By Stephen M. Flatow, JNS
President-elect Donald Trump says there will be “hell to pay” if the hostages in Gaza are not released. Sorry if I don’t get too excited about that.
I agree with those who consider U.S. President Joe Biden a failure to speak up about the American citizens held hostage in the Gaza Strip by Hamas since Oct. 7, 2023. As pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, “he rarely mentions them, and when he does, it’s usually to criticize Israel’s government for not agreeing to a ceasefire with Hamas that would cause the terrorists to release them.”
Along comes Donald Trump, promising on Truth Social that he’ll take a different course. “Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East. But it’s all talk and no action!”
“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to” his inauguration, “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” he added. “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”
Some may call that “bombastic” but to his credit, at least Trump’s demanding that Hamas release the hostages it kidnapped, unlike the Biden administration, which prefers to threaten Israel over “humanitarian aid” that the world seems to know (but not Biden) is being stolen by Hamas when it enters Gaza.
As the father of an American terror victim—my 20-year-old daughter Alisa was murdered in a 1995 bus bombing when she was a student in Israel—I have some experience with America’s position regarding U.S. victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism. Let’s look at that position.
In 1995, President Bill Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that gave American victims the ability to sue state sponsors of terrorism. I used that law to sue the Islamic Republic of Iran for its role as the funder of the terrorists who murdered Alisa. Getting a judgment of almost $250 million was easy; nevertheless, the Clinton administration put up roadblock after roadblock against my efforts to collect on the judgment. I was even accused by a member of the administration of trying to reset American foreign policy against Iran.
And what foreign policy was that? The Clinton administration lifted sanctions on the importation of Iranian caviar, pistachio nuts and carpets into the United States. Well, we all know where that got us.
In November 1995, the FBI seized the computer and records of one Sami Al-Arian, a professor of computer science at the University of South Florida. Why? He was suspected of being a fundraiser for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the terror group that took credit for Alisa’s murder. He also provided cover for terrorists through a think tank he assembled at the university. Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who surfaced in Damascus to take over as head of PIJ following the death of Fathi Shikaki in late 1995, was a member of that think tank. It took eight years before Washington decided to prosecute Al-Arian. He eventually pleaded guilty to supporting a terror organization and was deported to Turkey.
In 1996, Clinton promised that the United States would bring Mohammed Deif, the killer of a 19-year-old Israeli-American—Nachshon Wachsman—to justice. Deif finally met his end this summer at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces.
The terrorist bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001, which took the life of American Malki Roth, only 15, brought condemnation from President George W. Bush, who said: “I deplore and strongly condemn the terrorist bombing in downtown Jerusalem today.” Israel released Ahlam Tamimi, one of the masterminds of the attack, in 2011 to Jordan as part of a prisoner swap for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Since then, Washington has refused to request Tamimi’s extradition from Jordan.
Taylor Force was a native of Texas and a West Point graduate, and after several tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, he became a student at Vanderbilt University. He was murdered in a March 2016 terror attack in Tel Aviv while he was visiting Israel as part of a graduate-school study group examining global entrepreneurship.
Because the killer died while committing an act of terrorism, his relatives are paid a monthly pension equal to several times the average monthly Palestinian wage from the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund. The Palestinian Authority pays a monthly cash stipend to the families of Palestinians killed, injured or imprisoned for involvement in terrorism. The Taylor Force Act was signed into law in 2018 and required America to stop sending economic aid to the P.A. until it ceased paying the stipends as part of its pay-for-slay policy.
The Biden administration wasn’t thrilled with the Taylor Force Act and sought ways around it. For instance, U.S. aid has been dispensed to UNRWA; additional USAID funding was announced in September, bringing the total aid since October 2023 to more than $1 billion; $20.5 million has been directed towards COVID-19 recovery efforts, including health-care and emergency response; and, $45 million has been provided to support the security sector, including improvements to the rule of law and law-enforcement capabilities.
Doesn’t anyone at the White House understand that money is fungible and that when you put money into the P.A.’s pockets, it just frees up other money that can be used to pay the stipends that are the target of the Taylor Force Act?
So, forgive me if I don’t sound sanguine over President-elect Trump’s announcement. The parents of American victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism have been down this road before, and it has never been a good trip.
