TEL AVIV – Israeli dentists injected a Palestinian terrorist with muscular dystrophy while he was incarcerated in an Israeli prison for killing a policeman, at least according to the latest conspiracy libel published in the Palestinian Authority’s official daily.
Na’im Al-Shawamreh, who was imprisoned in 1995 for planting a bomb and killing an Israeli police sapper while he was defusing it, died earlier this month after being admitted to hospital near the West Bank city of Hebron, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported.
Shawamreh died more than three years after being released from Israeli prison in 2013 as part of a prisoner exchange deal.
Nevertheless, Abbas Zaki, a senior official from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, accused Israel of purposely injecting Shawamreh while he was serving his life sentence.
Zaki explained that “occupation authorities caused the death of released prisoner Na’im Al-Shawamreh as a shahid [martyr], after giving him an injection in the mouth four years ago which caused muscular dystrophy and led to his death as a Martyr,” the August 18 article, translated by Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported.
Zaki went on to praise the terrorist for being a hero.
“Al-Shawamreh is a patriot and a man of culture… He was beloved and a model of morals and positive influence, as is testified to by his companions and friends.” he said.
Last year, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported that Shawamreh was subjected to “secret medical experiments,” reminiscent of the infamous human experimentation performed on concentration camp prisoners by Nazi doctors.
After visiting the Palestinian prisoners, Director of the [PLO] Prisoners’ Affairs Commission [and PA Parliament Member] Issa Karake said that “Shawamreh and other sick prisoners are victims of severe crimes committed against prisoners in prisons, which expose them to deadly, chronic diseases resulting from secret medical experiments on their bodies, and their deliberate negligence,” the report said.
After Shawamreh’s death, Al Jazeera also published the libel, noting that “Rights groups say his death was the result of Israeli medical negligence in prison.”
However, Al Jazeera admitted that “the reason why Shawamreh developed the disease in prison remains unclear.”
As media watchdog Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) points out, the notion of Shawamreh contracting the disease while in prison is ludicrous on account of it being a genetic disease.
Of course, anyone with a smattering of medical knowledge knows that muscular dystrophy arises from mutations in the genes that code for the protein necessary to build and repair muscles. In other words, it is an inherited disorder, not an acquired one, even though some forms of the disease manifest themselves only in adulthood. Shawamreh, whose disease manifested itself during his incarceration, died three years after his release from prison. But Zaki and his colleagues who resort to such obviously dumb libels care little about facts when it comes to defaming Israel.