America First Legal sues Biden administration for ‘facilitating’ Palestinian terrorism

In light of recent terrorist attacks in Israel, including the deadliest in more than a decade, the conservative law group America First Legal (AFL) calls on President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s State Department to end the “enabling” of Palestinian terrorism.

America First Legal (AFL), a conservative group founded by former adviser to President Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, which goals to fight against “anarchic executive actions and the radical left”, pushes to hold President Biden responsible for his funding of Palestinian terrorism.

In December, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) announced the filing of a trial against the current administration “to prevent them from breaking the law”, after then-President Donald Trump signed the Taylor Force Act into law.

The law, named after an army veteran killed by a Palestinian terrorist during a 2016 visit to Israel, aims to keep taxpayers’ money from funding terrorism by banning US aid to the Authority (PA) as it continues to pay benefits to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons. and the families of the deceased.

Clapping the president’s “failed foreign policy,” Jackson accused Biden of “actively stabbing our greatest ally in the back,” noting that Democrats are “thrilled” by the betrayal of the Jewish state.

Taylor strength

“Israel has the right to exist in safety, free from violent attack, and the United States should do everything in its power to defend this right and oppose all those who threaten it,” he added.

According to a Friday statement, the need for the group’s trial is ‘sadly illustrated by the recent heinous acts’ committed by Palestinian terrorists who last Friday ‘increased their terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis, all with the blessing and celebration’ of the Authority Palestinian (PA):

Last Friday, a 21-year-old Palestinian terrorist shot and killed seven people and wounded at least three others as they emerged from a synagogue in Jerusalem after Shabbat observance prayers. The next morning, a 13-year-old Palestinian terrorist shot and seriously injured a father and son outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Celebrations of those attacks with fireworks and candy were commemorated all over the internet, including the mother of the Friday night killer herself handing out candy.

Disgusting! On the day the world remembers the horrors of the Holocaust, Palestinians celebrate the killing of innocent Israelis in Jerusalem with fireworks and dancing. It is the result of decades of Palestinian incitement and hatred that the world ignores. pic.twitter.com/YX89rf8v2v

— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) January 27, 2023

In addition, the group notes, “an official of the Fatah movement, which leads the PA, rented the terrorists, announcing: “We salute and bless these heroic operations in Jerusalem by the heroes of Jerusalem”.

The AFL, pointing to the PA’s “long history of acts of terrorism”, noted that the recent attacks “follow a significant increase in terrorist activity, with 2022 being the highest number since 2006”.

Indeed, for decades the PA – generously funded by the United States and other Western governments – has actually paid terrorists to indiscriminately murder and maim people living in or visiting Israel. Among other things, the PA’s “Pay to Slay” program rewards terrorists and their families with cash bonuses based on the number and severity of civilian casualties they inflict. The mother of Friday night’s Palestinian murderer has welcomed the large cash reward she is set to receive for her son’s terrorist actions.

“After a bloody weekend in Jerusalem”, with two terrorist attacks, “the secretary of the Jenin branch of Abbas’ Fatah movement, Ata Abu Rmeileh, announced that ‘war has begun in Palestine, in all Palestine ‘”, writes Nan Jacques Zilberdik of @palwatch. https://t.co/QHXc0PyLI7

— Algemeiner (@Algemeiner) January 30, 2023

Underscoring the Biden administration’s full awareness that the PA is “paying Palestinian terrorists to harm or kill innocent Americans and Israelis in Israel,” the group criticized President Biden’s “flagrant violation of the Taylor Force Act and the Secretary of State Blinken, a federal law that prohibits the government from sending US taxpayers’ money to the PA until it stops supporting terrorism,” following the resumption of payments to the PA “after the Trump administration ceased these payments” as required by law.

With the Biden administration having “illegally transferred hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars that directly benefit the Palestinian Authority”, the AFL condemned the “facilitation [of] violent extremism and the virulent and eliminationist anti-Semitism of the PA.

The group also announced that it was “proud to represent these plaintiffs in its lawsuit to stop the Biden administration from defying federal law.”

In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News on Friday, AFL senior counsel Julie Strauss denounced the Biden team’s “hypocrisy” over the matter.

“That President Biden had the temerity to call the Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu days ago and condemning the ‘horrific terror attack’ outside a Jerusalem synagogue so exemplifies the hypocrisy and gall of the Biden administration,” she said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Sunday, May 9, 2021. (Amit Shabi/Pool Photo via AP)

Strauss, accusing the president of complicity in the activation of Palestinian terrorism, pledged to do everything to combat criminal conduct.

“Biden is well aware that his administration allows Palestinian terrorists to brutally murder innocent Israelis in defiance of the Taylor Force Act,” she said. “This administration has the blood of children and adults on its hands, and the AFL will do everything in its power to end this brazen violation of federal law.”

The case comes as Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the region amid a tense period of bloodshed in Israel.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu give a joint press conference in Jerusalem. (AFP)

Last Friday, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, seven people, including a minor, were murdered in a terrorist shooting in Jerusalem as they left a synagogue after Sabbath services.

A second attack took place the next morning when a 13-year-old terrorist opened fire on a group of Israelis outside the Old City of Jerusalem, seriously injuring two people, a father and his son.

During a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he mourned the “innocent Palestinian civilians” killed over the past year in the West Bank, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority were terrorists – most killed in attacks.

Although Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly sworn he would never stop rewarding terrorists, even if it was down to his last pennythe Biden administration reinstated aid at the AP last year.

Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority hailed two terrorists killed by Israeli troops days ago as ‘heroes’, telling their families in a phone call this week that the ‘Palestine’ nation was in mourning for them. https://t.co/hBAM6bZ4Bj

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 1, 2022

In fact, Abbas’s own deputy in his ruling Fatah faction admitted Palestinian Authority security forces fight alongside terrorists.