Victims of Palestinian terrorism speak out about Israeli government’s ‘pay to slay’ backtracking

 Email this story

Print

1 Comment

The Palestinian Authority pays terrorist prisoners and families of martyrs and wounded nearly $1 million every day. According to the P.A.’s 2018 projections, 7.5 percent of its annual budget will go to terrorism, a little less than the 14.5 percent of the annual budget received from foreign aid…writes Eliana Rudee/JNS.

Eliana Rudee

To many Israelis, these numbers are not simply numbers.

In October 2015, Palestinian terrorists wounded 20 Israelis in a combination shooting and stabbing attack in Jerusalem. Two were pronounced dead on the scene; two weeks later, 76-year-old American-born Richard Lakin succumbed to his wounds. P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority rewarded the killers and their families with $3 million.

Earlier that year, in July 2015, another Palestinian terrorist—part of a four-member terrorist cell—shot and killed 26 year-old Malachi Rosenfeld after coming home from a basketball game, also wounding three of his friends, including Shai Maimon, who suffered two bullets in each of his legs. Rosenfeld’s killers were also paid a salary, as per the Palestinian law.

On June 18, the head of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition requested a revision that halted the Israeli bill that would deduct the amount of money going to terrorists from the money that Israel passes to the P.A. in tax-revenue transfers. Many believe that Netanyahu stopped the bill from passing because he wants the discretion of whether to reduce the funds or not.

JNS spoke with Micah Lakin, the son of Richard Lakin, and Maimon, who have both been tragically affected by Palestinian terrorism, about their thoughts on the “pay to slay” backtracking.

Now 36 and living in a small village in the Binyamina Region north of Jerusalem, Maimon has become committed to stopping the Palestinian incitement to violence. He told JNS on the three-year anniversary of the murder, “I thought we were closing a circle. I thought, ‘Wow, it’s going to be three years on this night, and this will be my revenge on all the terrorists.’ Now, after this revision, I’m very, very disappointed in the government, particularly in the Likud Party and Netanyahu. They are making a huge mistake; every day has significant value. Tomorrow, Likud is responsible for every shekel that the P.A. spends on terrorism.”

‘The right thing to do, the moral thing to do’

Maimon explained that when he found out that the mind behind the terrorist group, Amjad Hamad, killed other soldiers and civilians in the past, and that the money used to buy the weapon was donated by the P.A. specifically to Hamad to carry out the attack, he “could not let this reality go on.”

Micah Avni Lakin, the son of terror victim Richard Lakin, attends a Housing Committee meeting in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem, on Feb. 8, 2016. Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

“For the past 24 years, we have been delivering money to terrorism,” said Maimon. While he acknowledged the chance of an international and Palestinian backlash if the bill is approved, Maimon said that “on this issue, Netanyahu is too afraid to make changes that are the right thing to do and the moral thing to do. Our government can’t pass the money to terrorists who murder our citizens.”

Lakin, too, agrees that the Israeli backtracking was morally reprehensible and goes against all of the values that his father, who marched for civil rights in the United States in the 1960s, taught him.

The younger Lakin was born in Connecticut and made aliyah with his parents in 1984. He remembers his father as a social-justice fighter, marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and teaching English as a second language to all sectors of Israeli society. After his father’s murder, Lakin began monitoring, writing about and lobbying about the incitement of terrorism in Palestinian society.

He told JNS, “For there to be peace one day, we need to educate ourselves and our children to live together and want peace—only then can we try to reach an agreement.”

“But in the last few years since my father was murdered,” he said, “I have witnessed the systematic educating hatred, violence and murder. I’ve seen it in kindergartens and elementary schools, in high schools and universities, in clubs, book clubs, at sporting events and summer camps—all named after the terrorist who murdered my father. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has worked together with the father of one of the terrorists who murdered my father. All of this promotes a culture of hatred and violence and death, which cannot be the background to any kind of peace.”

The group of terrorists who involved in the terror attack near Shvut Rachel on June 29, 2015 where Malachi Rosenfeld was murdered is seen at the Israel’s Ofer military court near the West Bank city of Ramallah on August 17, 2015. Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

“The ‘pay to slay’ law—the idea that someone who goes out and murders Jews is rewarded by the governing authority with money—is by far the most dramatic and obscene example of this immorality. It’s the worst possible education there could be and the most morally reprehensible thing that could happen,” stated Lakin.

‘No reason we should help Palestinian terrorists who murder Jews’

Lakin has been an outspoken critic of the “pay to slay” law at the United Nations Human Rights Council, where he testified in March. He asked the U.N. Human Rights envoy to the Palestinian Authority, Michael Lynk, whose report failed to mention this law, “What if I were to pay $3 million to have your father, Stanley, shot in the head?” and then asked the members of the council, “What if I were to pay $300 million to have all of your fathers butchered? Would you report on that? Turning a blind eye while United Nations’ funds and your states’ funds are funneled through the P.A. to pay for the murder of innocents is unconscionable.”

Since speaking to the human-rights council, Lakin noted that this week, the United States enacted the Taylor Force Act quickly and with bipartisan support, which halted the transferring of foreign aid to the P.A.

“I have spoken about this in Europe and in the U.N., U.S. and Israel, and it is mind-boggling that other countries could understand this before we do here in Israel,” he said, pointing to the Israeli government’s backtracking on the issue. “There is no reason we should help Palestinian terrorists who murder Jews. Period.”