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Terrorism

PA grants Tel Aviv bomber martyr status


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
March 03, 2005

The young Palestinian Arab who slaughtered five Israeli Jews in a “suicide” bomb attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub last Friday was labeled a “martyr” by major PA-controlled media outlets this week.

Following his act of mass murder, “Palestinian” radio and newspapers afforded 26-year-old Abdullah Badran Islam’s highest level of human achievement – that of a “shahid.”

Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch wrote in The Jerusalem Post that “by granting shahid status to the murderer, the PA media are portraying suicide terror as a positive religious act.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority’s English-language condemnations of the bombing were taken at face value by the international community.

The PA’s seemingly contradicting positions supported assertions that for PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas, the only problem with the attack was in its timing.

Even when speaking to foreign reporters, Abbas failed to denounce the murder of Israeli Jews as morally wrong, and instead focused on how the bombing had damaged “Palestinian” interests.

“Everyone felt that the timing is not [right] and there is absolutely no need for it... It is not because the resistance against the occupation [terrorism] is a mistake, but because the nature, location and timing of the action are a mistake,” PA legislator Hassan Asfour told PA TV on Monday.

Marcus noted that the message being sent to the “Palestinian” street by the Abbas regime is the same as that broadcast for years by Yasser Arafat:

“Killing Israeli civilians is positive. Just be sure the timing's right.”

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