Throughout the 1930s, “various American Nazi organizations were discovered amassing arsenals of arms and ammunition, planning to sabotage roadways and power plants—even buying planes for a Nazi air force inside the United States,” writes Todd Farley in a review of the crime writer Michael Benson’s new book Gangsters v. Nazis. The book details the activities of Nazi sympathizers from that era as well as the organized resistance of infamous Jewish mobsters including Meyer Lansky, “Buggsy” Goldstein, and Harry “Pep” Strauss.

In 1938, New York City had a Nazi problem.

At the time, there were about 12 million German immigrants in the U.S., and most were happily assimilating. But about one in 500 were members of the German-American Bund, a national organization that avidly supported Adolf Hitler and pledged allegiance to Germany. Its literature called the Jewish people a “menace” and a threat to democracy. In New York, the Bund held massive rallies, goose-stepping down the streets of the Upper East Side in brown-shirted uniforms with swastikas on their arms.

The demonstrations terrified New York’s Jewish community, many of whom had relatives in Europe and had been watching the headlines from Germany with growing alarm. A former U.S. congressman and judge named Nathan David Perlman saw the path the Bund was on, and he wanted it stopped. He knew their actions weren’t illegal, but the judge had a revelation one evening while enjoying a cocktail in a Manhattan saloon.

“What those Nazis need is a good ass-whipping,” realized the judge.

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.