification and honor for terrorists, makes them “a prime supporter of terrorism.”
Most significantly, Giuliani asserted that the ongoing support for terror in all realms clearly establishes that the P.A. is “therefore not entitled to be a state.”
He particularly focused his attention on the P.A. sophisticated payment scheme of providing salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, and stipends to the families of terrorists killed while in the act of attempted murder.
“The payment of money by the Palestinian Authority to terrorists who are convicted of terrorism is an absolute human-rights outrage, and a crime in and of itself,” stated Guiliani. “To give money to people who slaughter innocent human beings, including children and women and innocent people of all kinds, is a direct contribution to terrorism. The fact that the Palestinian Authority does this, carries this out on a massive scale, is yet another indication that [it] is a prime supporter of terrorism, and therefore not entitled to be a state.”
Giuliani believes that countries must cut off all funding to P.A.
“The United States, for example, should not give the Palestinian Authority any money, and not just restrict the use of money, because money is fungible,” said Guiliani. “So if they get money for one purpose, they just don’t use it for that purpose, and they move it over to paying terrorists for killing Americans because many of these terrorists have killed Americans, as well as Israelis.”
Significantly, Giuliani recommends even stricter financial sanctions on the P.A. than were imposed by the U.S. Congress’s recent passage of the Taylor Force Act. While the law prohibits the U.S. government from passing foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority as long as “pay-to-slay” payments to terrorism remain in place, the act permits limited U.S. funding to the P.A. for specific humanitarian needs.
Giuliani also praised the work of Palestinian Media Watch, which has thoroughly documented the funds allocated as part of the “pay-to-slay” scheme, and monitors Palestinian text books, and speeches by officials, including by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
“Palestinian Media Watch is doing a great service in documenting this on such a large scale, and I congratulate them and hope that they continue this activity until we cut this out,” he said.
