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CAIR's Help
For San Bernardino Terrorist's Family Takes a Page from PLO
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Originally published under the title "CAIR's Help For San
Bernardino Terror Family Resembles Palestinian Policies Of Jihad
Benefits."
In the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) sought to support and assist
the families of the terrorist Syed Farook – before the FBI had even uttered
the word "terrorism."
As my colleague Joel Pollak writes
at Breitbart California, the organisation, which claims it is tasked with
improving relations between America and its Muslim communities took the
pre-emptive step of representing
Mr. Farook's family, in what Pollak describes as a terrorist family's
"death benefit."
CAIR's assistance and public representation of Syed Farook's family, in
my opinion, closely resembles the Palestinian Authority's (PA) behaviour of
rewarding imprisoned terrorists, or, in cases where they've died during an
attack, their families. The PA has used U.S. and UK foreign aid for these
"salaries," paid during incarceration, or, in the case of the
families, for the foreseeable future.
Pollak notes:
CAIR issued a press release drawing attention to its role, almost as
if legal assistance were a kind of death benefit offered to would-be
terrorists, ensuring their children's welfare.
CAIR's actions do not meet the legal definition of "accessory after the
fact." But helping terrorists' families, and broadcasting their
political message–common practices of regimes that support terror, like the
Palestinian Authority–is an odd way to carry out CAIR's mission of
improving "American-Islamic relations." If anything, CAIR's
actions are calculated to inflame those relations.
The similarities are stark, if you consider the work produced
by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) organisation. The Palestinian
Authority's actions are often funded by American and British tax payer-funded aid.
Earlier this year, the Jerusalem Post reported:
The PA in August 2014 announced that it
had closed its Ministry of Prisoners Affairs, which funneled monthly
salaries to terrorists, because of pressure from Western donors.
Rather than a PA ministry, a PLO
[Palestine Liberation Organization] Commission of Prisoners Affairs –
purportedly independent of the PA and its funding – was set up to pay the
salaries.
The international community, according to
the report, largely accepted these changes as assurance the PA was no
longer paying salaries to terrorists.
"However," the report read,
"the PLO commission was new only in name. The PLO body would have the
same responsibilities and pay the exact same amounts of salaries to
prisoners; the former PA minister of prisoners affairs, Issa Karake, became
the director of the new PLO commission and PA President Mahmoud Abbas
retained overall supervision of the PLO Commission."
The Palestinian Authority declined to
comment on the report.
According to the report, based on
comments made by Palestinian officials, the perpetually financially
strapped PA spent $144 million in 2014 paying salaries to incarcerated and
released prisoners.
The issue dates back to 2011, when PMW's Itamar Marcus noted: "The
Palestinian Authority pays monthly salaries to 5,500 prisoners in Israeli
prisons, including terrorists.,"
Even the heavily pro-Palestinian Guardian newspaper acknowledged in 2013:
[I]t is still a shock to most in Congress
and many in Britain's Parliament, who are unaware that money going to the
Palestinian Authority is regularly diverted to a program that
systematically rewards convicted prisoners with generous salaries. These transactions in fact violate
American and British laws that prohibit US funding from benefiting
terrorists. More than that, they could be seen as incentivizing murder and
terror against innocent civilians.
This report was confirmed by the Telegraph, while in 2012 the
Daily Mail published a report entitled "Palestinian prisoners are handed
millions in British aid with some being paid more than average UK
worker," revealing that the PA "is paying [terrorist prisoners]
up to £1,957 a month" (full disclosure, I was quoted in this article
on the subject).
Sir Gerald Howarth, a Member of the British Parliament said in 2014: "The Palestinian Authority is
putting two fingers up to the British taxpayer... It is not the job of the
hardworking British taxpayer to fund payments to terrorists."
CAIR may not be paying terrorists' families "salaries," but it
has offered a sort of benefit in kind via its Los Angeles Chapter.
Given what we now know about Syed Farook's mother,
and the fact that his father was just recently placed on the terror watch list, we have to wonder if CAIR's motivations lean
towards improving relations between Muslim communities and America or
providing a public relations outfit for Islam and the families of the
terrorists involved in the San Bernardino atrocity.
Raheem Kassam is the
editor-in-chief of Breitbart London and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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