Terrorists as heroes. Is that a way to raise children?

Mixing sports and terrorism

The Palestinian Authority’s Karate Federation recently held a “Sisters of Dalal Mughrabi Championship for Young Women,” named for a cherished mass murderess "heroine."

You have to ask why?  I explore this phenomenon in my recent column on Arutz Sheva, Israel National News.

Here in America we often have debates about whether it’s appropriate to mix sports with politics—whether athletes should speak out on political or social controversies. But in Palestinian Arab society, there is no such debate. Sports are a major platform for glorifying and promoting terrorism against Jews.

Using sports events to glorify mass murder clearly contradicts the spirit of peaceful international sporting competition.
The Palestinian Authority’s Karate Federation recently held a “Sisters of Dalal Mughrabi Championship for Young Women.”  Normal societies name sports events after a prominent figure in that sport, or after the donors who made the event possible. Not Palestinian society; it names sports events after its most cherished heroes—those who have massacred Jews.

On March 9, 1978, Ms. Mughrabi —who was just 19 years old at the time— led a squad of 13 Fatah terrorists that landed in several small boats on Israel's shore. Another young woman, Gail Rubin, happened to be on the beachfront that morning.  

Gail, an American Jewish nature photographer, was taking photos of rare birds near the water. Gail’s work had been exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York City and other major venues. She was the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.).

One of the terrorists involved in the attack, Hussain Fayadh, later described to a Lebanese Television station what happened next: "Sister Dalal al-Mughrabi had a conversation with the American journalist. Before killing her, Dalal asked: 'How did you enter Palestine?' [Rubin] answered: 'They gave me a visa.' Dalal said: 'Did you get your visa from me, or from Israel? I have the right to this land. Why didn't you come to me?' Then Dalal opened fire on her."

As Gail laying dying on the beach, Mughrabi and her fellow-terrorists walked to the nearby Coastal Road. An Israeli bus approached. They hijacked it. During the ensuing mayhem, they murdered 36 passengers, 12 of them children. Mughrabi was killed by Israeli troops. Ever since, she has been lionized by the Palestinian leadership and news media as a heroine, martyr and role model—including as a role model.

The Palestinian Karate Federation belongs to an international organization known as the Asian Karate Federation, which in turn its part of the World Karate Federation. I have written to both, asking them to take action on the Palestinians’ exploitation of karate to glorify terrorism. Neither federation has responded.

Meanwhile, Palestinian chess players recently took part in the “Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir Abu Jihad Tournament of the Palestine  Northern Districts Individual Chess Tournaments.”

Khalil Al-Wazir, better known as Abu Jihad, was one of the most notorious terrorists in modern history. He was a co-founder, along with Yasir Arafat, of the terrorist Fatah movement in 1965. 

According to news reports as well as the PA’s own boasting, al-Wazir personally organized attacks in which 125 people were killed. Among the most infamous were the murder of American diplomats in Khartoum (Sudan) in 1973, and the above mentioned Coastal Road massacre led by Dalal Mughrabi.

Karate and chess are not the only sports through which the Palestinian Authority glorifies mass murderers. The Ansar Al-Quds soccer club, near Jerusalem, holds an Abu Jihad Tournament. So do the Palestinian Judo Association, the Palestinian Table-Tennis Association, and the Palestinian Boxing Association. 

The international federations to which these Palestinian sports associations belong have an obligation to act. Using sports events to glorify mass murder clearly contradicts the spirit of peaceful international sporting competition. Silence in the face of these Palestinian outrages will imply acceptance of such behavior.

The question of naming sports events after terrorists is not just a matter of symbolism. Young people are influenced by what they see and hear around them. When a society presents Dalal Mughrabi and Abu Jihad as heroes, then young Palestinians will aspire to duplicate their murderous deeds. How can there be any hope for peace if young Palestinians are raised to view massacring Jews as their goal in life?

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I am pleased to say that my book A Father's Story: My Fight For Justice Against Iranian Terror is now available on Kindle.

A student's reaction as Students for Justice in Palestine honors a mass murderer

Students for Justice in Palestine is a virulent anti-Semitic group.  Naive students, from college campuses across America, march under a banner that boasts, "From River to the Sea, Palestine will be free."
Here's a video discussing one student's reaction to a heroine of the SJP cause, Dalal Mughrabi.

How to respond to honors for Palestinian killer of U.S. senator’s niece

Did you know that the United States Senate has been underwriting a series of events publicly glorifying a Palestinian terrorist who murdered an American citizen—in fact, a senator’s niece?  Well, it is, and this outrage must come to an end.

The terrorist’s name is Dalal Mughrabi. On March 9, 1978, she headed a squad of 13 Palestinian terrorists who set out from Lebanon towards Israel, in several small boats. They were members of Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). At the time, Yasser Arafat was chairman of the PLO and Fatah, and Mahmoud Abbas was his second in command. Today, Abbas is chairman of the PLO and Fatah, and president of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The terrorists landed on a northern Israeli beach, where Gail Rubin, an American Jewish nature photographer, was taking photos of rare birds. Her work had been exhibited at The Jewish Museum in New York City and other prominent venues. She also happened to be the niece of then U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut).

One of the terrorists, Hussain Fayadh, later explained to the Lebanese Television station Al-Manar what happened: “Sister Dalal al-Mughrabi had a conversation with the American journalist. Before killing her, Dalal asked: ‘How did you enter Palestine?’ [Rubin] answered: ‘They gave me a visa.’ Dalal said: ‘Did you get your visa from me, or from Israel? I have the right to this land. Why didn’t you come to me?’ Then Dalal opened fire on her.”

Mughrabi, Fayadh, and the others walked to the nearby Coastal Road and hijacked an Israeli bus. They murdered 36 passengers, 12 of them children. Mughrabi was killed by Israeli troops. Fayadh survived, was sentenced to life in jail, but was then released in a prisoner exchange.

On May 29, 2013, the Jerusalem Post revealed that Fayadh had been hired as an adviser to Abbas, which means that some portion of his salary comes from the $500 million that the U.S. government—with the Senate’s approval—sends to Abbas’s PA each year.

Those U.S. funds are also used in part to finance the PA’s ongoing public glorification of Mughrabi. The PA has sports tournaments and summer camps named after her. In 2011, the PA established a Dalal Mughrabi Square in the center of its capital city, Ramallah. Official PA television frequently broadcasts programs depicting Mughrabi as a “hero” and “martyr.”

Earlier this month, Abbas’s Fatah organized a public celebration of Mughrabi’s birthday. The event was broadcast on Fatah’s Al-Awdah TV, which is headed by Fatah spokesman Ahmad Asaf. Students participating in the celebration were interviewed for the program. One said this of the killer of Senator Ribicoff’s niece, “She is our role model, an example for every Palestinian young woman. Dalal did everything we dream of doing.” A second student declared, “Dalal Mughrabi is inspiring. She inspires us and gives us the strength to complete the journey after her.”

The Al-Awdah reporter cheerily added, “Martyr Dalal Mughrabi raised the Palestinian flag from the heart of occupied Palestine. On her birthday we renew the promise to her and its fulfillment.” Another student then described the work of the “Sisters of Dalal Committee,” a branch of the Fatah student movement. She was followed by the director of a PA government agency, the Palestinian Poets and Writers Association, who poetically hailed Gail Rubin’s murderer as “the Purple Gazelle, the Flower of the Land.” (Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)

Here are three steps that the Senate should take in response to this outrageous insult to the memory of one of its members:

1. No U.S. Senator should step foot in Ramallah until the PA changes the name of Mughrabi Park.

2. An amount equivalent to Hussein Fayadh’s salary and Al-Awdah TV’s annual budget should be deducted from the next installment of U.S. aid to the PA. Perhaps the money would be better spent if it were turned over to the families of Mughrabi’s victims.

3. The Senate should ask the U.S. Treasury Department to add the officers of Al-Awdah TV and the Sisters of Dalal Committee to the official U.S. list of “Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” The list consists of “persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.” Surely someone who publicly glorifies a terrorist qualifies as a supporter of terrorism. The designation would prevent those individuals from entering the U.S. and would freeze any assets they have in this country.

These are, of course, just a few initial steps. Much more can be done. But if nothing is done—if the Senate continues to tolerate this outrage—it will send a message to terrorists everywhere that they not only can get away with celebrating the murder of a senator’s niece, but can even get Senate-authorized funding at the same time.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in a Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is a candidate on the Religious Zionist slate (www.VoteTorah.org) in the World Zionist Congress elections.

 

This article can be read online here.

Treating a Terrorist as a Hero

The following appears in The Forward.

Treating a Terrorist as a Hero

Opinion

By Stephen M. Flatow

Published March 17, 2010, issue of March 26, 2010

On March 11, 1978, a gang of seaborne Palestinian terrorists landed near a nature reserve on the coast north of Tel Aviv. There was only one person who had the misfortune to be on the beach that afternoon, a young American photographer named Gail Rubin. Gail, a native New Yorker who happened to be the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff’s sister-in-law, was taking pictures of birds.

The terrorists shot Gail dead. They didn’t ask her what she thought about settlements or borders. They didn’t ask if she agreed with this or that Israeli policy. They didn’t care if she was a moderate Jew or a militant Jew. She was a Jew. That’s all they needed to know. And for that reason, they murdered her. Then they hijacked a bus on the nearby Tel Aviv-Haifa coastal highway, ultimately causing the deaths of 37 other innocent civilians.

I was thinking about Gail during Vice President Joseph Biden’s recent visit to Israel. It occurred to me that since Biden’s visit happened to coincide with the anniversary of the 1978 attack, he might have taken a moment to visit the site of the massacre or at least say a few words about the murder of the relative of his late Senate colleague.

I guess I was being naive. The vice president ignored the anniversary.

But the Palestinian Authority didn’t ignore it.

The P.A. marked the March 1978 massacre by naming a public square near its capital city, Ramallah, after Dalal Mughrabi, a woman who commanded the terrorist squad. According to an official P.A. newspaper, the square will “commemorate her memory and her sacrifice as a Palestinian woman who resisted the occupation… A picture of the Martyr Dalal Mughrabi will be placed at the center of the square.”

Despite protests from Israel, the youth division of Fatah — the Palestinian faction headed by P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas — held a ceremony on March 11 dedicating the square. A senior P.A. security official and a Fatah Central Committee member took part. While a larger planned dedication ceremony was canceled at the last minute for public relations reasons, the P.A. has made no secret of its embrace of Mughrabi and her murderous legacy.

Official P.A. television hailed the 1978 massacre as “a glorious chapter in the history of the Palestinian people” and praised Mughrabi as “a model of resistance, sacrifice, and Martyrdom-seeking, a model of giving and redemption of the homeland.” It also broadcast an interview with Mughrabi’s sister, who declared that “all the rifles must be pointed at the Zionist enemy, as Dalal willed it 30 years ago.”

Think about the message this sends to every Palestinian child who walks through Mughrabi Square, or who attends the computer center in Hebron, the Palestinian youth soccer tournament, the two summer camps or the two girls’ high schools that have also been named after Mughrabi. It teaches them that gunning down defenseless civilians is the proper way to behave, and that those who massacre Jews deserve to be honored and emulated. No wonder then-senator Hillary Rodham Clinton once referred to such Palestinian hate propaganda as “child abuse.”

Raising a generation of young Palestinians to glorify killers ensures that hatred and violence will persist. Not exactly what Israel expects from its Palestinian peace partners.

Why should Americans care about this?

Because we’re subsidizing the Palestinian Authority.

Congress approved $500 million in aid to the Palestinians for 2010. Granted, only some of the American aid to the Palestinians goes directly to the P.A., and the funds that are given to the P.A. are subject to restrictions. But money is fungible, and when we give funds to the P.A. for one project, it frees up funds for other purposes. And we know what the P.A. does with its money.

It gives payments to the families of terrorists who are imprisoned in Israel — including some terrorists involved in the murders of American citizens. (More than 100 Americans have been killed in Palestinian terrorist attacks in the past four decades — including my daughter, Alisa, who was murdered in Gaza in 1995.)

It uses some of our money to train, house and equip P.A. security forces. Some of the members of these “security forces” are terrorists (including killers of Americans) who were rewarded for their terrorism by being given jobs with the P.A.

And now P.A. money is being used to turn a public square in Ramallah into a shrine to a woman who is responsible for the murder of an American citizen.

It’s an outrage. And it took place right under the nose of our vice president.

Stephen M. Flatow is founder of the blog Terror Victims’ Voice.

The article can be read here.