Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas hailed a Palestinian who attempted to kill an Israeli soldier with her car as a “martyr.”
“We see in her a martyr who watered the pure earth of Palestine with her blood,” Abbas wrote in a letter to the parents of Amani Husni Sabatin, who was shot after she rammed her vehicle into a soldier in the Gush Etzion Junction near Jerusalem on March 4. Her funeral in the town of Husan near Bethlehem was reportedly attended by hundreds of Palestinians.
A similar condolence letter sent in 2014 by Abbas to the family of Mu’taz Hijazi, the Palestinian suspected in the attempted assassination of Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick, described Hijazi as a “martyr” who died “while he was defending the rights of our people and our holy places.”
Leading PA officials, including Abbas, have often been accused of inciting violence and glorifying Palestinians who carry out attacks against Israelis. Abbas consoled families of terrorists—including the relatives of a man who hacked a Jerusalem rabbi to death in October—during two separate meetings last month, calling the attackers “martyrs.” The first meeting took place hours after three Palestinian men gunned down an Israeli policewoman in Jerusalem. Fatah, the party led by Abbas, praised the shooters as “role models.”
The PA also joined the terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in honoring an Arab-Israeli gunman who killed three people in Tel Aviv on New Year’s Day, saying he was “one of the most precious martyrs whose name has been inscribed with his pure blood that watered the soil of our free land.” Fatah had similar praise for the terrorist, who died during a shootout with authorities, writing, “may Allah receive you in Heaven.”
Palestinian terrorists have killed 34 people and injured nearly 400 in over 320 attacks—including 41 car rammings—during the recent wave of violence. Abbas failed to condemn a series of attacks on Tuesday that wounded 13 people and killed Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran and graduate student who was visiting Israel on a trip with his university. Fatah praised Force’s killer on social media. At a press conference on Wednesday, Biden criticized the PA for not condemning the attacks, saying, “The United States of America condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn these acts.”
[Photo: Yonatan Sindel / Flash90]