Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah party released a photo last week of a terrorist deemed “heroic” for killing 11 Israelis 13 years ago, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported.
Fatah posted two photos of Thaer Hammad to its official Facebook page. Hammad is a Palestinian terrorist who shot and killed seven soldiers and three civilians in the West Bank on March 3, 2002. One photo depicts Hammad, who is currently serving 11 life sentences in an Israeli prison, on the day he was incarcerated, while the other is a more recent image. The photos are accompanied by the following text:
“The heroic prisoner Thaer Hammad, who carried out the Wadi Ah-Haramiya operation [i.e., terror attack], in which he killed 11 Zionists, in a new picture after 13 years in captivity. He is still sitting in the Zionist enemy’s prison.”
According to PMW, the practice of releasing such images serves to inspire a new generation of terrorists.
The PA and Fatah routinely glorify terrorists, and during the recent wave of stabbings and vehicular attacks against Israelis, Palestinian perpetrators have had football tournaments, streets and monuments set up in their honor.