https://www.jns.org/terrorists-released-by-israel-leave-prison-as-millionaires/
Many terrorists released by Israel are millionaires, flush with cash from years of receiving monthly Palestinian Authority “pay for slay” stipends, an analysis by a Jerusalem-based watchdog group revealed on Wednesday.
Palestinian Media Watch posted a list of all 734 terrorists scheduled for release from Israeli prisons in the first phase of the hostages-for-ceasefire agreement with Hamas, together with their “salaries”—the dollar amounts each terrorist had received from the Palestinian Authority’s so-called Martyrs’ Fund while incarcerated.
In total, the terrorists received $141,837,087, or more than half a billion shekels. Of those, 316, or nearly half, received more than a million shekels. (Palestinian Media Watch created a program to crunch the numbers, inputting all the relevant P.A. criteria—crime, marital status, number of children, etc., to determine the size of their stipends.)
“It’s a tremendous force driving terror,” Itamar Marcus, Palestinian Media Watch’s founder and director, told JNS.
First, it signals to Palestinians that these terrorists weren’t working in a vacuum, but were acting in the name of the P.A.
Second, the wealth places the terrorists in an honored position in Palestinian society, in fact, “Palestinian terrorists are the most honored people in Palestinian society,” he said.
“When they’re introduced, and in interviews, even years after they were released from jail, they’re called Asra [“Prisoner”]. That’s their title. It’s like an ambassador. It’s actually similar to POW [prisoner of war]. They have a different word for criminal prisoners. For the P.A., they’re legitimate fighters, even if they killed women and children,” Marcus said.
