In the late 7th century, the forces of the Umayyad caliphate were on the march westward from Egypt, eager to expand their empire. They soon found themselves fighting a confederation of Berber tribes led by a woman named Dihya al-Kahina, who to this day remains the stuff of legend. Arab accounts portray her as a sorceress, while some Algerian Jewish folklore has her as an anti-Semitic ogre. But the great 14th-century Arab historian ibn Khaldun notes that her tribe were converts to Judaism, and this is likely the origin of the claim that she was a Jew, made popular by the early 20th-century journalist Nahum Slouschz in his travelogue of North African Jewry. Ushi Derman recounts Slouschz’s version of her story:

Dihya offered peace, but the Muslim commander would not accept unless she acknowledged the authority of the caliph and adopted Islam, an ultimatum she rejected scornfully. According to Slouschz, she was a descendant of a priestly family deported from Judea by Pharaoh Necho in the days of King Josiah. She did not intend to enter the family history as a leader who caused yet another deportation of the dynasty, and certainly did not intend to convert to Islam. “I shall die in the religion I was born to,” she answered the commander’s demands, and went on forging her steel sword.

Berber tribes from all over the Maghreb arrived to join Kahina in her campaign, which they gloriously won after exhausting battles. Defeated and ashamed, the Arab general had to escape with what was left of his troops to Tripoli, where he had to face the caliph and tell him of his defeat. Kahina then chased his troops all the way to Carthage, and then became the city’s ruler [as well]. . . .

It took [the Arab armies] five years to recover from the losses caused in the battle with Dihya. [But they then returned with] a much larger force and managed to conquer Carthage and to defeat the Berbers. . . . After her defeat, Kahina took her own life by falling into a deep well. The Muslims pulled out her body, severed her head, and sent it to the caliph. The well is still called the Kahina Well.

Despite Slouschz’s claims, most modern scholars doubt that Kahina was in fact Jewish.

On Wednesday, Elliott Abrams testified before Congress about the Taylor Force Act, passed in 2018 to withhold U.S. funds from the Palestinian Authority (PA) so long as it continues to reward terrorists and their families with cash. Abrams cites several factors explaining the sharp increase in Palestinian terrorism this year, among them Iran’s attempt to wage proxy war on Israel; another is the “Palestinian Authority’s continuing refusal to fight terrorism.” (Video is available at the link below.)

As long as the “pay for slay” system continues, the message to Palestinians is that terrorists should be honored and rewarded. And indeed year after year, the PA honors individuals who have committed acts of terror by naming plazas or schools after them or announcing what heroes they are or were.

There are clear alternatives to “pay to slay.” It would be reasonable for the PA to say that, whatever the crime committed, the criminal’s family and children should not suffer for it. The PA could have implemented a welfare-based system, a system of family allowances based on the number of children—as one example. It has steadfastly refused to do so, precisely because such a system would no longer honor and reward terrorists based on the seriousness of their crimes.

These efforts, like the act itself, are not at all meant to diminish assistance to the Palestinian people. Rather, they are efforts to direct aid to the Palestinian people rather than to convicted terrorists. . . . [T]he Taylor Force Act does not stop U.S. assistance to Palestinians, but keeps it out of hands in the PA that are channels for paying rewards for terror.

[S]hould the United States continue to aid the Palestinian security forces? My answer is yes, and I note that it is also the answer of Israel and Jordan. As I’ve noted, PA efforts against Hamas or other groups may be self-interested—fights among rivals, not principled fights against terrorism. Yet they can have the same effect of lessening the Iranian-backed terrorism committed by Palestinian groups that Iran supports.