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In this mailing:
* Robert Williams: Why Are the European Union and the World Bank Paying Palestinian Terrorists?
* Ruthie Blum: Israel at War: Philadelphi Tunnel Vision


** Why Are the European Union and the World Bank Paying Palestinian Terrorists? ([link removed])
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by Robert Williams • August 8, 2024 at 5:00 am
* Back in March, the Biden administration claimed that it was persuading the Palestinian Authority (PA), led by Mahmoud Abbas, to change its murder-for-hire "pay for slay" policy. Terrorists who have been imprisoned in Israel for their crimes, as well as families of deceased or wounded terrorists, receive monthly stipends as a reward for murdering Jews. The longer the prison sentence, the higher the monthly stipend. Talk about incentivizing and encouraging terrorism.
* Not only has the PA not begun to change the "pay for slay" system, it is adding tens of thousands of terrorist prisoners and "martyrs" to be funded by the scheme.
* The PA is, as always, undergoing a major financial crisis, in part because it has failed to promote a productive economy – a failure made possible by unconditional handouts from the international community.
* Fortunately for Abbas and his terrorists, both the Biden administration, the World Bank and the EU stand ready with taxpayer financing to ensure that the terrorists are not about to run out of murder-for-hire payments anytime soon.
* The World Bank, in fact, decided that the PA should get more money. In July, it announced ([link removed]) that its usual annual grant to the terrorist entity of $70 million would be raised in to a whopping $300 million, no questions asked. The World Bank thereby knowingly and willingly made itself an active accomplice to terrorism. Even the PA leadership itself seemed surprised at the sum.
* "The money will be disbursed in the form of grants and loans in three payments between July and September, subject to progress in the implementation of the reform agenda of the Palestinian Authority," the European Commission said in a statement.
* What reform agenda?
* On May 31, the EU Commission bragged: "The European Union is the biggest provider of external assistance to the Palestinians which amounts to indicatively almost €1.2 billion [$1.3 billion] for 2021-2024 under the European Joint Strategy, of which €809.4 million have already been adopted."
* [W]hy is not one European leader questioning the use of EU taxpayer money for propping up a terrorist regime and its terrorists? Why is the EU knowingly enabling terrorism?

Not only has the PA not begun to change the "pay for slay" system, it is adding tens of thousands of terrorist prisoners and "martyrs" to be funded by the scheme. On July 23, 2018, at a ceremony honoring Palestinian terrorists, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said: "We will neither reduce nor withhold the allowances of the families of martyrs, prisoners, and released prisoners... if we had one single penny left, we would spend it on the families of the martyrs and the prisoners." (Image source: MEMRI ([link removed]) )

Back in March, the Biden administration claimed that it was persuading the Palestinian Authority (PA), led by Mahmoud Abbas, to change its murder-for-hire "pay for slay" policy. Terrorists who have been imprisoned in Israel for their crimes, as well as families of deceased or wounded terrorists, receive monthly stipends as a reward for murdering Jews. The longer the prison sentence, the higher the monthly stipend. Talk about incentivizing and encouraging terrorism.

"There's been a great deal of work on this behind the scenes, and the progress is encouraging," an unnamed senior Biden administration official told Politico in March, while another said that "changes to the system were expected soon."

Continue Reading Article ([link removed])


** Israel at War: Philadelphi Tunnel Vision ([link removed])
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by Ruthie Blum • August 8, 2024 at 4:00 am
* "[These leaked briefings to the press] create a false impression that Hamas has agreed to a deal while the government of Israel is opposed to it. The complete opposite is true... [Hamas] is doing all this because it wants to recover and rebuild, and return again and again to the massacre of October 7, as it has promised to do." — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, August 4, 2024.
* It is thus a relief and an expression of his leadership that Netanyahu is not budging on key conditions for a deal with the devil. One of these, which Hamas has nixed, is a list of the hostages still alive.
* This is why Cairo was so opposed to the IDF incursion into Rafah. It knew full well what it's been hiding for all these years from its Israeli peace partners.

Egypt was so opposed to the IDF incursion into Rafah because it knew full well what it's been hiding for all these years from its Israeli peace partners. Pictured: A large Hamas tunnel between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, beneath the Philadelphi Corridor, discovered by the Israeli military on August 4, 2024. (Photo source: IDF)

It beggars belief that Israeli defense chiefs with the highest security clearance have been leaking to the media transcripts of top-secret meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a hostage-release deal with Hamas. Such clearance isn't easy to come by, as anyone who ever went through the process of obtaining even lower levels of the coveted status can attest.

This involves a thorough grilling — including for many who've previously undergone the procedure — with endless forms to fill out, lengthy interviews and lie-detector exams. The point is that each person participating in sessions relating to the war has gone through this and signed legally binding confidentiality agreements.

Continue Reading Article ([link removed])

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