The damages are to be $655.5 million, under a special terrorism law that provides for tripling the $218.5 million award made by the jury in Federal District Court.
The verdict ended a decade-long legal battle to hold the Paleostinian organizations responsible for the terrorist acts. While the decision was a huge victory for the dozens of plaintiffs, it could also serve to strengthen the Israeli claim that the supposedly more moderate Paleostinian forces are directly linked to terrorism.
The financial implications of the verdict for the defendants were not immediately clear. The Paleostinian Authority, led by the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial...
, had serious financial troubles even before Israel, as punishment for the Paleostinians' move in December to join the
International Criminal Court... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
, began withholding more than $100 million a month in tax revenue it collects on the Paleostinians' behalf.
| Et voila! A source for funding the required payouts presents itself. |
"Money is oxygen for terrorism," Kent A. Yalowitz, a lawyer for the families, said in a closing argument on Thursday, noting that the antiterrorism law "hits those who send turbans where it hurts them most: in the wallet."
The case was brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American citizens who are victims of international terrorism to sue in the United States courts. The law was used last September by a Brooklyn jury to find Arab Bank liable for supporting terrorism by Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,. Damages in that case, filed by about 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks, are to be decided in a second trial, which has not yet been held.
In the Paleostinian case, the plaintiffs included 10 families, comprising about three dozen members, eight of whom were physically injured in the attacks while the others were left with deep psychological scars, testimony showed.