PMW Op-Ed challenges Hanan Ashrawi’s credibility

Itamar Marcus
Palestinian Media Watch
14 July '10

Background to Op-Ed:

After PMW director Itamar Marcus's press conference in Washington with Congressmen Brad Sherman and Steve Rothman to release the PMW reportFrom Terrorists to Role Models, Palestinian Member of Parliament Hanan Ashrawi wrote an Op-Ed in the influential Washington newspaper, The Hill, to attempt to challenge Palestinian Media Watch and defend the Palestinian Authority. Itamar Marcus's response, documenting the current PA leaders' and Ashrawi's response to terror, was published yesterday in The Hill.

"The Hill has a print circulation of above 21,000, more than any other Capitol Hill publication. It is aimed at the 100 senators, 435 House members, 40,000 aides and tens of thousands in the influence industry whose work affects the lives of all Americans." [from The Hill web site, http://thehill.com/ ]

Hanan Ashrawi ignores
glorification of terror
by Itamar Marcus

In an attempt to distract Congress's attention from a new Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) report documenting the Palestinian Authority's terrorist glorification, Hanan Ashrawi rushed to publish an article in The Hill to malign PMW. More striking still, although Ashrawi's article was in response to PMW's new report released in Congress, she did not allot even one sentence to name, review or even criticize the report's content. Why is Ashrawi so anxious to keep the contents of the PMW report from Congressional review?

Possibly because the report, From Terrorists to Role Models: The Palestinian Authority's Institutionalization of Incitement, documents 100 examples of the Palestinian Authority policy of turning terrorist killers into heroes and role models - a practice as disturbing as it is indefensible.

The PMW report documents, for example, that the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who led a bus hijacking in which 37 civilians were murdered, has been immortalized through the repeated naming of sites and events after her, including two elementary schools, a kindergarten, a computer center, a summer camp, football tournaments, a public square and street, an adult education course, a university club, a dance troupe, a military unit, a dormitory in a youth center and more.

Significantly, this terror veneration is coming from the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. It was PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself who funded the computer center named after bus hijacker Mughrabi, and it was Prime Minister Salam Fayyad who sponsored a sporting event named after Abu Jihad, who planned and directed the bus hijacking. The message the PA leaders are disseminating could not be more problematic: We, the Palestinian President and Prime Minister, believe that murdering brothers 6-year-old Roi and 3-year-old Ilan Hochman and their mother Rebecca, along with 34 other civilians on a bus, was an act worthy of honor.

(Read full Op-Ed)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.