After American student and veteran Taylor Force was murdered in a terror attack in Israel, his parents began a campaign to end the Palestinian government policy known as “pay to slay”. They won a major victory in 2018 when the Taylor Force Act became law, but Stuart and Robby Force recently discovered their work isn’t finished.
Now, they’re back on Capitol Hill working to pass legislation that goes even further than the Taylor Force Act to close a loophole that’s allowing banks to make payments to terrorists.
“We’ve recently come to the realization that the job is half done and the truth is that the payments have continued and those responsible have not been held accountable,” said Stuart Force. “The family of the Hamas terrorist who murdered Taylor is celebrated as a hero by Hamas, has been receiving martyr payments as a reward for his despicable, despicable act.”
The new legislation targets banks in the Middle East that continue to process martyr payments.
“The Taylor Force Martyr Prevention Act would give the Treasury Department the ability to designate these banks as institutions of primary money laundering concern and forbid them from using foreign correspondence accounts here in the United States,” explained Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).
Cotton says currently the banks avoid sanctions by not keeping an official presence in the United States.
“To those banks playing this game, your time is up,” warned Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Sen. Graham is confident the bill will pass, although Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) tells CBN News he’s not so sure.
“Sadly it would take some kind of miracle to get that across the finish line, but what it does give any of us is the ability to use the microphone to talk about it because many people probably don’t even realize that is happening,” explained Braun.
While introduced by more than a dozen GOP senators, Braun believes it could be a slow process moving the legislation through the Senate, and he’s not sure it can even pass the Democrat-controlled House right now.
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