Palestinian Rep to UN Defends Palestinian Authority Payments to Families of Terrorists Who Kill Americans & Jews

Palestinian terrorists who murder Americans and Israelis are "martyrs" whose families deserve compensation from the Palestinian Authority - that is, according to the Palestinian Representative to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour. In a press conference following a meeting of the Security Council on "The Middle East, including the Palestinian question" on April 20, 2017, Mansour was asked to explain why the Palestinian Authority paid the family of the terrorist who murdered Taylor Force, an American who was stabbed to death while touring Israel on March 8, 2016. (The "Taylor Force Act", sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham and under consideration by the Senate, would prohibit U.S. funding of the Palestinian Authority until it stops paying the families of Palestinian terrorists).

Mansour responded as follows:

"Listen, this issue is, that it now is in circulation for discussions. If you look at the families of Palestinian martyrs, that the great number of them are killed by the Israeli forces. That will, for example, rob and scheme. In Al-Khalil, in Hebron, he goes to the mosque and murders 27 Palestinian worshipers and injured dozens of them, and the Palestinian Authority, as a responsible party, helped the families of those who are killed. Who is the terrorist in this case? And there are so many cases. Or the family of the Palestinian individual that was killed in cold blood by an Israeli soldier in Hebron after he injured him, and we all saw on television that a bullet went through his head. And helping the family of that individual. Who is the killer and who is the terrorist? I am just telling you that this issue, you cannot cherry pick one case here or one case there, that there are, you know, a large number of Palestinians who are receiving compensation. They are victims of Israeli terrorism or killed by Israeli soldiers."

Asked to comment about Marwan Barghouti, a terrorist leader responsible for dozens of terror attacks, Mansour praised Barghouti as "a national hero" and compared him to Nelson Mandela.

In his words:

"I think the occupying power and the representative of the occupying power is the least qualified to speak about the credentials of a national hero. If we leave it up to racist South Africa to question the credentials of Nelson Mandela when he defended himself in court and refused the legitimacy of the apartheid regime court, then we would say that he was what they characterized him to be. I think it took people many years to realize that Nelson Mandela is bigger than many things, and he was a great figure in the struggle against apartheid. I believe that Marwan Barghouti is one of the leaders of the Palestinian movement and the Israeli occupying legal system and the representative of Israel are the last people qualified to speak about justice with regard to those who fight for independence and liberation."