Palestinian rulers gloat over pizza-shop terror attack
The anniversary of a terrorist attack on a Sbarro’s pizza restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including seven children, and wounded another 130 was cause for celebration by the governors of the Palestinian territory of Gaza.
Hamas, on the website of its TV channel, recalled “news of the operation made Palestinians joyous everywhere,” reported the Israeli news monitor Palestinian Media Watch.
“Masses of people went out to the streets, cheered and distributed candies out of happiness,” Hamas said on its Al Aqsa Channel website.
A similar celebration took place in the Palestinian territories after the 9/11 attacks, including the distribution of candies. In 2014, Palestinians also danced in the streets in celebration of a meat-cleaver terror attack in Jerusalem that left five people at a synagogue dead.
The Palestinian Authority, which governs Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank, also honored the 2001 Sbarro’s suicide bomber by giving him a military funeral when his body was returned to the Palestinian Authority in 2014, Palestinian Media Watch said.
A PA TV reporter at the time said Izz Al-Din Al-Masri “gave his soul for the struggle of a nation that strives for freedom.”
The reporter said the “flags of the political parties were raised at this national wedding” – the suicide bomber’s “wedding” to Islam’s promised 72 virgins in paradise – “which demonstrated the national unity and cohesion among our people.”
Wednesday marked the 16th anniversary of the Aug. 9, 2001, suicide bombing at the Sbarro’s pizza shop, which, among others, took the lives of Mordechai and Tzirel Schijveschuurder and three of their children, Ra’aya, 14; Avraham, 4; and Hemda, 2.
Citizens of Gaza elected the Hamas political party to lead its government in 2006. Hamas, an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, has a social service wing, Dawah, and a “military wing,” the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which has carried out more than 30 terrorist attacks against Israelis.
One of the most prominent Islamic public policy groups in the United States was founded by members of Hamas, the Council on American Islamic Relations.
In its charter, Hamas declares allegiance to Allah and its belief that Israel will be “eliminated” by Islam. The Hamas “slogan” is: “Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Quran its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief.”
Hamas, in its charter, denounces “so-called peaceful solutions” to the Palestinian conflict with Israel, declaring, “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.”
The headline Wednesday on the Hamas TV channel’s website referred to the guitar case in which the suicide bomber hid the bomb: “The Sbarro operation – The guitar that shook the [Zionist] entity and reaped 20 Zionists.”
Hamas, according to PMW, said the “news of the operation made Palestinians joyous everywhere.”
The article noted the terrorist mingled among the customers in the pizza shop before detonating his bomb, describing his actions as “playing the melodies of revenge.”
The Palestinian Authority and its governing party Fatah also have glorified terrorists and even reward them financially.
In 2001, the Hamas student branch at Al-Najah University in Nablus celebrated the murders by creating and exhibit of the pizza shop and posting images of body parts on the wall.
Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who led the suicide bomber to the Sbarro restaurant, was released from Israeli prison in 2011 as part of the prisoner exchange deal for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit brokered between the Israeli government and Hamas.
She had been serving 16 life sentences.
Following her release, PA TV rebroadcast an interview with her that aired on Israeli television during her imprisonment, in which she smiled upon hearing that more children had been murdered in the bombing than she had thought.
This year, the U.S. Justice Department requested that Tamimi be extradited from Jordan to stand trial.
Source: WND
