ISRAEL (IINO)
Saying ‘enough is enough,’ Smotrich doubles cut of PA tax money By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
February 2, 2023 – According to Israeli law, the government is supposed to withhold an amount equal to the financial support the Palestinian Authority gives jailed terrorists and their families.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced Wednesday that the government was dealing an extra financial blow to the Palestinian Authority (PA) due to its direct support of terrorism.
“For the first time ever, I signed a double offset of terror money that the PA transfers to terrorists’ families,” he said. “We have deducted 100 million shekels instead of 50 million up until now.”
“Furthermore,” Smotrich added, “we deducted an additional NIS 200,000 that will be transferred as compensation to the families of terror victims, in accordance with the court’s ruling. The PA funds terrorists, but now the State of Israel is saying: enough is enough. The citizens of Israel will not be part of this farce.”
According to 2018’s so-called “Pay for Slay” law, the government is supposed to withhold an amount of tax money it collects for the PA from Palestinian workers in Israel that is equal to the financial support the Authority provides to jailed terrorists and the families of those killed in attempted or actual attacks.
The PA pays hundreds of millions of shekels each year on a sliding scale, with those committing the most heinous crimes receiving the highest salaries. The PA consistently vows that it will never stop the payments no matter what Israel does, even though the tax revenue is a vast part of its budget.
[Ed.: If this keeps up, I’m going to have to stop calling it “IINO”! 
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Overnight Revenge Attacks on Israel’s South by AFSI Staff
February 2, 2023 – The Israel Defense Forces targeted Hamas weapons production sites and storage facilities in the Gaza Strip in response to rockets launched toward Israel early Thursday.
The rockets targeted southern Israeli communities in Sderot and nearby Nir Am and Ibim. The Iron Dome missile defense shot down the rocket targeting Sderot, as the first siren sounded at 2:38am local time. Another alert came 10 minutes later in Be’eri, Sirens followed throughout the night in Kfar Aza nearby.
Magen David Adom treated a woman in her 50s who fell while running to a bomb shelter in Sderot. There were no reports of other injuries, but a large piece of shrapnel caused minor damage to a road, the Sderot municipality said. An eight-month-old baby broke his hip when he fell from his older sister’s arms while she was running for shelter in Sderot during the rocket fire.
The latest friction point appeared to be over the treatment of Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir having ordered the shutdown of two bakeries inside detention facilities that supplied security inmates with fresh bread.
We know Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “right-wing” government presents an enormous threat to Israel’s enemies who continually seek to harm and delegitimize it. The government is starting to exercise its legal and sovereign rights to restore processes and operations to their rightful level of integrity in the face of threats of copycat and revenge attacks that hang overhead. Israel’s defense and security forces must be ready at every turn to combat and prevent these attacks.
