A London newspaper report of a  European Union audit citing gross corruption in the Palestinian Authority is the latest, but not the last, exposure of a PA regime that is a decaying creature living on borrowed time.

In August, the United States signed a $148 million agreement with the Palestinian Authority to support the budget in Ramallah.

U.S. Consul General Michael Ratney stressed how much the Obama administration supports Abbas government in order to strengthen its institutions, all part of the master plan to show that the Palestinian Authority functions as a state. All it needs, according to the U.S. State Dept., is the stamp of approval that it is a country.

The very idea of creating a new Arab state within Israel’s current borders is a dream for President Barack Obama, so he had no trouble in August to waive restrictions set by Congress to send more tax dollars to Ramallah,  part of a prize for resuming the so-called peace talks that are rapidly on their way to joining previous discussions in the grave from which they were exhumed in July.

Shortly after the U.S. aid, France and the Palestinian Authority signed a $15 million agreement to bail out Abbas’ depleted coffers, which have a bottom line of approximately minus $500 million.

Hamdallah then met EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, one of Israel’s biggest thorns in the you know where, to ask for more money.

When it comes to schooring, Abbas has it all over the Jews.

As usual, the PA says it needs money because Israel is choking it as well as Gaza with the famous siege that does not exist., except for that which the Egyptian military regime has imposed. But  that does not count since it is not part of the Zionist lobby.

Make no mistake about it, says Abbas. “Israel exploits our resources and lands which directly leads to an increase in the deficit which we must contend with,” and “the central reason for this is the Israeli occupation.”

That is the magic code word for Abbas to get whatever he wants. If there is not enough rain, it is because of the occupation. If it is Tuesday and not Wednesday, it is because of the occupation.

Now it is October. It’s salary time again, and guess what? Palestinian Authority  Finance Minister Shukri Bishara told Abbas it has no money to pay its workers, who officially comprise nearly 8 percent of the total population in Judea and Samaria, but in fact the number is far larger.

It has been reported year after that the Palestinian Authority is a welfare state and that it cannot exist on its own.

Anyone who simply travels through Judea and Samaria can see for himself huge villas and thousands of luxury cars. What people don’t see, or don’t want to see, is that many of those homes and cars were paid for by the billions of dollars a year that are controlled by officials who make Congressmen’s pork barrel look like small potatoes.

The Times of London revealed Sunday that a European Union audit shows that corruption and mismanagement managed to waste about $2 billion, which is three or four times the annual deficit and also is nearly equal to the total amount of money the EU has given to the Palestinian Authority in the four-year period ending last year.

This is no news to Palestinian Authority Arabs. The EU auditors could have saved themselves a lot of work and trouble if they simply had asked the local Arabs, just like pollsters did last year, when they discovered that an overwhelming 71 percent of Arabs believe that there is corruption in their government.

In order to boost the confidence of Abbas to remain corrupt, Uncle Sam will pay out approximately $440 million to Ramallah this years, which is less than the $513.4 million doled out last year but still $440 million more than zero, not including support for UNRWA.

Aid to Israel is in the billions, but a large part of it is funneled right back into the United States for purchases of Made in USA defense components.

In the case of the Palestinian Authority, the only money that goes back into the coffers of the United States is that which Abbas forks over in restaurants when schnooring in Washington.

The European Union has donated tents to dozens of Arabs in Area “C” in the southern Hevron Hills to help them dig in for the winter in their attempt to create “facts on the ground” and take over the region that officially is under Israeli control as agreed in the Oslo Accords.

The Arabs, most of them squatters on acreage that was state land during the Jordanian occupation from 1949 until 1967, have used the tents for livestock and not just for families. The EU has donated tens of millions of dollars in recent years to move Arabs from the Hevron area into more remote areas of Area C to increase the Arab population.

Many of the Arabs go back to their former homes in the winter, but the sudden presence of the tents indicates that the EU wants to make their presence permanent.

The campaign has been accompanied by reports by Palestinian Authority media of alleged attacks on Arabs by Jewish residents in the area.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef reversed his famous “Land for Peace” ruling of 1993 after the Palestinian Authority literally exploded in Israel’s face a decade later with large-scale terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings.

The revelation of the letter, seen below, explains Rav Ovadia’s incredibly strong statements in recent sermons, such as one of the most famous ones three years ago when he said of the Palestinian Authority, “All these evil people should perish from this world. God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.”

In 1993, when the prospect of peace turned into a mantra that mass media used to blind themselves and wishful-thinkers, the idea of Israel’s surrendering Judea, Gaza and Samaria for peace with Yasser Arafat was pushed by U.S. President Bill Clinton.

The Israeli government was split, and the Shas party, which obeyed whatever Rav Ovadia said, withstood arguments from nationalists and kept the Rabin-Peres coalition government alive with his famous ruling in favor of giving up “land for peace” because it is a matter of “pikuach nefesh,” saving the lives of Jews.

After Rav Ovadia died, Israel’s populist but rather ignorant media turned the funeral into a peace festival that obliterated the greatness of the rabbi, who wrote 50 books and who was cited all over the world as one of the greatest Torah sages ever.

The “expert analysts” on Israel radio and in the mass media explained that Rav Ovadia was a great man, but not because of  his brilliant mind that lived and breathed Torah and not because of the Shas party that he founded and turned into a kingmaker in Israeli politics.

“Land for peace” was the reason 800,000 Jews from all sects of Israeli society came to the funeral.

What they did not say is that 10 years after Oslo, during the Second Intifada that also is known as the Oslo War, Rav Ovadia ruled exactly the opposite.

Instead of “land for peace” being an issue to save the lives of Jews, it had become clear that it was a concept that endangered Jews.

Arafat’s “peace,” which murdered more than 1,000 Jews, wounded thousands others and which continues until today under the invisible hand of Mahmoud Abbas, is not the peace Rav Ovadia had in mind.

He wrote, “My dear brothers of Israel, residents of Judea and Samaria:

“It is my intention to make clear my position concerning Judea and Samaria. I have explained more than once since my Halachic ruling, that giving up land for peace has no validity in light of the current situation.

“I intended there be a true peace, in which Jerusalem and its surroundings will be secure in peace and quiet. But now, our eyes see that surrendering our holy land causes a danger to life.

“This is not the peace for which we prayed. Therefore, the Oslo Accords are null and void.”

Rav Ovadia then cited the verse form Psalms that states, “I speak peace and they speak war.”

Just as populist media falsified Rav Ovadia’s ruling, it has turned Jews in Israel and all over the world into victims of ignorant and slanderous reporting of Rav Ovadia’s Saturday night sermons. They took phrases out of contact and without any understanding that the rabbis was speaking the language his constituents understood, which is not the style of the pseudo-sophisticated Ashkenazi elite and certainly not that of the bleeding-heart media.

The Aish HaTorah website once quoted Rav Ovadia with comments that stated much clearer his idea of land for peace.

It quoted Rav Ovadia as saying, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef stated: “If the heads and commanders of the army, together with the government, state that saving of life is involved; that if areas of Israel are not given back, the danger exists of immediate war on the part of our Arab neighbors;

“And if the areas are returned to them, the danger of war will be averted; and that there is a chance of permanent peace; then it seems that according to all opinions it is permitted to return areas of Israel in order to achieve this aim, since nothing is more important than the saving of life.”

The Palestinian Authority war or terror on Israeli in the 1990s, after the Oslo Accords did not satisfy Arafat’s appetite to swallow up Israel, took a breather towards the end of the decade when the Barak government was on the verge of giving Arafat almost everything he wanted.

Palestinian Authority  chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who has vowed that a new Arab state within Israel’s borders will keep Israel secure, demands that the IDF stop entering Arab-controlled cities.

Israeli soldiers do not visit Shechem and Jenin to buy cheap vegetables. They enter to arrest terrorists, while the PA security forces give out parking tickets, try to catch criminals and occasionally search for rival terrorists from Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The Palestinian Authority almost never arrests terrorists belonging to the ”military branch” of the ruling Fatah party.

Abbas has done an incredible job on the international diplomatic front since taking over from Yasser Arafat nine years ago next month. He has painstakingly built up a world-wide image of Israel as an Occupier and Palestinian Authority Arabs as innocent victims.

But  on the ground, nothing is moving.

He insists on all of his demands, including a total withdrawal of the IDF  while claiming that his security forces will protect Israel.

Abbas told visiting Knesset Members two days ago that security coordination with Israel “has reached the highest point” but in the same breath demanded that the Israeli military stay out of areas where the PA is supposed to maintain security.

Just about the same time he was speaking, the IDF arrested two brothers who are suspected of shooting at a nine-year-old in Psagot, next to Ramallah, Saturday night.

As for the attack, whether he did not did not condemn it demands on what website you read.

Here is how Ynet headlined its article this week:  “Abbas Condemns Attack on Israeli Girl.”

That  is not a misleading headline; it simply is wrong.

The text of the article states that he told the visiting MKs, “We oppose, on principle, aggression against anyone, and the spilling of blood.” That is a broad generalization that makes no reference to any specific attack. There also was no reference to a Facebook posting on Fatah’s official Facebook page that praised the sniper on Psagot.

The same article in Ynet reported Abbas’ reaction to the IDF’s arrest of suspected terrorists, who carry out attacks that he opposes “in principle.”

He said, “The Israeli army’s incursions are unjustified. There’s security coordination with us, so why carry out these raids that harm (our efforts)? Seven years ago we began security cooperation (with Israel),” which he said has reached “100 percent.”

To this day, Abbas has not condemned two murders of Israelis soldiers last month at the hands of Palestinian Authority terrorists, nor has he explained why his security forces did not arrest the perpetrators, let alone prevent the attacks.

Meanwhile, the PA propaganda machine is running in high gear. The Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency reported on the MKs’ visit by quoting senior Fatah party official Mohammed Al-Madani as saying that “the Palestinian side denounced the attack in Psagot settlement, the killing in Hebron, the murder in Kalandiya refugee camp and the Israeli incursions into Palestinian cities and the ongoing settler assaults against our people.”

There is a big difference between what Abbas said and what someone said he said. Ynet did not report any such condemnation, except for its wrong headline. Nor did the Jerusalem Post, which reported that all Abbas said concerning the attempted murder of the girl in Psagot was, “Two days ago a girl was shot or stabbed. That is not the topic of discussion for today. Four Palestinians were killed in Kalandiya, too. We should all condemn murder and bloodshed of innocents.”

Abbas also made sure to welcome his Knesset guests without displaying the Israeli flag.

Instead, he outlined why there is no peace with Israel, which he said must stop “settlers” from attacking Arabs, must not pray at the Temple Mount, and must not build in “settlements.”

If Israel simply would cooperate and believe Abbas that he wants peace by not recognizing Israeli as a Jewish state,  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama can laugh all the way to the Nobel Peace Prize.

There is just one big problem for Abbas with this scenario: It won’t happen.

A mezuzah placed on an abandoned IDF building in the Shdema area of eastern Gush Etzion served as a victory sign for the Women in Green, who have struggled for five years to keep Arabs from occupying it and separating Jewish contiguity in the future.

The building now will serve as a cultural center, after having been abandoned in 2006 and later virtually destroyed and looted by Palestinian Authority Arabs.

Two years later, when Ehud Barak was Defense Minister, the IDF planned to give the land to the Palestinian Authority even though it is “Area C,” which under the Oslo Accords includes Jewish and Arab communities and villages that are supposed to be under complete Israeli sovereignty.

The nationalist Women in Green organized what appeared to be hopeless protests to keep the land from falling into Arab hands. They pressured the army to return to the Shedma base in 2010, and after renovations, a mezuzah was affixed to the doorpost of the building on Friday in the presence of the Deputy Minister of Religious Services Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan.

“Shdema will be a flourishing community. There will be no other sovereignty in Eretz Israel other than that of the State of Israel,” he said.

Yehudit Katsover, who along with and Nadia Matar leads the Women in Green, read a congratulatory letter by Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein, who wrote, “The Gush Etzion area has an abundant history of special women who ‘built the House of Israel.’ On one side, standing on the main road, is the tomb of the Matriarch Rachel, who weeps and ‘refuses to be comforted for her children, who are gone.’

“And on the other side stands Shdema, which connects Jerusalem and Tekoa, the place of the woman of Tekoa who acts on behalf of the unity of the people, ‘that the one who is banished be not an outcast from him.’ Israel is redeemed by the merit of righteous women, and by the merit of tenacious and fighting women, who are persistent and experienced in struggles… Shdema will yet develop and become an important and central settlement point.”

Gush Etzion Regional Council head Davidi Perl also vowed that Shdema “will be a permanent settlement.”

The Women in Green and their supporters have struggled against leftists, both Israelis and foreigners, who have encouraged Arabs to try to take over the land. The women frequently planted trees, even after Arabs uprooted them.

Attorney Herzl Yehezkel, who during his term in office as head of the Homat Shmuel (Har Homah) Community Administration worked with the women, said the effort to prevent the transfer of Shedma to Arabs “proves that determination is successful, and there is no reason not to settle everywhere.”

Palestinian Authority “special” security forces swooped down on Jenin, in central Samaria, an impressive show of force that would convince someone who does not know any better, such as the U.S. State Dept.,  that it is working to clear the city of terrorists,

However, their targets were not terrorists but were those “involved in lawlessness and chaos,” according to the official Palestinian Authority WAFA news site, quoting Jenin Governor Talal Dweikat.

He said that the “special National Security force” entered Jenin on Wednesday to help police restore law and order. Lest anyone think that the local Arabs are simply criminals, WAFA pointed out that a “number of people wanted for justice…were involved in chaos, lawlessness and riots that broke out following the Israeli army’s cold blooded killing of Islam Toubasi,” a terrorist who attacked IDF forces trying to round up his colleagues last month.

Once again, Israel is to blame, this time for killing a terrorist who was not interesting enough to be arrested by the “special” security forces.

The WAFA report exposes unrest within the Palestinian Authority. It reported that Dweikat “said that those who were involved in shooting and throwing firebombs at the governor’s headquarters, damaging cars for Palestinians from inside Israel, destroying public and private property, uprooting trees and spreading chaos and fear among the people will be brought to justice.”

The Arab street is heating up, but the Palestinian Authority has not been able to garner up the courage to crack down on terrorists.

Hamas is working furiously to establish small cells through Judea and Samaria, Israel’s Voice of Israel radio reported Sunday morning.

The Gaza-based terrorist organization has one single immediate objective – kidnapping an Israeli and using him as barter for freeing more Palestinian Authority terrorists and security prisoners.

IDF intelligence may help the PA forces to break up the cells, giving Abbas a chance to prove he is cracking down on terror.

So far, he not only is not doing so but also continues to incite terror.

On same day that Abbas preached peace at the United Nations, a Fatah party official read his speech in Samaria in praise of a terrorist who killed 15 Israelis, according to the Palestinian Media Watch, which translated and exposed the incitement.

Abbas called the terrorist “the most noble among the noble…(with his death) Fatah lost a beacon. He lived as a giant and died as a giant. He should remain in our hearts with this glory, this greatness.”

American Jews are debating where Jewish federations in their communities draw the line on funding programs associated with varying opinions about Israel, especially activities by “Zionists” who are nothing but anti-Zionists.

Boston

In the Boston area, a recent test case for the local Jewish federation—Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP)—revolves around its relationship with Leonard Fein, the founder of organizations including the National Coalition for Jewish Literacy, Moment Magazine, and MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

In an Aug. 24 column for the Forward, Fein called for a boycott of the Israeli city of Ariel, which is located beyond the 1949 Temporary Armistice Lines that existed until the Six-Day War in 1967.

“Specifically, I believe American Jews visiting Israel should stay away from [Ariel], treat it as an offense against peace,” Fein wrote.

He had been a guest speaker for CJP and has a long-term relationship with that federation’s leadership groups. Asked if that relationship would change due to Fein’s stance on Ariel, CJP Executive Director Barry Shrage said it would not, and regarding whether CJP is willing to continue to invite Fein as a speaker, Shrage said, “Sure.”

“Certainly an argument about settlements, and how to protest settlements and how to support settlements, is part of the daily life of the Jewish community that has a healthy ongoing debate about important issues,” Shrage told JNS.org.

While Shrage believes Fein’s call for a boycott of Ariel was “a very poor tactic,” he stressed that Fein is “a highly respected member of our community.”

“We’d be so much poorer a community if we drive out people like Leonard Fein,” Shrage said. “The future of the community is about binding people together.”

But Charles Jacobs, head of the Boston-based advocacy group Americans for Peace and Tolerance, believes CJP crosses a red line by continuing to work with Fein. Jacobs called the policy of welcoming a “big tent” of organizations and individuals with varying views on Israel a “slippery slope.”

“The CJP-certified Leonard Fein is now one more slip down the slope,” Jacobs told JNS.org. “Leonard Fein, who in the midst of Middle East madness, where Arabs are murdering and gassing and torturing each other—and each other’s wives and children, from Cairo to Damascus to Baghdad—Fein blames Israelis for the lack of peace in the region.

“Beholden to major donors, many of them on the left, it seems that some federations have become disconnected from the larger Jewish community. So if CJP does not excommunicate Fein—if it has no red lines—it will show just how disconnected it has become.”

Shrage said CJP does have red lines. Advocating for the destruction of Israel or harming Israel are “stances that place people outside the community,” but Fein is “a Zionist” and working with him does not cross a line, despite his stance on Ariel, according to Shrage.

“The line here is whether you are anti-Zionist, anti-Israel,” he said.

Fein told JNS.org that while he called for a boycott of Ariel because its location 10 miles beyond the 1949 armistice line presents “a very distinctive problem” and “essentially destroys the possibility of a two-state solution,” he opposes the broader Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

“I think each potential target of that kind of approach of boycott, divestment and sanctions needs to be treated on its own terms, on its own merits, or lack of merits,” Fein said, explaining that he disagrees with a movement that issues boycott calls “with a broad brush,” like the BDS movement does.

New York

Shrage called hosting Fein a “far cry” from hosting BDS activist Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple, who appeared at New York’s 92nd Street Y in May, a story that The Jewish Press exposed here.

The Y also scheduled an event this spring with Roger Waters, the anti-Israel Pink Floyd band member, which was ultimately canceled after The Jewish Press revealed it here.

On Sept. 12, JCC Watch and Americans for a Safe Israel partnered on a protest outside the UJA-Federation of New York building that called for Jews to stop donating to the federation, due to a lack of guidelines preventing federation funding of programming that gives a platform to anti-Israel voices like Walker and Waters. The Y receives $900,000 annually from the federation.

“We have a pattern of forces within the UJA-Federation diverting charitable dollars to further political purposes, and these purposes are anti-Israel,” Richard Allen, head of JCC Watch, told JNS.org.

When a UJA donor and volunteer told Allen at the protest that the funding in question is “only a small part” of the federation’s budget, Allen said he replied, “Even if it’s one penny, it’s wrong, and it makes the whole organization basically treif.”

The UJA-Federation declined to comment for a JNS.org article on the Sept. 12 protest and did not return a comment request for this article.

Washington, DC

Like JCC Watch, Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art (COPMA) is calling for a halt to donations to its local federation, citing the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s funding of the Washington DC Jewish Community Center’s Theater J.

COPMA was formed in 2009 as a response to Theater J’s work on “Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza,” a series of short plays in which parents repeat anti-Israel narratives while mulling how to speak to children about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One actor advises a parent not to tell a child that “Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.”

Robert G. Samet, COPMA’s chairman, said his group does not intend to impede artistic freedom, but rather specifically opposes the federation’s support of Theater J.

“It’s just, don’t do it on our nickel,” Samet told JNS.org. “Don’t do it on [federation] contributors’ support, it’s not appropriate. It’s a fringe view that’s being supported by mainstream contributors.”

Four days after The Jewish Press exposed Jewish funding for Theater J here, Robert Levi, chairman of the board of the National Council of Young Israel, wrote an an Aug. 26 letter to the DC Federation and joined COPMA’s call for the discontinuation of federation support for Theater J, due to the theater group’s planned performance of Motti Lerner’s “The Admission” from March 20-April 27, 2014.

“As you may be aware, [‘The Admission’] reflects a neo-anti-Israeli perspective, which is contrary to the mission of the Federation,” Levi wrote. “The climatic scene of play implies a fictitious 1948 massacre conducted by a colonel in the Israeli defense brigade. You may not be aware that many of Mr. Lerner’s dramas are not performed in Israel due to their harmful message.”

Last week, the federation responded to COPMA with an “open letter to our community.”

“Love of Israel and openness to a diverse array of thought are compatible goals,” the federation’s letter stated.

Ari Roth, artistic director of Theater J, told JNS.org that “The Admission” is all based on “actual research done by three historians,” rather than implying the “fictitious 1948 massacre” that Young Israel’s Levi described in his letter. “The Admission” was also featured in an April 2013 workshop that was underwritten by the Israeli Consulate of New York, which Roth called an Israeli “hechsher” on the play.

COPMA does not acknowledge Theater J’s slate of more than 35 plays and workshops relating to Israel over the last 16 years, said Roth, who among other plays the group has performed cited “Dai” (“Enough”), which details the experiences of 14 different Israelis in the moments before a suicide bombing.

Theater J also never actually produced “Seven Jewish Children,” explained Roth. Instead, the group held a “critical dissection” of the play, featuring readings of “Seven Jewish Children” and response plays, as well as a talk to start the event that included “what troubled me about the play,” Roth said.

The DC federation, in an April 2011 statement, said it would not fund “any organization that encourages boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel in pursuit of goals to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish State.” Theater J “stands squarely” against the BDS movement, Roth told JNS.org.

“We are all about bringing Israeli art over here, engaging with Israel,” he said. “We are a leading importer of Israeli cultural talent to Washington.”

In its letter on COPMA last week, the federation said it was not its job to meddle in the “autonomous decision making” of its partner agencies, or to “single out a few programs from the thousands we support that may make some uneasy.”

Samet, chairman of COPMA, told JNS.org that it was “only with great reluctance that we went to a mass email campaign urging people to suspend or terminate contributions until such time as [the] federation does something about [the Theater J issue].” But the federation ultimately crossed COPMA’s red line.

“We didn’t want to take it that far, but they pretty much forced our hand by ignoring us, and ignoring the issue,” he said.

A group of 16 Knesset Members in Israel’s governing coalition, many from the Likud that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu heads, wrote him on Sunday not to give up territory to the Palestinian Authority.

In a letter sent to the Prime Minister during his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the MKs called on Netanyahu “not to return to the Oslo Accord template or cede any more parts of the homeland to the Palestinian Authority.”

The letter was drafted by MK Yariv Levin (Likud-Beiteinu), chairman of the governing coalition, and MK Orit Struck (Jewish Home). It was also signed by deputy ministers Ze’ev Elkin, Tzipi Hotovely and Ofir Akunis of the Likud and  Eli Ben-Dahan and Avraham Wortzman of Jewish Home.

Meanwhile, Energy and Water Resources Minister Silvan Shalom, a veteran and senior Likud leader, said that “no one believes a permanent agreement can be reached in nine months,” the timetable the U.S. has set for the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations.