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Palestinian terrorist with badge is no ‘guard’

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The next time you visit the American consulate in Jerusalem, the heavily armed men whom you think are there to protect you may actually be Palestinian terrorists.

The consulate’s chief security officer, Dan Cronin, has decided to hire 35 Palestinian security guards, some of whom are former terrorists, according to Ynet, the English-language website of the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Some of the new hires “have been arrested in the past for throwing stones,” as Ynet put it. In other words, they were caught trying to stone Jews to death. One “senior Palestinian adviser” to the consul-general “served time in Israeli prison because of membership in the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization).” Another is related to a Hamas leader in Jerusalem, Mohammed Hassan Abu Tir, who has served “numerous sentences” for terrorist activity.

The new guards are now undergoing training in weapons and hand-to-hand combat at an American facility in the Palestinian Authority (PA)-ruled city of Jericho. Some have also undergone training in the United States.

 To make matters worse, the hiring of the Palestinians is a blatant violation of an Israeli-American agreement. In 2011, Israel consented to the American consulate’s request to keep 100 guns on the premises, on condition that they are handled only by U.S. diplomats or veterans of the Israeli army.

Now, those guns are being handed over to those who tried to stone Jews to death and have served time in prison for their terror activity.

In a dose of bitter irony, one of the terror-guards’ duties will be to serve as “escorts to American diplomats’ convoys in the West Bank.” That’s ironic because of what happened the last time the U.S. turned to Palestinians for assistance with regard to a diplomatic convoy. 

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