A Palestinian terrorist, who murdered a 31-year-old Israeli man in the West Bank community of Adam on Thursday, has been declared a “martyr” by the Palestinian Authority and is entitled to a one-time payment of $1,600, as well as monthly salaries starting at $380, under the PA’s “Pay to Slay Program.”
The 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist Muhammad Tareq Dar Yusuf fatally stabbed Yotam Ovadia, a father of two young children, and wounded two other Israelis, in a frenzied attack in Adam last week.
A day after the murder took place, Yusuf was hailed a “martyr” in an article published in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Shiri Moshe reported in The Algemeiner on Monday. According to a translation by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli research and advocacy organization, the same description was used in a Facebook post published the same day by the Bethlehem branch of Fatah, the party of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
The term “Pay to Slay” refers to a PA law, which assigns payments to terrorists and their families for acts of terror. Under the scheme, monthly allowance increases based on several variables, including the nature of the crime, the number of relatives, well as whether the perpetrator was a resident of Jerusalem and/or Israel.
According to figures released by the Israeli Defense Ministry, the PA in 2017 paid NIS 687 million ($198 million) to the so-called “martyrs’ families fund” and NIS 550 million ($160 million) to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club — some 7 percent of its total budget. The Ministry further alleged that some Palestinian terrorists will throughout their lifetimes be paid more than NIS 10 million ($2.78 million) each by the PA for having murdered Jews.
Last week, Abbas defiantly vowed to continue making financial rewards to Palestinian terrorists and their families, even to the PA’s last penny. The Knesset earlier this month overwhelmingly passed into law a bill that allows Israel to deduct the payments the PA makes to Palestinian terrorists and their families from the taxes Israel collects and passes on to the PA.
The bill was inspired by the Taylor Force Act, named after an American killed in Israel by a Palestinian terrorist in 2016. The law, which would cut funding to the PA as long as it pays rewards to terrorists, passed in March with strong bipartisan support as part of the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that will keep the United States government operating until the end of the fiscal year.
[Photo: Arutz Sheva TV / YouTube ]