Despite its policy to cut off funding to terrorists, the U.S. continues to finance promotion and glorification of Islamic “martyrdom,” according to a report submitted to members of Congress.
In a recent example, nearly $500,000 of USAID [United States Agency for International Development] money funded a Palestinian Authority soccer stadium named after the head of Black September terrorists, says Itamar Marcus, author of the report.
The group was responsible for the murder of two Americans diplomats in Sudan and 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Marcus, director of Israel-based Palestinian Media Watch, says that after testifying last October at a hearing of a Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations, U.S. officials assured him USAID money could not be used for terror promotion.
But Marcus contends his research proves that’s not the case. Four legal loopholes allow U.S. money to reach champions of terror and terrorists, he says.
U.S. policy requires organizations receiving funding to sign an anti-terror clause called the Anti-Terrorism Certification.
The Palestinian Authority and its non-governmental organizations, however, have adamantly rejected these conditions.
That stance was reiterated in a vote of the PA Legislature this month, reported the Palestinian daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.
The Palestinian Legislative Council “rejects USAID conditions regarding support to local organizations,” the statement said, by refusing to sign “a commitment not to support, finance or join activities of institutions or individuals of terrorist nature, by the known American definition.”
Yet USAID still funds numerous projects in PA areas, totaling more than $174 million in 2003, with similar funding planned for this fiscal year.
The “Martyr Salakh Khalaf” soccer stadium inaugurated last month was named for Salakh Khalaf, better known as Abu Iyad, head of the Black September terrorist organization that murdered American diplomats Cleo Allen Noel Jr. and George Curtis Moore in Sudan in 1973.
In a report of the stadium’s inauguration, the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida said “speeches were made by UNICEF representative in Palestine Jonathan Hutchen and “in the name of USAID, which financed the project. … Deputy Minister of Youth and Sport, Dr. Jamal Muhaysin, thanked the sponsoring and supporting agencies and praised the management of the Shahid [Martyr] Salakh Khalaf Center … which is considered one of the most important and … biggest sport centers.”
Marcus said another striking example of supporting terrorism was mentioned in the same article.
USAID gave $10,000 to the Gaza City Council, which has honored the recently slain spiritual leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Ahmad Yassin, with the naming of a street.
The city council, according to the article, has named more than 300 city streets after Palestinian and Arab “martyrs.”
Marcus says the four flaws in the Anti-Terrorism Certification are “exempted recipients, ignoring the money chain, ignoring the fungibility of budgets and differences over the definition of terror.”
Exempted recipients: The problem, Marcus says, is governments and municipalities are exempt from signing the ATC. “This is a significant loophole,” he asserts, “because both the PA and PA municipalities have received substantial U.S. funding, and both continue to be involved in terror glorification and promotion.”
Ignoring the money chain:: U.S. law does not place sufficient restrictions on the way primary recipients, including international organizations receiving U.S. money such as the World Bank and the United Nations, give out money originating in the U.S., according to Marcus.
Ignoring fungibility of budgets: U.S. funding agencies routinely ignore terror promotion and anti-American activities of recipients when these activities are not directly funded by U.S. money, Marcus contends.
Defining and renouncing terror: While all PA groups and non-governmental organizations openly purport to “renounce terrorism,” they refuse to accept the U.S. list of terror organizations, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Marcus notes. They define killing Israelis – and Americans in Iraq – as “resistance.”
