The Palestinian Authority has chosen a bizarre and troubling way to mark the upcoming Jewish festival of Passover. Despite an often voiced Palestinian commitment to end the glorification of terrorists and incitement to violence, on March 28 Issa Karake, the Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, visited the family of Hamas suicide-bomb mastermind Abbas Al-Sayed, awarding them with an official, festive plaque, in celebration of the anniversary of the massacre.
This honor is not the only example of official Palestinian glorification of violence. In recent weeks, the Palestinian leadership named a youth soccer competition in Ramallah after Wafa Idris, the first female suicide bomber. Similarly, they named a square in El Bireh, as well as two schools and a summer camp, in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, commander of the March 11, 1978 massacre of 38 bus passengers on Israel’s coastal road.
The Passover massacre
On March 27, 2002, thirty, mostly elderly, people were killed and dozens maimed and injured when a suicide bomber dispatched by Al-Sayed walked into the Park Hotel on the Netanya seafront in the middle of a Passover Seder, a religious ceremony celebrating the Israelites’ freedom from bondage in ancient Egypt.
The suicide bomber, Abdel-Basset Odeh, from a Hamas terror cell in Tulkarm, detonated a large device packed with explosives and shards of metal. The blast killed 22 people outright. Eight more succumbed to their wounds after terrible suffering, despite the desperate efforts of doctors who fought to save their lives. Evidence revealed that Al-Sayed was involved in planning the Park Hotel bombing down to the minutest details, from checking the bomber’s explosives belt to helping him write his will and making a video of him reading it.