TEL AVIV — At a memorial honoring Palestinian terrorist Muhamm​ad Halabi, 19, who killed two men in Jerusalem on October 3, an official from the ruling Palestinian Fatah party said he “salutes the soul of [the] martyr who detonated the Jerusalem Intifada” and ​declared that Palestinian “young men have the right to cause Israeli women to cry,” Palestinian Media Watch reported.

Jamal Muhaisen, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, participated in the rally that the ​Palestinian Ma’an news agency dubbed “a national wedding,” in reference to the Islamic tenet that 72 virgins will wed martyrs in heaven.”It is the right of our young men to cause Israeli women to cry like our women are crying, even though our women make sounds of joy after their sons’ and husbands’ deaths as Martyrs,” said Muhaisen. Halabi has gained particular eminence in Palestinian society for being the first to carry out a successful stabbing attack​,​ now lauded as the catalyst for a string of copycat ​stabbings in the month and a half that followed.

Halabi, who stabbed Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Bennett to death while they were walking with their wives and a​ 2-year-old child ​ in the Old City of Jerusalem, was shot dead by Israeli police.

PLO Central Committee Member and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) member Omar Shehadeh said at the rally that Halabi “represents an example and role model for generations of young.” PLO Executive Committee member and Deputy Secretary-General of the DFLP Qais Abd Al-Karim ​called the terrorist a “hero,” and expressed his “pride” at Halabi’s loyalty to the cause.

The Palestinian Authority also erected a memorial in honor of the terrorist next to his home. During the inauguration of the edifice – which displays Halabi’s name under his image​, along with ​a ​map of “Greater Palestine”