Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Senate Republicans Introduce Bill to Crack Down on Palestine ‘martyr Payments’; Taylor Force Act Addition Seeks to Block 'pay for slay'

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Senate Republicans introduce bill to crack down on Palestine ‘martyr payments’:
Senate Republicans have introduced legislation aimed at cracking down on foreign banks that knowingly facilitate “martyr payments” by the Palestinian Authority to families of terrorists.
The proposal underscores the GOP’s effort to double down on pro-Israel policies as Democrats increasingly side with Palestinians in the Middle East conflict.
“We should not send one penny of federal taxpayer money to any organization that is celebrating, that is rewarding, that is incentivizing, that is causing American citizens to be murdered,” Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said while introducing the bill.
The Taylor Force Martyr Payment Prevention Act is named after an Army veteran who was murdered in Israel by a knife-wielding Hamas operative in 2016. Ten others were wounded in the attack before Israeli police killed the assailant.
Soon after the attack, the Palestinian Authority began making payments to the assailant’s family as part of a program that pays families of Palestinians who are killed or detained by Israel. Many of the payments have been made to families of suicide bombers and other terrorist attackers.
In 2018, Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, a bipartisan measure that restricted humanitarian aid payments to the Palestinian Authority until it ceased making “martyr payments.”
But lawmakers behind the new legislation say the previous bill did not go far enough. --->READ MORE HERE
photo credit: ANDREW HARNIK/POOL VIA REUTERS
Taylor Force Act addition seeks to block 'pay for slay':
A group of 13 Senate Republicans, spearheaded by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), on Monday introduced the “Taylor Force Martyr Payment Prevention Act,” a bill “aimed at eliminating Palestinian ‘martyr payments.’”
According to Cotton and his colleagues, banks in “nominally friendly jurisdictions” evade United States anti-terrorism sanctions by avoiding an official presence in the United States “and continue to knowingly provide banking services, including dollar-denominated transactions, for terrorist organizations.
“Such flouting of anti-terrorism financial regulations is only possible through the maintenance or use of correspondent accounts at United States banks for the benefit of terrorist organizations,” the bill reads.
The legislation says the secretary of the Treasury should find foreign financial institutions that flout anti-terrorism financial regulations to be of primary money laundering concern, “and prohibit the maintenance or use of correspondent accounts in the United States by such institutions.” --->READ MORE HERE
If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.


No comments: