Samir Kuntar
The PA routinely praises terrorists, and yet US officials continue to treat it as if it were a respectable government organization. From Arutz Sheva, :
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is urging National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice to suspend her planned meeting with the head of the Palestinian Authority until he publicly refutes an article in the official PA newspaper praising a terrorist who murdered an Israel father and his two young daughters.
“Those who incite murder by praising murderers do not deserve the honor of meeting with senior U.S. government officials,” said ZOA National President Morton A. Klein. “At this crucial moment in the international war against terrorism, the Bush administration must have a policy of zero tolerance for those who incite terrorism and praise terrorists.”
As reported by Palestinian Media Watch, a May 6th article in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida heaped praise on Samir Kuntar, who is serving multiple sentences of life imprisonment in Israel for murdering an Israeli father, Danny Haran, and his two young daughters in Nahariya in 1979. The PA newspaper praised Kuntar as “a name of pride in the history of the prisoners of the national movement” and “a beacon of light for us and for the generations to come and an authentic role model. Every day that passes Samir’s pride grows, and our pride in him grows greater and greater.”
In this connection, journalist David Bedein (“www.israelbehindthenews.com”) reports that official PA radio, known as Voice of Palestine, regularly praises Arab terror attacks. Calling the station the “most influential media tool in the hands of the Palestinian government,” Bedein writes that it is “the official voice of the Palestinian people… You hear [it] everywhere in the Arab street. It sets the public tone… [Its] radio airwaves were provided for the PA from Israel’s Ministry of Communications with the idea that the Palestinians would be able to broadcast messages of ‘peace’ on their own radio and in their own language” – and yet “during the past ten years, The Voice Of Palestine has consistently praised Arab terror attacks.”
Last week’s slaughter of a pregnant woman and her four little daughters, for instance, was described on Voice of Palestine as “an act of heroic martyrdom.” As reported by Arabic media expert Dr. Michael Widlanski, the station repeatedly used the terms for “heroic martyrdom” to describe the terrorist act, and called the murders “heroic martyrs.”