Earlier this year, Taylor Force, a West Point graduate, former US Army officer and Vanderbilt University MBA student, traveled to Israel to learn in the start-up nation. Such an adventure was a natural fit for this brave, ambitious American son. Taylor had a bright future, but it was destroyed when a terrorist named Bashar Massalha fatally stabbed the young American on the streets of Tel Aviv.
Like too many of his cohorts, Massalha, a 22 year old Palestinian from the West Bank, decided one day to take a knife, go to an Israeli town, and kill anyone he could. In addition to murdering Taylor, Massalha wounded eleven others, including a pregnant woman. No one, regardless of innocence or circumstance, was immune to Massalha’s bloodlust.
There are no words to describe the horror and heartbreak Taylor’s parents must have felt when news came that their warrior son had been murdered not on a battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq but on a boardwalk in Israel.
For those of us studying in Israel at the time, the terror touched us in a unique way. There had been a wave of attacks in the months leading up to the one that killed Taylor. Israelis my age had been killed at the hands of Palestinian terrorists, but learning that an American student had been the victim of one of these heinous acts was disturbingly personal.
Following Taylor’s senseless death, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noted on Facebook, “On behalf of the people of Israel, I send my condolences to Taylor’s family and friends. May his memory be a blessing.” In stark and vile contrast, the ruling party of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas hailed Massalha as a martyr and role model for young Palestinian children.
Neither the attack that stole Taylor’s life nor the official Palestinian reaction to it are aberrations. The simple and appalling truth is that the PA, which receives funding from the US government, regularly incites and applauds violence against the innocent. And it does so not just in word but in deed as well.
Through financial sleight of hand, the PA consistently rewards and incentivizes acts of terror by paying salaries to terrorists or, if the assailants are killed, to their families. Massalha had US subsidized financial incentive to embark on the stabbing spree that took Taylor from his family.
This abomination must end. And it’s up to each and every American appalled by this murder and the scores like it to put a stop to this travesty.
In order to prevent American taxpayers’ hard earned money from rewarding terrorism, Sen’s Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Dan Coats (R-IN) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) have introduced legislation that would cut off American aid to the PA so long as the Palestinian body continues to pay murders. If the Taylor Force Act is successful, the PA will be compelled to divest from terror and invest in peace.
Palestinian incitement of and compensation for terrorism has gone on for far too long. America should have done so much sooner, but let us now, in the wake of Taylor’s brutal murder, draw a line in the sand and demand Palestinian leaders choose life not death.
Destiny Albritton is the Central Region Coordinator for the Christians United for Israel campus division.