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Israelis and Palestinians Can't Have Peace When Terror Is Profitable
(The Hill) David E. Weisberg - On June 30, 2016, a 13-year-old Jewish Israeli girl named Hallel Yaffa Ariel, who was also a U.S. citizen, was asleep in her bedroom when a Palestinian named Mohammad Tra'ayra, who lived in a nearby Arab village, made his way undetected to her bedroom and stabbed the sleeping girl numerous times. Tra'ayra was later killed by security guards. The Palestinian Martyr's Fund pays Tra'ayra's family $350 each month because, as his own mother said, he was a "hero" who had "died as a martyr defending Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque." Daoud Kuttab wrote an opinion piece claiming that the payments are a "social stipend" that "is given to Palestinian families whose breadwinner is killed or incarcerated." But his analysis is false. First, the very name "Martyr's Fund" makes perfectly clear that cold-blooded killers, like Tra'ayra, will be rewarded (or their families will be rewarded) no matter how heinous their crime. Second, there is absolutely no "needs" test attached to payments from the "Martyr's Fund." Additionally, the "Martyr's Fund" pays more to captured terrorists who receive a longer sentence in Israeli prison, thus rewarding criminals who perform the most heinous acts. A prisoner's family doesn't need more generous monthly "social support" just because the prisoner has been sentenced to a longer prison term. That bigger payment is obviously a reward for more heinous crimes.