Overdue Justice in Monetary Damages

"We will appeal this decision. We are confident that we will prevail, as we have faith in the U.S. legal system and are certain about our common sense belief and our strong legal standing."
"This case is just the latest attempt by hard line anti-peace factions in Israel to use and abuse the U.S. legal system to advance their narrow political and ideological agenda."
"[The decision represents] a tragic disservice to the millions of Palestinians who have invested in the democratic process and the rule of law in order to seek justice and redress their grievances."
Dr. Mahmoud Khalifa, deputy minister of information, Palestinian Authority

A woman is evacuated for medical treatment after a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the center of Jerusalem on January 27, 2002 (photo credit: Flash90)

Cry me a river of sanctimonious innocence, denying the incitement by the PA for Palestinians to attack Israeli Jews as their sacred duty to the cause of 'resistance' and the calling to return to Arab Palestinian possession the lands that represent Jewish heritage, but which are claimed by Arab Muslims as consecrated to Islam, not Judaism. This is the grievance of the Palestinians, that Jews had the gall to claim their own land as a haven for a Jewish presence. The Palestinian ministry of information represents the propaganda arm of the PA.

Jews and Israelis have never made it a national and religious mission to attack Palestinians -- to deliver the message that the land they claim as their heritage geography which had never ceased being occupied through a Jewish presence -- demonstrating through bloody violence that they will never vacate that position. It is the Palestinians who have been encouraged throughout the 60-some-years since the creation of the State of Israel, to rampage and hate and destroy all that is Jewish.

Seeking redress and hoping that recognition of their plight and tragedy would turn the international community to a final, firm realization that the Palestinian Authority and the PLO have two agendas; one for the international community to digest, that they are a wronged people being forced to live under the oppressive boot of the Israeli military, and one for their home audience, gloating that they are on track to destroy the Jewish State through violent terror, abetted by the permissive understanding of the West and the manipulation of United Nations human rights bodies.

In an effort to extract a painful toll on the Palestinian Authority and the PLO for their violent perfidy, eleven families brought their case to a New York Court succeeding on the evidence their lawyers provided on their behalf, to persuade that court that the Palestinian leadership was indeed responsible for terror attacks during the Second Intifada. Four parents of American citizens murdered in the Hebrew University cafeteria bombing among them, along with the family of a man killed in a suicide attack in Jerusalem.


The civil trial was in its seventh week where the jury had heard testimony from the survivors of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem where thirty-three people were killed and over 450 injured. "Money is oxygen for terrorism" a lawyer for the families said in his closing argument on Thursday. The anti-terrorism law "hits those who send terrorists where it hurts them most: in the wallet."

And this verdict turned out to be quite painful, brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act, allowing U.S. nationals who become victims of international terrorism to sue in American courts. A recently-settled case where a Brooklyn jury found Arab Bank liable for supporting terrorism by Hamas where 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks are yet to find through a second trial not yet held, what the results will be preceded this one. This case, with its deep psychological scars, was found in favour of the plaintiffs also.

An injured man is evacuated from the scene of a terror attack in Jerusalem on the number 19 bus, on January 24, 2004 (photo credit: Flash90)

The jury was convinced by the evidence presented in the form of direct testimony, through payroll records and other official documents demonstrating that many of those involved in the planning and participation in the attacks against Jews had in fact been active employees of the Palestinian Authority. The PA had paid their salaries and had also paid salaries to convicted terrorists imprisoned in Israel. That the PA also paid 'martyr' payments to the families of suicide bombers also conveyed the message of guilty complicity.

In a January 2002 attack where the gunman, Said Ramadan, was a PA policeman, the Israel Law Center said the attack was coordinated by Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, and that Ramadan — who was killed in the shootout — was described in PA documents as a martyr who died "performing his national duty." That 'national duty' is taught through school curricula, through PA television, to Palestinian children to ensure that they are imbued with those very same sentiments and tendencies as they grow up to take their place as 'resisters' and 'martyrs'.

In 2001, Oz Joseph Guetta, 12, and his parents were wounded after a terrorist and PA employee opened fire on their car. "Varda Guetta later identified one of the shooters as a member of the PA’s Force 17, a commando unit which guarded then PA-leader Yasser Arafat. Others in the attack later implicated the same man, Fawzi Murar, whose family received martyr payments after he died the next year," the Israel Law Center asserted. And the jury was listening, carefully.

 

If any source has done a disservice to the millions of Palestinians "who have invested in the democratic process", it most certainly is their leadership who flout the democratic process. Who will do their utmost to overturn the verdict that imposed a $218.5-million award to the plaintiffs, determined by the jury in U.S. District Court. A penalty that a special terrorism law providing for the tripling of the damages to $655.5-million will make for an imposing message to the Palestinian Authority, one far too long overdue.