The State Department is not going to try to stop the courts from awarding Americans recompense for finding the Palestinians guilty of terrorist attacks.
The US administration Friday turned down a request from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to intervene to stop compensation payments in cases won by the families of American victims of Palestinian attacks, US officials said.
“We are declining the statement of interest in this case,” said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
Under the US legal system, the administration can decide in cases of national strategic importance “to declare an interest” in a court case and call for a suit to be dropped.
The United States said earlier this month it was mulling whether to back a request from Abbas to avoid paying compensation to US victims of attacks in favor of a broader interest in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
This is huge. Of course, it also means that American taxpayers are still going to be funding Palestinian terrorism. Only now we can get a partial refund when the attacks kill Americans. Gee, that makes me feel so much better.
The good news is that State didn’t succumb to the pressure of terrorists like Mahmoud Abbas, who put on a suit and tie and pretend that they’re not responsible for the murder of Israelis by the people in their organization. He’s Yasser Arafat with a better face and less power, but never forget that he was Arafat’s right hand for some time. Abbas hasn’t forgotten:
PA President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday said that he does not rule out returning to the path of armed “resistance” against Israel and took pride in the fact that he had been the first to fire on Israel and that his organization had trained Hizbullah.
In an interview with the Jordanian daily al-Dustur, Abbas said that he was opposed to an armed struggle against Israel – for the time being.
“At this present juncture, I am opposed to armed struggle because we cannot succeed in it, but maybe in the future things will be different,” he said.
[…] “I had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965 and of being the one who taught resistance to many in the region and around the world; what it’s like; when it is effective and when it isn’t effective; its uses, and what serious, authentic and influential resistance is,” Abbas said.
“It is common knowledge when and how resistance is detrimental and when it is well timed,” he added. “We (Fatah) had the honor of leading the resistance and we taught resistance to everyone, including Hizbullah, who trained in our military camps.”
Add to that his Holocaust-denying doctoral thesis, and you have a cold-blooded Jew-hater leading the Palestinians. So bravo to State for doing the right thing—and boo to State for giving this man either a penny of our tax dollars, and any kind of legitimacy. There is no Palestinian leader “uncompromised by terror”—the caveat that George W. Bush called for years ago.
What’s good about State not finding an interest is that it signals our position that the PA is not a legitimate government of a state, but rather a terrorist organization that’s not protected by international law.