Cruz: 'Americans Will Die' from Biden Sending Money to Palestinian Authority

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Americans and Israelis will be murdered as result of the Biden administration’s decision to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Palestinians during an appearance on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak.

On Wednesday, the White House announced it would provide $250 million to Palestinians, despite a 2018 law — the Taylor Force Act — that prevents U.S. taxpayer dollars from supporting the Palestinian Authority (PA) while it pays stipends and pensions to terrorists and their families.

Cruz said, “In 2019, the Palestinian Authority expressed its intention to spend $342.6 million on rewards for terrorists and their families. We’re not talking about a few dollars here and there. … And now, with Joe Biden’s decision, a significant chunk of that $342 million is going to have come from you and me.”

“We’re sending American taxpayer funds to [the Palestinian Authority] so they can fund terrorists,” he continued, “and as a result of Joe Biden’s decision, Americans will die. Israelis will die. This money that Joe Biden is sending to terrorists will be used to commit more acts of terrorism, to incentivize terrorists, to murder women, to murder children.”

He added, “Joe Biden decided that funding terrorists who kill Americans apparently is a good idea.”

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Cruz remarked, “We’re just a few months in but [the Biden administration is] already demonstrating the same pattern we saw during eight years of the Obama administration, which is that they support our enemies, they fund our enemies, they fund people trying to kill Americans, and they undermine our friends. They undermine our allies. “

“Barack Obama had been the most anti-Israel president ever … and I’m worried that Joe Biden wants to beat that record with respect to the Palestinians,” he added. “We have given over $6.3 billion dollars to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian authority is in a unity government with Hamas, a terrorist group that murders Americans and murders Israelis, and for years the Palestinian Authority has had a policy that’s called the pay-to-slay policy. … When terrorists murder people, the Palestinian government pays their families in perpetuity.”

“Palestinians … are among the world’s highest per capita recipients of foreign aid,” according to a 2011 report from the Congressional Research Service.

Cruz said, “[The Biden administration] announced at least $130 million that they’re sending to the Palestinian Authority. They did it the dark of night. They they didn’t publicly discuss it. They were required to make a statutory notification of Congress — which they did — but no explanation other than pablum about, ‘Oh, we want peace.’ Well, paying people who are funding terrorists is not a way to get peace.”

Cruz stated, “Taylor Force force was a U.S. Army veteran — a Texan — who was murdered in Tel Aviv. He was one of 11 people stabbed in 2016 by a terrorist. … The Palestinian authority paid the family of the terrorist every year. It would send $25,000 to the family in support. It’s essentially a bounty on terror, The Taylor Force Act said … we’re not going to send U.S. taxpayer money for you to fund terrorists to kill Americans.”

On Thursday, Cruz authored a letter — sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and signed by 17 other Republican senators — addressing the Biden administration’s violation of the Taylor Force Act.

“This administration has demonstrated a far too great willingness to utterly ignore the law,” Cruz concluded.