Terrorists held as role models by the official Palestinian Authority outlets on International Women’s Day

In celebration of International Women’s Day, official Palestinian Authority outlets promoted several terrorists as role models, the NGO Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) revealed in a March 15 report.

The glorification of female terrorists occurred in three television features on an official PA TV news channel, and in a statement by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

The terrorists featured included Dalal Mughrabi and Fatima Barnawi. Mughrabi was the leader of a Fatah squad that hijacked a bus in what became known as “The Coastal Road Massacre.” The attack, in which Mughrabi died, killed 38 Israelis, among them 13 children, and injured dozens of others.

Barnawi, according to the program, is “one of the most veteran female Palestinian prisoners,” and was responsible for a failed 1967 cinema bombing. The program also mentioned MP Khalida Jarrar, who has been arrested multiple times for incitement to terrorism and membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group.

According to PMW translations, the March 8 PA TV program stated that Palestinian women have “been participating in the crucial self-sacrificing operations in the history of the Palestinian revolution, and likewise more than 15,000 female Palestinian prisoners have entered the occupation’s prisons.”

A different show on the same day, Topic of the Day, likewise extolled “the female martyrs, prisoners and wounded; the mothers of the martyrs, prisoners and wounded; the comrades in our long struggle,” in their commemoration of the day for women.

In the daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 9, Abbas was reported to have “blessed the souls of the female martyrs and expressed his appreciation for the resolve of the fighting female prisoners in the Israeli occupation’s prison.”

PMW is not the only group critical of the Palestinian Authority’s women’s affairs. “Women’s affairs are still at the bottom of the political administration’s list of priorities, despite the strengthening of the campaigns demanding to improve things for women – and especially on everything connected to approving the law to defend women from violence – but there is no response.” said Women’s Affairs Technical Committee director Nadia Abu Nahleh, as reported by Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on March 7.

Source: JP