The lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is partially the fault of US policy-makers. US administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have covered for the Palestinians and let them off the hook for directing terror and refusing to make peace.
Before I criticize US behavior with respect to the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), I wish to state that I have had the opportunity at this site to praise the United States and express my gratitude for all that I have received from such an amazing country. With that said, I wish to place part of the blame for a lack of peace between Israelis and Palestinians on the shoulders of clueless policy-makers in Washington.
I have mentioned in several previous articles that our oldest son and I were injured in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem on March 21, 2002. The bomber was a PA policeman; the head of his terror cell was a senior PA intelligence officer; the bombing material was provided by the head of the PA intelligence service who was a friend of the former CIA director George Tenet. The CIA had by then provided the PA intelligence services with C4 explosives, the same apparently used in our attack. The US did not provide the rusty nails and screws in the bomb, but the C4 propelled them through my left arm and into our son’s brain.
After the bombing, we as a family witnessed the complete cluelessness of multiple branches of the US government. At the urging of the then US-ambassador, I sent all of the material I could find regarding our bombing to the FBI. When I met a few years later with the agent on the case, he told me that our file was empty. Everything that I had sent, totaling over 60 pages in Hebrew and English, had simply been thrown in the garbage. When I pressed the Department of Justice on using an existing extradition treaty with Israel that was often employed in drug and fraud cases in order to bring Palestinian terrorists who harmed American citizens to the US for trial, I was promised that they were working hard to prosecute Palestinian terrorists. I know that both DOJ and FBI employees routinely came to Israel during the early 2000s, but nothing came of these efforts. One Palestinian terrorist to date has been indicted and none has ever been prosecuted by the DOJ. Dr. Paul Teller used to keep a detailed list of Americans killed and wounded by Palestinian terrorists in reports for the Republican Study Group. I do not have up-to-date numbers, but I would estimate that the number of attacks in which at least one American citizen was shot, stabbed, blown up, or run over by a Palestinian terrorist would be around 200, with 500 American citizens being direct victims, not including the families of those killed or wounded.
In our lawsuit against the PLO and PA, Sokolow v PLO, we had several families whose children were murdered at the Frank Sinatra dining room of the Hebrew University. One of our co-plaintiffs identified his murdered daughter by her hair flowing out of a body bag as he watched the news. I had thought that our son had died in the ambulance after our bombing when I misread the form being filled out by a paramedic; I felt that my heart was going to explode until he corrected my misunderstanding. I cannot imagine what the bereaved father felt while watching TV and not having heard anything from officials about his daughter’s murder.
During a meeting in Jerusalem between US terror victims and members of the DOJ, FBI, and the US Embassy, one woman related that after her daughter was murdered in a bus bombing, officials came from the Embassy to offer their condolences. They then added that should it happen again, the family should call the emergency number provided. Needless to say, these officials were immediately thrown out of the house of mourning.
Frustrated by the lack of action by the DOJ, a group of families whose children had been killed or wounded in Palestinian terror attacks wrote directly to then-Attorney General Eric Holder demanding action against the perpetrators. In parallel, we sent the letter to news outlets. Eric Holder sent via FedEx a letter to each family promising action. And what action did he undertake? The FBI agent mentioned above was removed from a field office and put on Holder's security detail. Another was fired and a third quit the force under pressure. No Palestinian terrorist was indicted, extradited or tried.
When I took our issues to Daniel Shapiro, then US ambassador to Israel, I made three requests of him. I asked that those who had harmed American citizens not be included in any trade of Palestinian prisoners for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. I asked that he prod DOJ to prosecute those involved in our attack, including terror honcho Marwan Barghouti who gave $600 to the terror cell the day before the bombing. I also asked that he help us secure a settlement in our case against the PLO and PA. He promised that he would look into the issues and get back to me. More than a decade later, I have not heard back from him. I wrote to the most recent US ambassador, asking him not to deal with Hussein Al-Sheikh, who was also involved in our attack (he provided weapons and wrote the letter of responsibility for the bombing). Not only did Tom Nides not bother to respond to me, but Al-Sheikh, heir apparent to Mahmud Abbas, met in Washington with Secretary of State Tony Blinken this past summer. And when the Schalit deal did go down, 18 terrorists with American blood on their hands walked, including the two women who had brought the bomber in our attack to downtown Jerusalem. The FBI could not figure out which terrorists had been released due to missing identity numbers or mistranslated names; our lawyers provided them a detailed list of terrorists and the American citizens they had harmed.
And as to Blinken, we know how terrible he is from his initiating the fake letter of “Russian disinformation” on the Hunter Biden laptop in order to take out Donald Trump. Years before, Tony Blinken played a no less diabolical role in our case. In 2015, we won our case in federal court in New York. Twelve New York jurors found the PLO and PA guilty on 24 counts related to 10 attacks in which American plaintiffs had been harmed. The trebled verdict came to $655.5 million. We were elated. In order for the PA to file an appeal, they would have had to provide a $700 million appeal bond. Instead of demanding that the PA settle with us, Blinken asked the judge to have mercy on the supposedly broke PA and make for a low appeal bond. He averred that if the PA went broke, bedlam would ensue in the region and Hamas would take over. The terrified district judge lowered the appeal bond to $10 million. We went to appeal where the case was thrown out for lack of jurisdiction over the Palestinians. Two weeks later the PA bought Abbas a $55 million new jet.
If the US really wants peace to succeed between Israelis and Palestinians, it would take care of its own citizens. It would actively indict, extradite, and prosecute any Palestinian terrorist who harmed an American citizen. It would also make it clear that the PA would be expected to make whole those it had harmed. It would also refrain from meeting terrorists like Al-Sheikh. Instead, both Democratic and Republican administrations have ignored Palestinian terror in the perverted hope that peace will somehow just happen. But as long as the US will not drop the hammer on PA and PLO-sponsored terror, the Palestinians will believe that terror pays and not be in any hurry to make peace with Israel. Make terrorists and their supporters pay, and the PA’s calculus might change radically in the direction of making peace with Israel.
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