Originally, I revealed this information at the end of 2013 in my book, Financing the Flames, which I brought a copy of for the committee. In fact, I believe that I actually published in Financing the Flames a copy of the law, the public law, with the amounts of money that would be given to each terrorist. Now, these are not from the Islamic jihad or PLO; these are just ordinary citizens. Sometimes they just need to provide money for their family or a wedding, and it lays this out.
I visited four parliaments in four weeks: the House of Commons in London, the European Parliament, the Knesset, and the House of Representatives, and you are my fifth, and they were in disbelief. In the United States there was a great deal of discussion about it. At the last omnibus spending bill in December, a specific line item was put in that any of this money that goes in to pay these terrorists will be deducted from the overall amount of foreign aid given to the PA. Every banker knows that the concept of fungibility makes that an impossible goal. When the Palestinian Authority heard of this—and they never denied this, there's no denial here, this has been known for years—they said they were going to make an outside commission so they could run the money through several tunnels, and therefore it wouldn't be the PA.
I would like to differ on the concept of charitable organizations. Many of the charitable organizations that I have studied are actually intertwined with the terrorist activity or intertwined with the organizations who are financing terrorist activity in terms of fungibility and support. There's a 2003 report by the Israeli military government—actually it's the foreign ministry—that outlines the various specific charitable organizations that are involved in funnelling a lot of this money. And remember, charitable organizations are now transnational. They're international, they're supranational, and in some cases they bear no allegiance to any nationality, especially when you have organizations, as we do in the United States, that have offices in Switzerland. Nobody knows where the money's coming from. They take money by credit card. They have something called “donor-advised” in the United States. You can just give your money. What we need to do to cure this is not to make better regulations for the NGOs—I think you call them NPOs here—or any of the banks, but to dismantle the actual establishment, the institution—