On Sunday and Monday, the annual CUFI Summit was held in Dallas. Due to covid-related restrictions, the event was by-invitation only, and limited to 700 participants. Despite these limitations, CUFI’s impact will not be diminished. As some of you may recall, last year’s Summit had to be held entirely online. Engagement with elected officials had to be done via digital methods as well. Nonetheless, CUFI members delivered more than 300,000 emails to lawmakers in the weeks after the Summit in support of CUFI’s 2020 legislative agenda, and all three items on that agenda advanced through Congress and were signed by the President.
We look forward to the same this year. The 2021 CUFI legislative agenda again includes three items, which are the focus of this week’s Action Update.
Foreign Aid to Israel
Every year, if Israel is to receive the aid it needs to fight terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah, Congress must appropriate the funds to do so. This year we are calling on Congress to do as it has in years past and advance the $3.3 billion appropriation for aid to Israel contained in the annual foreign aid legislation.
We are also calling on Congress to remove from this bill $225 million in aid to
the Palestinians. And the reason is simple: that is almost the exact same amount of money the Palestinian Authority (PA) spends each year on its pay-to-slay program which entices (often the poorest) Palestinians into acts of terrorism. Money is fungible, and no matter which vehicle for disbursement one uses there’s no getting around the fact that any aid to the Palestinians frees up money for the PA to support terrorism.
Stop terror, build your society, receive international aid. That’s the only path for the Palestinians and American taxpayer dollars delivered to the Palestinians in the meantime
empower those corrupt and criminal leaders that continue to subjugate the Palestinian people.
Cybersecurity Cooperation
Open any news website or watch any news program and eventually
you’ll hear about one cybersecurity threat or another. The threat from cyber criminals and terrorists impacts us all, and it must be confronted. The legislation we are supporting in this context would bring together the best that Israel and the US have to offer in the cybersecurity arena by supporting cybersecurity research and development, demonstration and commercialization of cybersecurity technology - allowing for an authorization of not less than $6,000,000 for each fiscal year from 2022 through 2026.
As CUFI founder and Chairman Pastor John Hagee noted recently, “One of the many ways in
which the US benefits from its relationship with Israel is through the cutting-edge technology consistently flowing from the Jewish state. In recent years we have seen a dramatic increase in attempted cyber-attacks from our foes. The US-Israel Cybersecurity Cooperation Enhancement Act would enhance the ability of these two nations to work collaboratively to confront this ever-present threat.”
Hezbollah in Latin America
No reader of the Action Update is unaware of the fact that Iran is the leading state sponsor of terror and that the Islamic Republic’s primary international henchmen are the terrorist-army Hezbollah. But it may come as a surprise to you that Hezbollah’s operations in Latin America are extremely sophisticated and dangerous.
As such, CUFI’s legislative
agenda this year includes a bill that requires detailed reporting of Hezbollah’s known operatives, recruiting methods, and resources in Latin America. This reporting will better enable the US and allied governments to confront the growing threat Hezbollah poses to us and our neighbors to the south, as well as impede Hezbollah’s international criminal enterprises which feed cash to the terrorist organization.
If you haven’t yet done so, please click here to let your Representative and Senators in Washington know where you stand on CUFI’s 2021 legislative agenda. Next week, we’ll bring you some highlights from the Summit, but for now, take please take just a few minutes to make sure you
join with millions of Christians across the country to ensure our elected officials stand with Israel.
Sincerely,
|
|
|
