Americans Sue Palestinian Authority Over its ‘Pay-For-Slay’ Program

[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

“Pay-For-Slay” is the program by which the Palestinian Authority provides generous monthly stipends to imprisoned terrorists, and to the families of terrorists who were killed during or after carrying out their attacks. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has said that even if he were down to his last penny, he would still fund “Pay-For-Slay.”

Now, at long last, relatives of victims of Palestinian terror are suing the PA for its “Pay-For-Slay” program that rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism.

Two things had to happen before this could be undertaken. First, the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act granted US citizens the right to sue individuals, organizations, or governments that carry out or support acts of terrorism, even if the attacks did not happen on US soil.

Second, this past June, the Supreme Court ruled in Fuld v. PLO that that American anti-terrorism laws apply to foreign entities, thus making possible lawsuits and financial compensation for American victims of terrorism that was committed outside US soil.

More on the lawsuit that has just been filed by American relatives of victims of Palestinian terror can be found here: “US victims of Palestinian terror sue PLO over ‘pay-for-slay’ scheme,” by Mathilda Heller, Jerusalem Post, October 21, 2025:

A group of American victims of Palestinian terrorism, including the family of slain US Army Veteran Taylor Force, has filed a federal lawsuit demanding accountability from the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization over their ‘Pay-for-Slay’ policy.

Despite promising Western governments that it will reform, the PA continues to provide terrorists and their families with monthly stipends, the amount of which increases with the severity of the crime and length of sentence.

According to the lawsuit, almost eight percent of the PA’s annual budget is dedicated to the program. The new lawsuit, brought in Manhattan on behalf of plaintiffs Stuart Force and Hananel Gez, seeks to hold the PA and the PLO accountable for bankrolling terrorism.

Taylor Force was a Vanderbilt University MBA student and former Army officer who was killed in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in March 2016. Hananel Gez was injured in a terror attack in May 2025 while driving his wife, Tzeela Gez, and their unborn child, Ravid Haim Gez, to the hospital to be delivered. Both his wife and son were killed.

As of now, Taylor Force’s murderer continues to receive payments from Defendants, while the family of the terrorist who injured Gez and killed his wife and son has received at least one payment of NIS 6,000 and subsequent monthly payments of NIS 1,400 since June 2025.

“Mr. Force lost his son, and Mr. Gez, his wife and son, because of the actions promoted, subsidized, and rewarded by the PLO and PA,” said Erielle Azerrad, the attorney for the plaintiffs and member of the National Jewish Advocacy Center.
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If both Taylor Force’s father and Hananel Gez, an American-Israeli whose wife and unborn son were murdered by terrorists, win their case, having proved that the PA’s Pay-For-Slay program incentivized their relatives’ murderers, they will be awarded many millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages. And this will open the floodgates of litigation, for more than 100 Americans have been killed by Arab terrorists since the 1990s. Hundreds of millions of dollars may be awarded.

Appeals to morality mean nothing to these Palestinian killers, and to their supporters, with Mahmoud Abbas heading the list, who reward them for their terrorism. Empty bank accounts, however, matter very much.