By Stan Goodenough
Mar 10, 2008
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and United States President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice all call him Israel's "peace partner."
But PLO/PA chief Mahmoud Abbas has sanctioned the immortalization of the terrorist who Thursday night murdered eight young Jews in a Jerusalem seminary.
According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), Abbas' official daily newspaper, Al Hayat Al Jadida has honored Alaa Abu D'heim by prominently placing his picture on its front page above the caption, "The Shahid [Holy Islamic Martyr]."
The newspaper, which goes on to laud the massacre as "a Shahada [martyrdom] achieving" deed, is funded by the PA.
PMW says that, "since a society's honoring of terrorists is one of the greatest terror promotions, and as the budget for the PA newspaper comes from the PA's general budget, the incessant honoring of this and all recent terrorists by Abbas' PA as Holy Islamic Shahids should render the Palestinian Authority ineligible to receive any American money under the terms of US law."
Incomprehensibly for many observers, this open veneration of a murderer of Jews, like the massive Arab celebrations in Gaza at the news of what Abu D'heim had done, appears to not give the Olmert government any real pause in its pursuit of a process whose goal is the granting to these people of a state of their own on the Jews' ancient homeland.
Meanwhile, in a not unrelated issue, Iran Monday issued a new stamp in honor of Imad Mugniyeh - the veteran Lebanese terrorist killed in a mysterious bomb blast in Damascus last month.
Many in the Muslim and Arab world lionized Mugniyeh for killing and terrorizing hundreds of Americans and Israelis.
While no proof has been shown to date of any Israeli involvement in his death, Israel's enemies began blaming the Jewish state immediately after the explosion.
According to an Iranian news agency, the Mugniyeh stamp will send "a cultural message of support from the Iranian people to the Lebanese nation against the crimes of the Zionist regime."