Micah Lakin Avni, whose father was one of three Israelis murdered in a 2015 terrorist attack in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, accused the United Nations Human Rights Council of funding terrorism in an address to the world body on Tuesday.
Avni's address to the Human Rights Council followed five anti-Israel resolutions that appear in a report by the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and Special Rapporteur on Palestinian territories Michael Lynk, which were deliberated by the UNHRC that day.
Avni told the council how his father, Richard Lakin, "was brutally murdered at age 76 by Palestinian terrorists, shot in the head and butchered with a knife after he fell to the ground. President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority rewarded his killers and their families with $3 million. Yes, you heard right, $3 million.
"The Palestinian Authority actually has a pay-to-slay law. Palestinians systematically pay terrorists to kill Jews – more than $300 million a year. That's 10% of the PA's annual budget. The Palestinian Authority received hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the U.N., from the EU and countries like Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, [and] Ireland. They use this money to reward murderers."
Avni said Lynk's report "failed to mention the Palestinians' pay-to-slay law. It ignores Palestinian use of United Nations funds as blood money," he said.
"Mr. Lynk, what if I were to pay $3 million to have your father, Stanley, shot in the head? Members of this council, what if I were to pay $300 million to have all of your fathers butchered? Would you report on that?" Avni said.
"Turning a blind eye while United Nations' funds and your states' funds are funneled through the PA to pay for the murder of innocents is unconscionable. Your failure to report and condemn these crimes makes you an accessory to the murder of my father and to the murder of many other Jewish fathers, mothers and children the Palestinians pay to slay.
"I call upon this council, and upon all U.N. members, to stop funding to the Palestinian Authority until the Palestinians stop the murderous practice of rewarding terrorists for killing Jews."
Avni raised the issue of online incitement to terrorism in an opinion piece in The New York Times a month after his father was murdered. In the months that followed, he wrote additional opinion pieces, gave interviews, appeared in documentary films, and gave lectures on the subject around the world.
Avni also filed two civil lawsuits against Facebook, one of them for $1 billion.
In addition, Avni established the Stop Incitement movement, which calls for increased regulation of social media and the removal of incendiary online content.
