On Sunday, US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides arrived at the house of mourning for Boaz Gol, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Gol, a father of five, and two others were murdered as two Palestinians armed with axes and knives went on a killing spree in the city of Elad as Israel Independence Day ended last week.

Galit Gol, the widow, confronted Nides.

“If the murdered were close to someone in the government, would the terrorists also receive salaries and money?” she said. “You must stop the salary payments from the Palestinian Authority to the terrorists.”

Her question is justified. The Palestinian Authority (PA) Martyr Fund (also known as the pay-for-slay program) pays monthly cash stipends to terrorists or the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out terrorist attacks. According to a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, in 2017, half of the $693 million that the PA received as foreign aid, $345 million, was paid out as stipends to convicted terrorists and their families. The amount of money the PA pays prisoners is proportional to the length of their sentence, which is naturally also proportionate to the severity of the crime. Hamas operates a separate but similar fund. 

On 23 March 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Taylor Force Act into law, which will cut about a third of US foreign aid payments to the PA until the PA ceases making stipends to terrorists and their surviving families. 

President Biden reinstated aid to the PA and PLO in contravention of the Taylor Force Act. At the same time, a report in Palestinian Media Watch revealed that the PA paid at least $181 million (3.75% of their total budget) in salaries to terrorist prisoners in 2020. This was made possible by channeling the funds through the PLO. As a recipient of international funding, the PA must show full transparency and publicly list all its expenses, whereas the PLO is not accountable to anyone for how it spends its money. 

As of last month, the Biden administration is considering 

Gol’s son told the ambassador, “The terrorists carry out an attack – and then we send them to a hotel.”

The terrorists were not, in fact, sent to a hotel after they were apprehended. Gol’s son referred to the relatively decent conditions terrorists experience in Israeli jails.

Yesha Council Director General Yigal Dilmoni, a relative of Gol’s, told the US ambassador: “The Palestinian Authority and Israel pay salaries to terrorists. I ask you to demand in advance from the Palestinian Authority to stop paying salaries to terrorists.

In response, the ambassador said: “I have come to share your grief and pay my respects.”

Dilmoni told Hebrew-language Arutz 7: “It is shocking to think that the terrorist who murdered Rabbi Boaz Gol 14 will start receiving a salary of over 12,000 shekels from Abu Mazen and the same ambassador meets with Abu Mazen and encourages him and supports him financially and does not demand him to stop paying salaries to terrorists. Paying wages to terrorists encourages terrorism. “

In June, the Biden State Department admitted that funds allocated for humanitarian aid could be used for terrorism against Israel.

Additionally, the General Accounting Office, a US government watchdog agency,  issued a report in March showing that USAID did not fully comply with vetting procedures for primary recipients in the years 2015-2019 and that some of the funding may have reached terrorist organizations.

Rozie Levy, Boaz Gol’s sister-in-law, told Ynet that Gol was murdered while walking to a Torah lesson.

“His daughters, may they be healthy, said they can’t be without him. His wife also… I told the girls that dad went to get the messiah so that there wouldn’t be any more victims of terrorism. I believe wholeheartedly he went to get the messiah,” Levy told Ynet.

After the funerals on Friday, the families of the three victims requested that Israeli ministers and government officials refrain from paying condolence visits. No ministers attended the funerals.