President Joe Biden offered strong support to Israel this week after massive terror attacks by the Palestinian Hamas terror group, but said nothing about following President Donald Trump’s example of withdrawing funds that may have benefited terrorism.
In fact, President Donald Trump was the first U.S. president to cut aid to the Palestinians because of concerns about subsidies that the Palestinian Authority (PA) pays to terrorists and their families — what critics have called the “pay to slay” program.
U.S. direct aid to the Palestinians dates to the 1990s, when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), formerly considered a terror group, signed the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel. U.S. aid for the PA totaled about $5 billion from 1994 to 2018, according to the Congressional Research Service.
