In keeping with Palestinian Authority tradition, Abbas’s Fatah movement immediately glorified the dead terrorist as a “heroic martyr” deserving of a “military salute.”

By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch

Omar Abu Laila, the terrorist who killed two Israelis in a shooting attack near Ariel on March 17, was shot dead by Israeli special forces during a gunfire exchange when the forces came to arrest him.

In keeping with Palestinian Authority and Fatah tradition, Abbas’s Fatah movement immediately glorified the dead murderer as “the perfect person,” in addition to his being a “heroic martyr” deserving of a “military salute.”

Once again, Fatah used Facebook as the means to disseminate its support for the murder of Israelis and to broadcast its message of support for terror to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Facebook users. Fatah’s official page alone has more than 170,000 followers.

PMW is disappointed that Facebook knowingly allows itself to continue to be an important platform for support of Palestinian terror.

In February, PMW sent Facebook a 40-page report documenting the repeated terror support by Fatah on its Facebook page throughout 2018.

By allowing itself to be used to honor and glorify terrorist murderers in real time, Facebook serves as a platform for encouraging more terrorists and literally endangering lives, even if Facebook removes the terror supporting posts at a later date.

The following are the texts of posts honoring the terrorist who murdered 19-year-old Sgt. Gal Keidan and Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger, 47 and a father of 12, that appeared on Fatah’s official Facebook page.

Posted text: “The martyr (shahid) represents the moment of transcending these blind instincts, as he stands firm before death and transcends the conditioned reflexes, then the perfect person is realized within him, to whom we give a military salute.” [Official Fatah Facebook page, March 20, 2019]

Posted text: “Martyr (shahid) Omar Abu Laila from the town of Al-Zawiya, the one who carried out the Salfit operation. Glory and eternity to the Martyrs.” [Official Fatah Facebook page, March 19, 2019]

Fatah’s official Facebook page also published two items honoring the terrorist by Shabiba, Fatah’s youth movement, in which the murderer was praised as “more honorable than all of us.”

In addition to Fatah’s official Facebook page being used to glorify terror, many local branches of Fatah likewise use Facebook this way. Fatah’s branch in the murderer’s home district Salfit posted three posts with the photo (at the top) of murderer Abu Laila and praised him as “Rambo of Palestine” and a “self-sacrificing fighter.”

One post lauded him as the “lion cub” who succeeded in “frightening, shocking and crushing” the “wild dogs” of the Israeli military and security forces.