He survived multiple tours of duty in hostile nations, only to be killed on the streets of our greatest ally. Americans were shocked when Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran visiting Israel, was stabbed to death in Tel Aviv. His killing brought to the forefront of America’s conscience the inconvenient truth that U.S. tax dollars were being used in the commodification of terrorism. Specifically, U.S. aid money was being given by Palestinian leaders to terrorists in exchange for perpetuating violence against American and Israeli citizens.
For decades, Washington sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Palestinian leaders while ignoring the acts of terrorism that those funds bolstered. In 2018, President Donald Trump signed the bipartisan Taylor Force Act, barring further aid until we could be sure it would not be used as bounty payments for terror. In the years since, Palestinian leaders have devised creative schemes to skirt this law and continue incentivizing the murder of innocent people with lifetime annuities. But America will not be deterred from its moral leadership in confronting evil, and Congress is responding.
Sen. Tom Cotton has introduced new legislation to stop foreign banks from processing so-called “martyr payments.” The bill, the Taylor Force Martyr Payment Prevention Act, is a straightforward and smart rebuke to morally bankrupt leaders in anti-Israel countries such as Qatar that are processing handouts to Palestinians with blood on their hands. It will empower the Treasury Department, among other things, to block any bank processing a “martyr payment” from having any connection or relationship to American banks.
Stuart Force, the father of Taylor Force, told reporters this month that “this is not a theoretical problem. The family of the Hamas terrorist who murdered Taylor and was celebrated as a hero by Hamas has been receiving martyr payments as reward for his despicable act.” This past summer, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas awarded the family of a terrorist who killed two and wounded two others, including a toddler, more than $40,000 and a new house. Another, Hakim Awad, is reportedly paid $14,000 annually as a reward for murdering a family of five in their home.
This is grotesque, and it must end. Now.
Nearly a dozen of Cotton’s colleagues immediately signed up in support of this vital legislation. More should do so, and each should ask where else this harsh penalty can be applied. Banks in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region that process payments for Hezbollah, for example, should have their correspondent banking relationships in the U.S. similarly severed. While there is federal legislation on the books protecting the U.S. financial system from banks that support Hezbollah, lawsuits filed by U.S. military veterans injured by Hezbollah-designed IEDs in Iraq suggest enforcement is lacking. The veterans allege that more than a dozen Lebanese banks with correspondent bank accounts in New York have provided material support to Hezbollah.
The more barriers there are between us and these agents of terror, the safer Israelis, Americans, and the region at large will be. Banks that are complicit in the Palestinian pay-to-slay program must choose between standing with terrorists or being part of the global financial system. How they respond will tell us all we will ever need to know. More importantly, these barriers will put an end to our tax dollars being complicit in the murder of innocent civilians. As these radicals adapt in how they perpetrate their terrorist acts, so, too, should our manner of defense. We cannot let them turn our banks into bullets.
If lawmakers are unwilling to do this, they are unwilling to do anything. Palestinian leaders have been financing terrorism with our tax dollars for far too long. Instead of consequence, these despots have been feted at the White House, won commitments for a resumption of aid to the Hamas-dominated United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and avoided sufficiently harsh consequences for the shootings, stabbings, vehicle rammings, kidnappings, bombings, and rocket attacks that perpetuate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
President Joe Biden should do everything in his power to stop this abhorrent behavior. He should ensure total compliance with the letter and spirit of the Taylor Force Act, endorse the newly proposed measure, suspend support for UNRWA and other Palestinian mouthpieces in the international system, and show that his foreign policy will live up to basic American values.
We must do all that we can to stop making murder profitable. Forcing banks overseas to stop the payments or risk losing access to the U.S. is one of the best tools at our disposal. Regardless of politics or party affiliation, people of conscience should support this bill. The banking industry should support this bill. And so should 100 senators, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the president.
The families of the victims deserve that we give our all to end this injustice. And until we do, we remain shamefully complicit in these acts of terror.
Sandra Parker is the chairwoman of the Christians United for Israel Action Fund.
