A disturbing gesture by the Biden administration. Note that Hussein Al-Sheikh met with, among others, Megan Doherty of USAID, pointing to the possibility that even more American tax dollars will go to the Palestinian Authority. There’s a pattern with the Biden administration. When Biden spoke at the UN last month, right after stating that America was committed to Israel’s security, he said: “give the Palestinians the state to which they are entitled.” In a similar clueless manner, he promised that America “will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon”, while he supported the disastrous (and apparently now abandoned) Iran deal that would only have aided Iran’s ambitions.
Biden has also enabled the Palestinian jihad by restoring $235,000,000 in “aid” to the Palestinians. The Palestinian leadership knows who their friends are. Last year, the Palestinian Authority called on Biden to cancel the US designation of the PLO as a terrorist organization “and instead recognize it as a partner organization for peace.”
Just days ago, the Biden administration covered for Palestinian terrorists when it left out a “key detail” about a beheaded young Palestinian man. Biden’s Ambassador to Israel, Thomas R. Nides, condemned the gruesome murder of Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, which took place in Hebron, a West Bank city, without mentioning that his killers were Palestinians, not Israelis. Abu Murkhiyeh was beheaded because he was a gay man, and it was Israel that tried in vain to save him from persecution from his fellow Palestinians, who ascribe to the Sharia treatment for gays. Israel had granted him asylum. Palestinians kidnapped him from Israel and murdered him. But the Biden administration doesn’t see fit to call attention to any news that portrays Israel in a favorable light.
Where are prominent lobbies like J-Street and the ADL, which profess to look out for human rights and Jewish interests? It is troubling to think that US law was broken to allow in an “alien engaged in terror activity” from the PLO into the US. without any consequences or criticism.
“Who waived US law to allow an “alien engaged in terror activity” into the US?,” by Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch, October 18, 2022:
A clear provision of US law denies entry of officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the US. Despite this clear prohibition, on October 5 and 6, 2022, Hussein Al-Sheikh, who in May 2022 was appointed to Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, not only entered the US, but also held high-level discussions with officials of the Biden administration, including, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, and Andrew Plitt and Megan Doherty of USAID.
Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter II, Part II, § 1182(a)(3)(B)(i)(I) of the U.S. Code prohibits entry to the US of aliens who have “engaged in terrorist activity.” Subsection (IX) adds that “An alien who is an officer, official, representative, or spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization is considered, for purposes of this chapter, to be engaged in a terrorist activity.”
For many years, while the PLO was permitted to operate an office in Washington DC, successive US administrations predominantly waived the aforementioned prohibition. However, in 2018, the PLO offices were closed, after the State Department concluded that the “PLO had failed to use its Washington office to engage in direct and meaningful negotiations on achieving a comprehensive peace settlement and, therefore, closing the PLO’s Washington office would serve the foreign policy interests of the United States.” [Legal opinion of the US State Department, “Statutory Restrictions on the PLO’s Washington Office”, Sept. 11, 2018]
Since that designation, the PLO has done nothing to change the situation. In fact, as Palestinian Media Watch has shown, since then, the PLO has not only continued to fail to engage in meaningful negotiations, it has also taken active steps in the opposite direction and promoted terror against Israel….
