The House Foreign Affairs Committee heard expert testimony detailing the Palestinian Authority's payment of funds from its budget in assistance to imprisoned and dead terrorists and their families.

Yigal Carmon, the president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute, says most of the funds come from donor countries like the U.S. and Western Europe, making them virtually complicit in attacks on Israeli citizens.

Washington Free Beacon:

The Palestinian Authority has also furnished terrorists and their families with financial support weighted by the severity of the attack, a matter over which congressional lawmakers expressed outrage on Wednesday.

“These terrorists are not, in fact, lone rangers. They are not lone wolves,” said Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), who chairs the committee, in opening remarks during the hearing. “Instead, these terrorists are the product of the programming done by the PA’s perverted culture that glorifies the willingness to die or to spend time in prison in pursuit of killing or maiming Israelis.”

According to Carmon’s testimony, which was informed by an analysis of the Palestinian Authority’s budget and years of research, the Palestinian Authority transfers funds to terrorist prisoners in Israeli or their families using two Palestinian Liberation Organization funds. The financial support of these individuals is mandated by law.

Prisoners must be provided a monthly salary ranging from $364 to over $3,000 during their detention, and salaries or jobs upon their release. Those who commit the most grievous attacks receive the most substantial monthly payments and are also entitled to jobs in the Palestinian Authority institution upon their release.

Carmon said that it is difficult to determine exactly what percentage of the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget is put toward this cause because of a lack of transparency, but estimated that it amounts to about 10 percent.

“It is just outrageous that they pay cold-blooded killers who murder innocent people and call them martyrs,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), the committee’s ranking member, said during the hearing. “I cannot think of anything more disgusting.”

While Abbas two years ago ordered that these salaries not be paid by the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs but instead by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Carmon described this as a “deliberately misleading move” to assuage concerns from donor countries worried about their money being funneled to terrorists.

This fig leaf is exactly what the Obama administration and the pro-Palestinian governments in the west need to absolve themselves of responsibility for the attacks.  But we should have no illusions that the campaign of violence against Israelis is inspired by P.A. rhetoric.  There are also planned attacks approved at the highest levels of the P.A.  And since the terrorists know that their families will be well taken care of, suicide attacks are common.

Not surprisingly, there have been no calls to defund the Palestinians for this outrage.  But the BDS movement has no trouble trying to punish Israel for fighting back.