PMW submission to US Dept. of the Treasury to blacklist Issa Karake
PMW submission to US Dept. of the Treasury
to blacklist Issa Karake
By Maurice Hirsch, Adv.
On Apr. 16, 2018, Palestinian Media Watch submitted a report to the US Department of the Treasury documenting the connection between Issa Karake, the Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoner’s Affairs, to terror, terrorists and terror financing.
The report focused on Karake’s responsibility for the payment of salaries to terrorist prisoners, his glorification of terrorists and their actions and his incitement of terrorism. The report further demonstrated how these actions breached Executive Order 13224 and provided the evidentiary basis for his designation as a sponsor of terrorism.
PMW’s report was submitted soon after the passage of the Taylor Force Act, which provided that, “The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons,as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror.”
In the report, PMW included official PA documents detailing the PA salary payments to a number of terrorist prisoners. While PMW has been in possession of these documents for some time, the report to the US Department of the Treasury was the first time they were publicly exposed. The documents are additional proof that the PA’s 2004 Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners is enforced by the PA and that imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, including but not limited to members of organizations already designated as terrorist organizations by E.O. 13224, do in fact receive a salary. The report also included sections of an affidavit, submitted to the Jerusalem District Court on behalf of the PA, which provided details and confirmed the PA’s payment of salaries to terrorist prisoners since 1995.
PMW welcomes the news that now two US Congressmen - Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) and Doug Lamborn (R- Colo.) are using the very same reasoning and are also urging the US Treasury to use E.O. 13224 and blacklist Karake.