A jury in New York federal district court has found the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority guilty of supporting terrorists in carrying out attacks in which Americans died — a decision in an international case that has dragged on 10 years.

Oddly, not one national network carried “breaking news” about the verdict when it was announced, nor was it mentioned on evening newscasts. No one missed rehashing the previous night’s Oscar awards, the previous day’s video call by al-Shabaab to attack the Mall of America, and various local news events.

The jury found the PA and the PLO knowingly provided support for at least six terrorist attacks in which U.S. citizens were killed and wounded between 2002 and 2004. The plaintiffs were awarded $215.5 million in damages. However, the lawsuit by 10 families comprised of some 36 members was filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which actually triples the award of damages, raising the total to $655.5 million.

The law allows U.S. citizens who are victims of international terrorism to sue their attackers in United States court. Eight of the victims were physically injured but all were deeply scarred emotionally by the attacks, testimony showed. Also included among the plaintiffs were the estates of four victims who were murdered in the attacks.

The verdict came in the seventh week of a civil trial that included emotional testimony from survivors of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem.

More than 450 people were injured, including some permanently maimed, and 33 people died in the attacks.

The targets included a crowded bus stop, a public bus and a school cafeteria on the campus of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Many of those involved in the planning and operational aspects of the attacks were proven to have been actual employees of the Palestinian Authority.

In addition, plaintiffs documents that the PA had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel – and followed up with “martyr stipends” to the families of suicide bombers.

The practice continues to this day, with such payments promised as incentive to commit future attacks.

Last September, a Brooklyn jury found the Arab Bank liable in a case filed by 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks for supporting terrorism via Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization. The case has yet to be concluded, with damages to be set in a second trial.

The Likud and the Herzog-Livni “Zionist Camp” parties attached each other for being soft on security only hours after a Palestinian Authority Arab stabbed a Haredi man in his stomach near City Hall in Jerusalem.

Mayor Nir Barkat was at the scene and helped tackled the attacker, whose victim suffered moderate wounds in his stomach.

The terrorist attack and Barkat’s action did not interest the two major parties in the election. Instead, they continued to stab each other below the belt with personal insults, continuing a campaign absent of reason and logic.

The Likud started the verbal free-for-all by suggesting that the terrorist attack was a result of Tzipi Livni’s remarks that dividing Jerusalem is an option.

The Likud’s statement declared:

If Tzipi and Bujie [Yitzchak Herzog] form a left-wing government – Hamas will be in the heart of Jerusalem.

That is the way this campaign has been going. The price of water, determined by experts in the bureaucracy, goes down, and everyone takes credit. An Arab terrorist attacks, and all of a sudden it is because someone said something, or did not say something.

It didn’t take long for Herzog-Livni to react on Facebook, writing that the Likud disseminated “another lowly and despicable lie from the man who is personally responsible for the loss of security in the capital.”

Here we go again.  Netanyahu is “personally” responsible? And was Livni “personally responsible” for every terrorist attack when she was acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quit?

And do Israelis feel any less secure now than they did when Livni was Prime Minister.

Livni, who still acts like her figment of a politician, as usual could not restrain herself from showing everyone that she is as lowly and despicable as Netanyahu. She accused him of “dancing on the blood” of the victim of the stabbing attack and using it to win more votes, which may be true but is exactly what she is doing.

The good news is that we are less than four weeks away from the end of this disastrous campaign.

The Somali al-Shabaab terror group linked to Al Qaeda has called on Muslims in the West to “answer the call” and attack “American and Jewish-owned” shopping malls in the UK, US and Canada.

In the 77-minute video the speaker, whose face was covered, said, “We call upon our Muslim brothers, particularly those in the West, to answer the call of Allah and target the disbelievers wherever they are,” said a speaker wearing a military jacket, face covered.

Suggesting the Mall of America – the largest mall in the United States – the speaker displayed coordinates for the site on the screen. The “twin cities” of S. Paul and Minneapolis are home to the largest population of Somali immigrants in the U.S. More than a few are known to have traveled from there to the Mideast and Africa to fight with radical Islamist terrorists.

The threat has become a raison d’etre for America’s Department of Homeland Security, which was slated for shutdown this week.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said Sunday that the propaganda video released Saturday by al-Shabaab, made clear “why I need a budget.” The video also called for attacks on Oxford Street in London and two Westfield Malls in Stratford and White City as well as Canada’s West Edmonton Mall in Alberta – the largest shopping mall in North America.

In an interview over the weekend on CNN, Johnson said “It’s absurd that we’re even having this conversation about Congress’s inability to fund homeland security in these challenging times.”

The Palestinian Authority has renewed incitement over the Temple with accusations that Israel is guilty of “over 100 attacks” on the holy site, following nearly half a year of relative calm.

King Abdullah of Jordan and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met several months ago and each side took steps for calm and to end daily clashes on the holy sites and a spate of barbaric terrorist attacks on Jews.

Israeli ministers stopped uttering statements that Jews one day will rebuild the Third Temple, and they suddenly dropped off the front pages by not grabbing headlines with high-profile visits.

Jordan made it clear to the Palestinian Authority that the “status quo” allows Jews to visit the holy site, so long as they don’t pray there, and Palestinian Authority news agencies stopped reporting that Jews were “invading” and “storming the Temple Mount.

Things are way too calm for the Palestinian Authority, whose officials uttered several gems of incitement by Palestinian Authority officials this past month and which were translated and published by the Palestinian Media Watch, which summarized:

The three most important PA religious leaders have all stated this month that Al-Aqsa is threatened by Israel. This religious incitement in the name of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is exactly what Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party used to incite Palestinians to carry out acts of terror, including murder, during the recent two-month terror campaign in Jerusalem. During October and November 2014, Palestinians murdered 11 Israelis using guns, knives, and cars, and wounded dozens.

At that time, Palestinian Media Watch documented  that Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash acknowledged the PA leadership’s full endorsement of the killings:

‘We kiss every forehead, every hand and even every foot that carries out Ribat (religious conflict/ war over land claimed to be Islamic) at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem.”

PA Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein on February 12 that said that Israel aspires “to build the alleged Temple on the ruins of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Abbas’ Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash, speaking a day earlier, said that UNESCO must prevent Israel from “destroying the human heritage in Jerusalem.”

The PA Minister of Religious Affairs Sheikh Yusuf Ida’is warned on February 5 that since January, Israel has carried out “over 100  attacks and incidents of desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Ibrahimi Mosque [Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron]” and that “the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in grave and direct danger and that with every sunrise, this danger grows.”

Muslim leaders are absolutely paranoid of Jews being near the Temple Mount.

The Mufti, in his remarks published in the Arabic edition of the Ma’an News Agency and translated by PMW, went ballistics over a sign showing Jews and others the direction to the Temple Mount. Ma’an wrote:

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories and Preacher at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque Sheikh Muhammad Hussein warned about the placement of a sign by the occupation municipality near the Council Gate [entrance to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount), with the inscription, ‘Temple Mount’ ….

The Mufti explained that with the elections of the occupation authorities approaching, all the parties are trying to draw the votes of the extreme right by increasing the attack on the Palestinian people and its holy places.

Abbas’ adviser al-Habbash also spun out of control over the “threatening” sign and “warned of the severity of the escalatory measure implemented by the Israeli occupation municipality crews, in placing a sign in Arabic, Hebrew and English calling the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque “the Temple of Solomon.”

Al-Habbash said that Israel’s changing of names in the Holy City “is a kind of intentional falsification of history and heritage, and a desperate attempt to deny the [city's] Arab and Islamic character and force a new, invented character – the Jewish character. He noted that this was a most dangerous step, heralding grave consequences. “

A new U.S. agreement with Turkey to train and equip five thousand moderate Syrian opposition forces “is not a serious effort at all to win a war,” a displaced Syrian activist refugee says. Aboud Dandachi, who now lives in Istanbul, Turkey says a plan to train and arm 5,000 moderate Syrian opposition forces is “not serious at all.”

The plan signed by the United States at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara is intended to train, equip and arm 5,000 troops. Congress has already allocated half a billion dollars for the project, but according to a Pentagon spokesperson, only 1,200 “moderates” have been “identified” for the program slated to begin in mid-March. How long will it take U.S. military specialists to train, equip and arm 5,000 Syrian rebels? How effective will this program be? Will it help change the picture with Daesh, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria terrorist group? Will anything be resolved in Syria by this?

Dandachi has had first-hand experience observing the factors that led to the nightmare that once was his homeland. A business person, he became a refugee within his own country after being forced to leave his home in Homs when the Syrian Army launched an artillery and tank assault on his neighborhood. After moving from one place to the next and following the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against two Damascus neighborhoods, Dandachi made the painful decision to leave his homeland and traveled to Istanbul, arriving in September 2013.  He has a rather sardonic view of President Barack Obama’s new plan to help Syrian rebel forces. As to the American president’s international credibility …. well …

“Where do I begin with the problem with this approach,” Dandachi replied in an exclusive interview conducted via the Internet with JewishPress.com on Thursday. “If an Israeli wants a career in the IDF, he or she knows where to sign up. If any Jew anywhere in the world wants to dedicate a few years of their lives to serving Israel, they know the address.

“You can’t build a military by “scouting” soldiers; you need people to know where to come forward,” Dandachi said. “As a Syrian I can’t very well sit around and hope to be ‘discovered’ by Obama,” he continued. “And then if I were, it will be a cold day in hell before I trust him to sell me a used car, much less supply me with weapons.

“War is a potentially long term affair; will Obama keep this force supplied for the years it may take to have any effect? The Americans have proven notoriously fickle in the past,” he observed. (Ed. – More than one news commentator has made similar remarks, referencing America’s behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan, for starters.)

Somewhat taken aback by his candor, this writer asked a second time about the advisability of revealing his identity – but was told “by all means” to go ahead.

“I was never a fighter and I will never be one, I’ve never held a gun in my life, but I’m sure that’s what many potential fighters could be thinking right now,” Dandachi wrote. “When the U.S. went to war in WWII and Vietnam, it didn’t want to “vet” its potential pool of recruits – it drafted anyone above a certain age. When you wage all-out war you can’t hand-pick your fighters; you need to make sure of the widest possible amount of potential manpower available.

“Training” several thousand soldiers is not a serious effort at all to win a war,” he contended.

By the way — Dandachi’s point has some merit: how effective can 5,000 U.S.-trained troops be against the combined forces of Syrian military forces, backed and equipped by Russia and Iran, fighting side by side with the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards force and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerrilla fighters?

Syrian “moderate” forces will also be facing the “other” Syrian rebel faction — that of the radical Islamist rebels linked to Al Qaeda (Jabhat al Nusra, for instance) and now also Daesh, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). That force alone numbers in the tens of thousands: the most recent estimates place the total number of “moderate” Syrian rebel fighters at best at 20,000.

Can this cause be saved?

Jewish schools and synagogues in Britain were warned to tighten security this week following last weekend’s terror attacks in Copenhagen.

National Policing Lead for Counter Terrorism Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said in a statement this week the government has become more concerned “about the risk to the Jewish community in the UK.”

Security personnel “are in dialogue with Jewish community leaders about further actions that we will be taking, including more patrols in key areas,” Rowley added. Reports of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain more than doubled over the past year, according to the Community Security Trust (CST), which has reported security-related events in the British Jewish world since 1989.

Current funding for security around schools stands at $3.5 million, according to ABC News.

“It is very clear that Jewish institutions are targets,” European Jewish Association general director Rabbi Menachem Margolin told the news network. “Jewish institutions should be under surveillance 24/7.”

Not every Jew in Britain agrees, however, and some actually feel quite safe.

The president of the UK Board of Deputies of British Jews, Vivian Wireman, was quoted as saying “Jews in the UK are living in a safe environment. Although there is a danger of copycat attacks,” she acknowledged, she nevertheless maintained, “British Jews shouldn’t be too concerned.”

A group calling itself “Liberate Stamford Hill” has planned a rally on March 22 to protest the “Jewification of Great Britain.” The demonstration is set to take place in a district of northern London – Stamford Hill – that is home to the highest concentration of Orthodox Jews in Europe.

A senior Pakistani official said Thursday that Taliban is prepared to open peace talks with the United States with the first rounds of talks today and Friday in Qatar.

Back in 2002, peace talks between the Bush administration and Taliban ended without any results, one year after the United States invaded Afghanistan as part of its war on terror.

Pakistan’s military chief of staff told Afghan leaders that Taliban is prepared for a sudden shift in policy, which also would signal a change for the Pakistani military that is considered to be behind  Taliban.

The peace overture is not official and needs a wider agreement among Pakistani officials and the  approval of Taliban’s spiritual leaders Mullah Mohammed Omar.

One factor working help compel the military to change course and go with a peace overture is last December’s savage Taliban attack against children in a school, which evoked shock among citizens and more suspicion of the military’s involvement with Taliban.

Using Qatar as the host to talk peace is interesting since it backs Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps can convince Obama that they represent Islam and not those “who have perverted Islam.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said last month that Taliban is an “”armed insurgency” and not a terrorist group.

Earnest said, as heard and seen in the video below:

It is important to draw a distinction between the Taliban and al Qaeda. The Taliban has resorted to terror tactics, but those terror tactics have principally been focused on Afghanistan.

They do carry out tactics that are akin to terrorism, they do pursue terror attacks in an effort to try to advance their agenda.

The State Department does not include Taliban on its list of foreign terrorist organizations, while the Treasury Department defines it as a group of  “specially designated global terrorists.”

Earnest explained that the Treasury Dept.’s designation means the United States can impose financial sanctions against Taliban’s leaders.