„Ahmad Musa looks like a character in a gangster movie with his black leather jacket, slicked back hair and self-possessed stare. Perhaps this is unsurprising: he first went to jail aged 15 and has been behind bars for double murder.
As this stern man sits beside me, I ask him if he killed the two men as charged? He pauses, then replies softly: ‚Yes, I shot them dead.‘
Yet Musa was released after just five years. For he is a Palestinian activist, the men he killed were alleged collaborators with Israel, and he was freed under a peace deal.
Despite a subsequent arrest and nine-year sentence for shooting at Israeli troops, he is hailed a hero by his supporters for fighting the occupation.
So like thousands of Palestinian prisoners – including jihadist bombers and killers of children – he has been awarded a ‚salary‘ for life. Musa gets £605 per month; others get much more. If they die, the cash can go to their family.
These men are seen as terrorists by Israel and many in the West. Yet money to the body behind these ‚rewards for murder‘ flows from British and European taxes, leading to accusations that aid is ‚subsidising mass murder‘ with ‚incentives‘ for terrorist outrages.
The UK cash comes from the Department for International Development (DfID), giving up to £25.5 million this year to the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) as part of a £72m package. It also provides billions to the European Union and World Bank, both big donors to Palestine.“ (Der Journalist für die Online-Ausgabe des Jewisch Chronicle: „Cash for terror: how PA duped British backers“)
