State Department website ignores Palestinian terror

State Department website
ignores Palestinian terror
Program fails to identify perpetrators
of suicide bombings, attacks in Israel

Rewards for Justice, a program administered by the U.S. State Department for the purpose of "bring[ing] international terrorists to justice," includes names, photographs and other background information about those wanted for attacks against American citizens in places such as the Philippines, Yemen and Italy on it's website, but when it comes to Israel, the site fails to identify a single perpetrator of a suicide bombing or other attack as a Palestinian.

The program offers rewards "for information that prevents, frustrates or favorably resolves acts of international terrorism against U.S. persons or property worldwide."

Although the website provides details of attacks where American citizens have been targeted and identifying information – including ethnicity – about terrorist suspects for other countries, those who've killed or injured U.S. citizens in Israel or the territories of the Palestinian Authority are identified only as "individuals and groups opposed to Middle East peace negotiations" or as "terrorist individuals and groups opposed to a negotiated peace."

According to the Jerusalem Post, dozens of Americans have been killed in attacks by Palestinian terrorists since 1993 when the Oslo accords were signed. In some cases, Palestinian organizations have claimed responsibility for attacks. In 2003, Palestinian officials renamed the central square in Jenin after Ali Jafar al-Na'amani, an Iraqi suicide bomber who killed four U.S. Marines at a checkpoint in Najaf.

Andrea Rogers-Harper, a spokeswoman for the State Department, told the Post that the website included ethnicity for wanted terrorists "in the hopes that it could help potential informants identify the suspects," but since "no biographical data is currently listed on the Violence in Opposition to the Middle East Peace Negotiations Web page," the site makes "no mention of ethnicity" with regard to Palestinians.

Neither does that page list suspects or offered rewards.

A separate webpage for the Gaza roadside bombing that killed three Americans in October 2003 offers a $5 million reward "for information leading to the arrest or conviction of any persons involved" without naming suspects or mentioning that the attacks were carried out by Palestinians.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the Israel Law Center, an independent Israel-based Jewish legal-rights institute, and Israeli intelligence both identified members of then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, which operated in Gaza under Col. Rashid Abu Shabak's command, as being responsible for the blast. Shabak was selected by the FBI to investigate the bombing and today serves in the Mahmoud Abbas government as commander of the Fatah's Preventative Security Service in Gaza.

Another Rewards for Justice webpage for Benjamin Blutstein, 25, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – one of five Americans killed at Hebrew University in a July 2002 bombing – makes no mention that Israeli authorities arrested three Palestinian members of a Hamas cell in East Jerusalem for the murder.

According to Rogers-Harper, a specific terror suspect is only listed on the website following "a written request from an agency within the U.S. government, usually an investigative agency with jurisdiction over the incident."

"The request is then put through a thorough interagency review process before it is submitted for final approval within the Department of State," she said.

No Palestinian terrorists are identified on the program's website, she said, because no rewards have been offered for information leading to the capture of specific Palestinian terrorists wanted for murdering Americans.

Still, Rogers-Harper said, "All cases in which Americans are victims of terrorism are a high priority for the Rewards for Justice program and the U.S. government as a whole."