Just two days after two Da’esh (ISIS) terrorists ritually sacrificed an elderly Catholic priest by slitting his throat on the altar of his own church as he was serving Mass, the people of France has once again bestowed the title of “Honorary Citizen” upon another cold-blooded terrorist killer.

Palestinian Authority terrorist Marwan Barghouti is the darling of the movement to create a new Arab state nestled right up against the State of Israel. He is also popular on the Palestinian Authority street, where citizens still vote for him during elections though he is sitting in a jail cell. Hamas has attempted during every parlay with Israel to free him; but he is one of the terrorist prisoners least likely to ever be released.

The leader of the Tanzim paramilitary terrorist organization, Marwan Barghouti is serving five consecutive life sentences plus 40 years for the particularly brutal murders of five Israelis. Among the dead was a 3-year-old girl.

That doesn’t include the deaths of the “hundreds of civilians, both Israelis and citizens of other states,” that he is also responsible for, said Israeli Ambassador to France Aliza Ben-Nun (Bin Nun) in an open letter published in France.

This is the eighth time since 2009 that Paris has bestowed the honor upon Barghouti. No fewer than 20 cities in France have honored the child-killer with the title of “honorary citizen,” according to the French L’Humanite newspaper.

None have invited him to come live within their municipal boundaries, however.

Ben-Nun expressed “deep shock and worry” in her letter, saying that French officials who pay tribute to Barghouti are “not only guilty of supporting terrorism but also have denied values that are cherished in both France and Israel.”

There have been repeated struggles between Israel and France over the latter’s attempts to portray Barghouti as a folk hero, including one attempt this past spring by Paris to present the killer to the world as some sort of “Nelson Mandela.”

In fact, a Paris auction house was ordered to remove a painting in which the chief of the Tanzim terrorist organization was actually presented as a Palestinian Authority version of the South African president and leader. “Nelson Mandela was also called a terrorist in the 1950s,” wrote the artist in the inscription.

But the Paris government didn’t issue the order until the auction house received a letter from the Israeli embassy, expressing disapproval of the comparison made by the artist between Mandela and Barghouti. The letter pointed out that Mandela opposed violence; Barghouti, on the other hand, is a real terrorist and a convicted killer. He is serving five consecutive life sentences plus 40 years for the heinous murders he committed.

He’s the kind of terrorist who would fit right in with the bloodthirsty murderers who slaughtered the 84-year-old priest who was celebrating Mass at the altar of his church two days ago, and who forced his fellow priest to film the event as they did so.

Perhaps that’s why France again has awarded him the honor, so close to the barbaric murder of the gentle man of God in Normandy?

Equally strangely, both chambers of the Belgian Parliament voted in May 2016 to nominate Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize. A letter was sent to the Nobel Committee in which the killer was called a “peace activist and a key figure in Palestinian-Israeli settlement.”

In terrorist-besieged Belgium, this is akin to something like the Stockholm Syndrome.

One wonders whether any of the security officials in either of these countries have considered the message being sent to the world’s terrorist community — and it is a real community, make no mistake — and how that warm welcome gets played to the budding lone wolves being recruited online.

Could be the leadership may only be ‘talking the talk’ about declaring “war on terror” for the cameras.

If so, then it looks like Brexit came just in time.

Israeli police have been trying over the past three years to lay their hands on recordings of Rabbi Eliezer Berland’s alleged confessions of rape. On Tuesday night, Israel TV played those recordings, which will play a major role in convicting Berland, who has evaded Israeli police around the globe for three years, of four counts of rape and one count of an attack against the husband of one of the women who had launched a complaint against him.

The recordings were made four years ago by two of Berland’s followers, who were ordered at the time to burn all the incriminating material, because “you don’t cooperate with police.” But despite the order, someone has kept MP3 recordings of Berland describing one act of rape against one complainer.

Berland’s discussion is “purely” halakhic, concerning whether or not the raped woman is obligated to divorce her husband on the grounds of her adultery. “She was absolutely raped, beginning to end,” Berland is heard saying, meaning that the sexual liaison was not her responsibility and therefore she is not obligated to seek a divorce. “She is permitted to her husband without any doubt,” Berland said. “She had no understanding of what was going on, she has no need for any get-religious divorce.”

Berland further explained that what the woman had performed with him was a divine mission to serve in the role of his wife, and so she cannot be accused of doing it out of her own free will.

A different recording that has surfaced, this one a video, is even more disturbing than the view of a religious Jewish cult leader expecting the wives of his followers to satisfy his sexual needs as a divine assignment. The video show Berland sitting, wrapped in a talit, at a Melaveh Malka-Saturday night meal, with his followers, discussing the planting of an explosive charge to murder a former follower who reported on Berland to the police.

The discussion between Berland and a member of his cult of recruiting an expert in planting explosives from among their members (his name happens to be Nachman, which should cause a certain Hassidic teacher to roll in his grave many times over), and to send that moser-snitch “straight to Gan Eden.”

Viewing this plotting session of a murder, one is reminded of similar scenes involving mobsters and Hamas terrorists, except the godfather is in a talit and the gangsters wear shtreimlach.

“Be careful,” my father warned. “Don’t run around the house with that sharp thing in your hand. Slow down. You could hurt somebody.”

“Old peoples’ advice,” I thought to myself as I raced by. “Besides, my father is a dayan. Judges always anticipate the worst.”

When it comes to preservation of life, we should all anticipate the worst.

The Rambam tell us there are three degrees of unintentional murder.

The first mentioned by the Rambam is hahoreg bishegagah ubeha’alamah gemurah – unintentional murder in situations where accidents are prone to happen and could be avoided with a little more concern for public safety.

Such might be the case when one is installing an air conditioning unit in an upper story window overlooking the street. Perhaps some safety precautions were taken but maybe more could have been done. The unit plunges to the street and a passerby is fatally hurt. In the days of the Sanhedrin, one would have been banished to an open prison known as ir miklat, city of refuge. These cities of refuge served a dual purpose. The punishment of being confined within its borders served as atonement for the sin of not being more careful. They also protected the inadvertent killer from vengeance at the hands of the goel hadam, the deceased’s closest relative, who would be acquitted of murder if he or she, out of emotional distress, killed the inadvertent killer outside the ir miklat.

The second degree is hahoreg bishegagah karov le’oness – unintentional murder in situations in which even the most diligent safety precautions could not have prevented the accident. Such might be the case when one is driving attentively within the legal speed limit and the victim darts out right in front of one’s car. In this situation, the Sanhedrin would completely exonerate the inadvertent killer, who would not be banished to the ir miklat but would be free to go home. The inadvertent killer needs no atonement because he did nothing wrong. The goel hadam would be guilty of murder if he or she killed him.

The third degree is hahoreg bishegagah kerovah lezadon – unintentional murder as a result of reckless or negligent behavior. Examples might be running about in a confined, populated area with an unsheathed knife, or backing up a car in the street without looking behind. In this situation, the Sanhedrin would not banish the killer to the ir miklat because the sin is so grave that confinement there will not atone for it. If the goel hadam kills the inadvertent killer, he or she will be acquitted of murder.

Six cities of refuge were established in Israel, one of them being Hebron. In addition there were forty-two cities belonging to the Levi’im that also served as sanctuaries for the inadvertent killer but provided a lesser degree of protection.

All persons accused of murder were confined to the cities of refuge during their trial in the Sanhedrin. If they were found to have killed intentionally and the conditions permitting execution were present, they were executed. If they were found to have committed unintentional murder, of the second or third degree described above, they were released. If they were found to have committed first-degree unintentional murder they were banished to the cities of refuge.

Once the inadvertent killer was inside the ir miklat, the law prohibited the goel hadam from avenging the deceased. But if the inadvertent killer ever ventured outside the ir miklat, this protection was removed. Similarly, the goel hadam would be acquitted of murder if he or she killed the inadvertent killer after the verdict, while the inadvertent killer was on the way to the ir miklat.

The inadvertent killer would remain confined to the ir miklat until the death of the kohen gadol, the high priest. Following the death of the kohen gadol, he would be allowed to return home and the goel hadam would no longer have any license to kill him. One could well imagine that in these circumstances the inadvertent killer would pray fervently for the death of the kohen gadol. According to the Talmud, the kohen gadol was deserving of such harmful prayers because had he beseeched God earnestly enough during the Yom Kippur service to spare Israel from such tragedies, the accident might never have happened.

The road to the cities of refuge had to be a well-maintained, unobstructed freeway so that the inadvertent killer could get there safely without being ambushed by the goel hadam. The cities of refuge themselves had to be equipped with all the services and amenities necessary to live a “normal” life so that the inadvertent killer would not be tempted to venture outside and risk his life. The kohen gadol’s mother would supply food, drink, and clothing so that the inadvertent killer would not pray for the kohen gadol’s premature death.

The new General Security Services (Shabak) chief Nadav Argaman told a Knesset committee on Tuesday that more than 40 women were involved in the current wave of terror, and that in almost every case the background to the individual woman taking up arms in a suicidal attack was internal family conflict over disapproval of the woman’s sexual conduct. In some cases, he said, it was even known that family members delivered the women to the scene of the attack.

Argaman argued that the women were sent to their certain death as an act of redemption for their misconduct, and also as a means for their families to earn a monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority.

Argaman appeared before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in his first presentation. He showed the committee charts proving that the peaks in the wave of terror have been related to tension surrounding the Temple Mount compound. He warned that a heated situation on the Temple Mount could bring about a new explosion of terror.

The new chief of clandestine operations also remarked that Hamas, which is in the midst of a strategic duress, is not interested in going to war at the moment. He noted that there is a tight cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in intensively perusing Hamas in Judea and Samaria.

Like many other in the security apparatus leadership, Argaman stressed the value of issuing work permits in Israel to Judea and Samaria Arabs, suggesting that these working people are a source of calm in the Arab society there, who also prevent terror attacks. Today there are about 120 thousand Judea and Samaria Arab residents who work in Israel, legally and otherwise, supporting about one third of the population at home.

Argaman said that since the start of the new wave, security forces and Shabak have foiled about 240 significant attacks, and in the first five months of 2016 alone 11 suicide bombing attacks were thwarted, as well as 10 kidnapping attempts, and more than 60 shooting attempts, most of them by Hamas members.

According to Argaman, since the official date of the current escalation, October 1, 2015, there have been more than 300 significant attacks and attempted attacks (not including the countless daily incidents of stone and Molotov cocktail throwing). Out of those there were some 180 stabbing attacks, more than 90 shootings, and some 30 ramming attacks using a car. He noted that most of these attacks were carried out by lone individuals, while the number of attacks carried out by terror organizations has been relatively low.

Argaman told the committee that the decline in the number of attacks in recent months, compared with October 2015, can be explained by the high number of prevented attacks, improvements in the Israeli alert capacity regarding lone attackers, and the focusing of deterrence on the attackers and their close environment.

{Originally posted to the Commentary Magazine website}

Note: After this article was published, Israel announced that it would in fact start deducting salaries paid to terrorists from its tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority

The brutal terror attack in which a teenaged Palestinian murdered a 13-year-old Israeli in her own bed early this morning—an Israeli who was also an American citizen—is a perfect example of why a piece of legislation now moving through Congress is essential. The bill won’t end the Palestinian Authority’s abhorrent practice of paying generous salaries to the perpetrators of such murders. But it will at least stop it from doing so on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime.

A brief recap: The PA has for years paid above-market salaries to the perpetrators of anti-Israel terror attacks. The salaries range from 2,400 to 12,000 shekels a month and are paid for the duration of the perpetrator’s jail sentence in Israel (people killed while committing attacks get other benefits). The lower figure is roughly equivalent to the average–not minimum–wage for people who actually hold jobs in the West Bank, and about 40 percent higher than the average wage in Gaza; figures at the higher end of the range are the kind of salaries most Palestinians can’t even dream of. In short, the PA has made terror far more lucrative than productive work.

No less repulsive is the fact that the size of the monthly salary is tied to the length of the jail sentence. The highest payments go to those serving life sentences, meaning those who managed to murder at least one Israeli, while the lowest go to those serving the shortest sentences–i.e. failed terrorists who didn’t manage to kill or wound anyone. Thus, not only does the PA incentivize committing terror over getting a job, but it also incentivizes mass murder over minor offenses.

After discovering this in 2011, the organization Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) began hounding the PA’s Western donors over whether they really wanted to be spending taxpayers’ money to pay salaries to suicide bombers. The answer, it turned out, was yes: Virtually without exception, Western governments refused to cut donations to the PA over this issue. But under pressure from a few lawmakers and journalists who found this reprehensible, they eventually decided they needed a face-saving way to pretend their aid wasn’t being used to pay killers. So the PA obligingly provided one. In 2014, it announced that it would no longer pay these salaries; instead, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) would do it. And since Western donors give money to the PA, not the PLO, they would no longer be involved.

This was always a transparent fiction. Both organizations are headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas and controlled by his Fatah faction, and money flows freely between them. But the indefatigable PMW soon provided hard evidence of this. In January 2015, for instance, the PA Finance Ministry announced that its annual budget included money for these salaries. Moreover, when Israel halted tax transfers to the PA in early 2015 over an unrelated dispute, the PA announced that due to its cash shortage, prisoners’ salaries would be cut. That would not have been unnecessary had the PLO actually been paying those salaries out of its own funds since the PLO doesn’t get any money from Israel to begin with.

None of this bothered Western governments. They continued pretending that the PA really had stopped paying these salaries, and the Obama Administration was no exception. But it did bother U.S. lawmakers.

Earlier this week, the Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs approved a change in next year’s State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill. The change requires aid to the PA to be cut “by an amount the secretary [of state] determines is equivalent to the amount expended by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization and any successor or affiliated organizations, as payments for acts of terrorism by individuals who are imprisoned after being fairly tried and convicted for acts of terrorism, and by individuals who died committing acts of terrorism during the previous calendar year.”

The House approved a slightly different version, which also mentions the PLO but doesn’t include the phrase “and any successor or affiliated organizations.” Senator Dan Coats (R-Indiana), who introduced that phrase in the Senate, told the Jerusalem Post he would try to persuade the House to adopt it, too, and his colleagues should listen. As he correctly said, absent language to preempt the possibility, the PA will simply create another face-saving dodge, and the State Department will surely accept it just like it accepted the PLO fiction.

Coats said he understands concerns that cutting aid to the PA could destabilize it, but believes “there’s a moral issue here that transcends that concern.” And he’s right: It’s simply immoral for America to be financing terror.

Moreover, adding insult to injury, the U.S. has always deducted the cost of settlement construction from loan guarantees to Israel. So essentially, U.S. government policy, as it stands now, is that building houses is a much worse crime than committing mass murder. Regardless of what you think of the settlements, that’s a moral outrage.

Coats was also right to call out Israel on this issue. “I don’t understand how Israelis can accept this practice, on the argument of maintaining stability in that government [the PA],” he said, presumably referring to the fact that Israel doesn’t deduct the cost of these salaries from its tax transfers to the PA.

Granted, the Israeli case is more complicated because, unlike U.S. aid, those tax transfers aren’t gifts; they’re Palestinian taxes on Palestinian activity Israel collects on the PA’s behalf. Nevertheless, by transferring this money, Israel is complicit in incentivizing the murder of its own citizens, and thereby most likely violating its own laws against financing terror. It’s long past time for that to stop; Israel should simply deduct a monthly amount equivalent to those salaries and use it to pay long-overdue Palestinian debts to Israeli companies (like the 1.7 billion shekels owed the Israel Electric Corporation).

Finally, both American and Israeli officials should press European governments on this issue. A good place to start might be Britain, where just this month, an independent report commissioned by the Department for International Development concluded that by enabling the PA to pay salaries to terrorists, British aid to the PA had made anti-Israel terror “more likely.” DFID predictably dismissed the report, but it caused a storm in Parliament.

By encouraging terror attacks, such funding also contradicts the West’s stated goal of promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace, since Palestinian terror merely convinces most Israelis that ceding the West Bank would be a bad idea. But even if this weren’t the case, it’s long past time for the West to stop incentivizing the murder of Israelis through its foreign aid. As Coats said, some things are simply too immoral to be tolerated.

The murder of 13-year-old Hallel Ariel Thursday morning may have been inspired by an exceptionally vile statement made this week by a high PA official, Abbas’ advisor and Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein, who on Monday urged Arabs to seek out Israelis in order to cut off their heads.

The statement was made during an interview with Donia Al-Watan, an independent Palestinian news agency, about building peaceful and normal relations with Israel, according to Palestinian Media Watch. Abu Al-Einein explained that he rejects “negotiations, meetings, and normalization” activities and believes that when a Palestinian meets an Israeli he should kill him.

“Regarding the matter of normalization [with Israel] and the participation of members of the Fatah leadership and members of the PLO Executive Committee in Israeli conferences, Abu Al-Einein said: ‘If you would ask me about my personal position, I would tell you — every place you find an Israeli cut off his head. Likewise, I am against talks, negotiations, meetings, and normalization in all its forms with the Israeli occupation,’” Donia Al-Watan reported.

According to PMW, based on his previous statements and Facebook posts it is clear that his statement promoting murder should be taken literally. Abu Al-Einein has stated in the past that killing Jews and Israelis is not merely a Palestinian national goal but is what Allah demands of Palestinians as an Islamic necessity. After the bloody terror attack in November 2014 in which four rabbis were murdered during prayer in a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of western Jerusalem, this Abbas advisor posted pictures of the dead rabbis and a shot of a pool of their blood on his Facebook page to celebrate the murder. He wrote that the butchering of the rabbis with axes and kitchen knives was “the heroic operation at the religious Zionist institute.”

The Coordinator of Government Activities in Judea and Samaria, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, warned on his Facebook page that Abu al-Einein’s incitements would have “repercussions.”

“Such words, in the summer of 2016, in a region that wakes up and falls asleep to the news of terrorist actions… cannot be allowed to stay within the bounds of rhetoric,” Maj. Gen. Mordechai warned.

Considering that Hallel Ariel’s killer was attempting to cut her throat while stabbing her body repeatedly, it could be established that Abbas’ advisor’s instructions were the driving force behind the despicable attack and that the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories should at least pick the man up for questioning.

Anti-Zionist Arabs are not happy with the pending new Israeli-Turkish rapprochement — there goes yet another regional power whose support for Arab terrorism against Israel has cooled down. The two loudest Israeli-Arab voices to spin Netanyahu’s diplomatic success into a failure are MKs Haniz Zoabi and Ahmad Tibbi. Both are arguing that the fact that Israel is paying Turkey reparations over the 2010 Mavi Marmara fiasco constitutes admission of guilt and therefore does not end the Israeli public relations headache, it only makes it bigger.

But everyone else in the region, most notably the Turks and the Israelis, appear delighted to put behind them that nasty episode and the bad six years that followed.

After the final disagreements have been smoothed over Sunday, on Monday afternoon Prime Minister Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are expected to announce a reconciliation agreement between their two countries in concurrent press conferences. Netanyahu’s cabinet would then be required to approve the deal, and said cabinet includes Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, a staunch enemy of appeasing Turkey, but that’ll come later.

Turkish-Israeli relations hit a wall back in 2010 after the IDF special forces who were attempting to take over the Mavi Marmara, part of the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla,” were met with overwhelming violence from the Arab and Turkish crew, and were forced to kill Turkish citizens onboard. On Sunday, after six years of open hostility between the two countries, which have historically depended on each other economically, high level Israeli and Turkish delegations met in Rome and hammered out the final reconciliation deal.

The political components of the agreement are:

1. Israel will pay Turkey some $20 million, presumably going to the families of the dead crew members.

2. Turkey will not launch lawsuits against the IDF officers and soldiers who took part in the operation.

3. Israel will ease some of the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

4. Turkey will limit Hamas activities inside its borders. Turkey will not permit Hamas to conduct, plan or direct any military activity against Israel while in Turkish territory. However, the Hamas offices will stay open and can continue to operate as diplomatic agencies.

The economic aspects of the deal have mainly to do with Turkey, which is now dependent on its hostile Russian neighbor for its supply of natural gas, looking to replace it with Israeli gas. However, for the time being, the Israeli gas is still tied up in the Knesset as well as in the Supreme court, so that’s not happening yet.

MK Zoabi, for whom this is her last term in the Knesset, having been kicked off her realistic spot on her Balad party’s list by party primary voters, insists that this is not the time to celebrate the diplomatic achievement of the Netanyahu government, instead, she says, the deal constitutes an Israeli admission of “committing nine murders, injuring dozens, kidnapping and piracy in international waters.”

Zoabi is also irate that the Turkish-Israeli deal does not deposit in Israel’s hands the responsibility for the woes of the Gaza Strip, which it abandoned ten years ago this summer. Zoabi wants the Israeli blockade to come down completely, but has nothing to say about the Hamas openly declared intentions of continuing their plans to attack Israeli civilians.

MK Tibi for his part suggested PA-based jurists should take note of the reparations index of the Turkish deal, for future discussions, when the new Palestinian state would be handing Israel the bill for all the Arabs that died over the years, presumably including those who were killed while trying to stuff their suicide belts with explosives.

Israeli politicians on both sides of the aisle were unhappy with the deal. Former minister Gidon Sa’ar (Likud) tweeted: “Israel will pay Turkey reparations for the Marmara? I hope the news is wrong. If it’s true — this is a national humiliation and an invitation for more flotillas and more libels from Israel haters.”

MK Arel Margalit (Zionist Camp) said that “Netanyahu once again capitulated with his tail between his legs before Hamas, hurt the IDF soldiers without blinking, and abandoned the families of the missing.”

Margalit was referring to Turkey’s failure to convince Hamas to sweeten its Israeli deal with Israel by handing over its biggest bargaining chip, the bodies of two Israeli soldiers. Of course, the Turks promised to try, and they probably did, but anyone who expected Netanyahu to be able to come up with a win on that count is either terribly naïve or just hates Netanyahu.

MK Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi) tweeted that “there better be a very good reason to justify the deal with Turkey, which on its face appears shameful.”