The Real Palestinian 'Heroes': Terrorists
by Bassam Tawil • September 30, 2021 at 5:00 am
As far as [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas and the PA leadership are concerned, any Palestinian who joins the jihad (holy war) against Israel and Jews and gets killed, wounded or imprisoned is a "hero" and a "freedom fighter." This is the same PA that the Biden administration is now working to strengthen.
This approach by the PA leadership has sent a message to generation after generation among the Palestinians that the murder or injuring of a Jew is a noble deed that earns the perpetrator boundless respect – even adoration.
This is the theater of the absurd, where a senior Palestinian official condemns Israel for making an effort to recapture convicted terrorists who murdered and injured several Jews and are serving lengthy sentences. Israel, according to this official, should stand aside while terrorists escape from prison and return to murdering Jews.
What Abbas, the PLO and Fatah have been saying – in Arabic – about the terrorists over the past few days reveals the Biden administration's talk about reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for what it really is: a fatal phantasm.
Under such circumstances, how could Abbas – or any Palestinian leader – ever return to the negotiating table with Israel, regardless of how many hundreds of millions of dollars the Biden administration decides to waste on the Palestinians' worthless words.
While many international media outlets focused their attention on the escape of six Palestinian inmates from an Israeli prison on September 6, as well as the ensuing dramatic manhunt launched by thousands of Israeli police officers and soldiers, only a few – if any – reported on the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership's ongoing glorification of terrorists.
The PA lionization of Palestinian terrorists, including those who have been caught by the Israeli security forces, tried and are currently serving prison sentences, is not new. In fact, this is a practice that dates back to the first years of the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964.
Since then, the PLO has not only been heaping praise on Palestinian terrorists who murder or wound Jews, but has paid monthly stipends to them and their families.
