Wall Street Journal editorial on PMWs report
The U.S. press is all over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but there are certain stories for which it has strangely little interest. On Thursday it was the terrorist murder of an Israeli civilian security guard, Shalev Zvuluny, at a supermarket in a West Bank suburb of Jerusalem. The two killers, who stabbed and shot Zvuluny after arriving in a stolen car, were Palestinian Authority police officers.
Ramallah pledged to investigate, which is good for a laugh. The Palestinian Authority (PA) glorifies terrorism by its security forces, as is documented in a new study by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israel-based research institute. The PA also subsidizes terrorists, paying them or their families monthly salaries for life. This costs more than $300 million a year, about 8% of the PA budget.
The 2018 Taylor Force Act stops direct U.S. economic aid to the PA. But support for the PA Security Forces (PASF) is another matter, the State Department tells us: "The United States has continued to provide limited assistance to the PASF for the purpose of maintaining stability in the West Bank, apprehending terrorists and militants and supporting related criminal prosecutions, and keeping Israel secure."
On May 1, the Palestinian Media Watch study says, the PA Security Forces honored one of its own, Naji Arrar, when he was released by Israel after serving 18 years for shooting attacks during the Second Intifada. Dressed in a PASF uniform, he was welcomed back to his unit as a hero. The PA's Governor of Ramallah, Laila Ghannam, posed with him for a photo.
On March 26, according to the study, the PA's daily paper reported that the PA General Intelligence Service had made extra cash grants to 38 families of "Martyrs and prisoners from among the Forces' members" in Jenin. It did so, the paper said, on orders of Maj. Gen. Majed Faraj, a confidant of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Faraj has called such "martyrs" and prisoners "the most honorable, the best, and the most supreme among us."
The terrorists who killed Zvuluny have been lionized by the PA newspaper in similar fashion. The study concludes that "the PA and Fatah," Mr. Abbas's party, "make no effort to hide the involvement of the PA security officers in terrorism—instead, they openly publicize and boast about it." A 2022 Fatah video sums up the phenomenon: "By day Security Forces, and by night self-sacrificing fighters"—martyrs.
A State Department spokesman agreed to provide numbers on U.S. aid to the PASF, even offering a "hard deadline," but then reneged. Taxpayers and the public deserve to know.