When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas last month, he boasted of the over one billion dollars in aid that the Biden administration had programmed for the terrorist territories. That aid has come with a very heavy price.
In Feb. 2019, President Trump’s total cutoff of aid to the Palestinians became official. That year, 10 Israelis or people in Israeli-controlled areas were killed in stabbings, shootings, rockets, and other attacks, down from 12 the previous year, 15 in 2017, and 16 in 2016.
In 2020, however, only three Israelis were killed.
These numbers reflected the diminished capacity of the Islamic terrorists. The reduction in numbers was not due to the pandemic. The year still saw attacks, including firebombings, rocket launches, and stabbings, but the success and lethality rates for these attacks were lower.
The numbers turned around dramatically once again in 2021.
In April 2021, the Biden administration restored aid to the PLO. Terror incidents, reflecting attack attempts, shot up sharply, from 91 in February and 89 in March to 130 in April.
By May, major fighting had resumed, with 13 Israelis, including two children, killed.
By the time the year was over, 17 people in Israeli areas had been killed. The over 400% increase in deaths was only the beginning. In 2022, 31 Israelis or people in Israeli areas were killed, up from only three in 2020, for a massive 900% increase in casualties since the restoration of foreign aid to the terrorists. This was the worst death toll since 2015 under Obama.
But in January and the first half of February, 10 Israelis have already been killed, including a 6-year-old boy and his 8-year-old brother.
Three times as many have been killed in the past month and as in all of 2020. That’s a 233% increase over 2020 in just a fraction of a year, but it’s also a marked month-to-month escalation from 2022, which featured no attacks at all in January or February. More people have already been killed by terrorists in 2023 than through most of March 2022.
What a difference a billion dollars makes.
While the media has tried to portray terrorism as “lone wolf” attacks, they’re crowdsourced violence of the kind that Al Qaeda and Islamic State helped innovate. But the PLO’s version is unique through its ‘Pay-to-Slay’ program, which rewards terrorists, regardless of their formal affiliation, with salaries and payments for their families
Photo Credit: Reuters