The Palestinian Authority has announced it will appeal this week’s New York federal court jury decision to pay $218 million in damages to American victims of Arab terrorist attacks in Israel.
The Anti-Terrorism Act allows for the actual amount of damages to reach $655.5 million, a sum that the PA says it cannot pay because it lacks funds. That is true because the Abbas regime needs the money to pay “salaries” to jailed terrorists who committed the murders for which the terror victims claimed damages.
Mahmoud Khalifa, PA deputy minister of Information, said that both the PLO and PA were “deeply disappointed” by the court decision.
He added:
We are confident that we will prevail, as we have faith in the US legal system and are certain about our common sense belief and our strong legal standing.
The decision is a tragic disservice to the millions of Palestinians who have invested in the democratic process and the rule of law in order to seek justice and redress their grievances, and to the international community which has invested so much in financial and political capital in a two-state solution in which the PLO and PNA are paramount.
The Palestinian Authority’s “democratic process” speaks for itself by the fact that Mahmoud Abbas now is in his 11th year of a five-year term that expired six years. He was elected in the first and perhaps last election in the Palestinian Authority.
Khalifa’s comment that the “international community…has invested so much in financial and political capital” underlines the real tragedy of the Palestinian Authority and the European Union. The PA is a welfare state. Without foreign donations, mainly from the Europeans, it could not afford to pay for its bloated government payroll, terrorists in jail, Abba’s worldwide junkets, and the propaganda machine that promotes a “no Israel state” solution and incites Arabs to murder Jews.
The European Union, which has a vested interest in “protecting its investment” and avoid exposure that it is pouring money down the drain, is desperate to see the PA achieve its aims.
But not to worry. Khalifa added, “We stand ready to be a partner in peace and an unyielding advocate for the rights of our people and homeland to exist as a free, independent, democratic and prosperous state, living in peace with our neighbors.”
Reaction overseas was a bit shocking by the lack of coverage of the landmark decision.
The New York Times headlined the story, but the major networks totally ignored it.
NewsBusters noted, “NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News instead devoted a segment to a study showing 80% of kids born with peanut allergies improve if exposed to peanuts at an early age, on Feb. 23, the day the court’s ruling was handed down.”