JERUSALEM – Hijacking planes and murdering Israelis are “wonderful acts of heroism” for women, according to a Palestinian Authority psychologist interviewed on an official PA TV program.
During an interview on “Our Ethics,” psychologist Jultan Hijazi outlined the evolution of Palestinian women whereby after the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel captured the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, women moved from domestic to proactive roles – primarily demonstrated through their acts of “struggle and self-sacrifice,” i.e. terrorism.
Hijazi cited several female “heroes” as examples of this, including Laila Khaled who committed two plane hijackings, Dalal Mughrabi who led a bus hijacking – one of Israel’s most lethal terror attacks – that killed 37 including many children, and Fatima Barnawi who placed a bomb in a cinema and who Hijazi admits “was the first female terrorist prisoner.”
Hijazi also mentioned the “mother of Martyr Muhammad Farahat,” who accompanied her son during a terror attack that claimed the lives of five students.
“As a mother, I am incapable of doing what she did, but she constitutes an example for the struggle, and she succeeded in strengthening the national values. … Women carry out a large role in the children’s psychological preparation,” she said.
“These women, through their operations, recorded wonderful acts of heroism that the generations still see as an example,” Hijazi added.
She said it was important for the next generation to have female role models to look up to since “women carry out a large role in the children’s psychological preparation,” according to a translation by watchdog Palestinian Media Watch.
She also lauded Palestinian women for taking action in the most recent terror wave of stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks.
“The women also had a role in the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2015, and we saw how women attacked the Israeli soldiers at checkpoints in stabbing operations,” she said.
Laila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist, was one of the hijackers of TWA flight 840 from Rome to Athens on August 29, 1969, as well as El Al flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York on September 6, 1970.
Dalal Mughrabi orchestrated 1978’s Coastal Road Massacre, hijacking a bus and murdering 37 civilians –including 13 children – and wounding over 70.
Fatima Barnawi placed a bomb in a movie theater in Jerusalem that malfunctioned. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Barnawi was released after serving 10 years in a prisoner exchange. In 2015, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas honored Barnawi with the Military Star of Honor.