On American TV, a show called “Lovers’ Tales,” would likely be a romantic comedy. On Ma’an, the independent Palestinian television network, it is a weekly show interviewing freed prisoners.
This week Palestinian Media Watch reports on the interview of one Issa Abd Rabbo.
Until his release, Issa Abd Rabbo was serving two life sentences for killing two Israeli university students, Ron Levi and Revital Seri, who were hiking south of Jerusalem on Oct. 22, 1984. At gun point he tied them up, put bags over their heads and then shot and murdered both.Abbas’ “hero” has now given an interview to the independent Palestinian news agency Ma’an on its weekly TV program Lovers’ Tales, which interviews released prisoners. There he calmly describes how he initiated the killing, spotted the two hiking university students and waited until they sat down to rest under a tree. He then recounts how he tied them up and murdered them in cold blood.
Here’s the clip. Note how he betrays absolutely no remorse.
To the Palestinians Abd Rabbo is a hero. In 2012, he was so highly regarded that the official Palestinian Authority television station interviewed his mother.
I am proud of my son. I’m proud like a tree that is planted in the ground and grows tall. Praise Allah, I’m proud. I wish I had another 10 [sons] like him. I have no regrets.
In October when Abd Rabbo and other terrorists were released as an incentive to get Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate with Israel. (For some reason the incentive of obtaining his own state is not incentive enough.) The New York Times reported Emotional Gulf Renewed as Israel Frees Palestinian Prisoners:
Among Palestinians, those freed are seen as political prisoners who fought for the Palestinian cause. Harbi Abu Duheileh said that he was not proud of what his brother had done, but that “he was defending his land.”In Israel, where the returnees are widely viewed as terrorists, the release on Tuesday, like the one in August, has stirred protests and anguish. Many said it was too heavy a price to pay for entering negotiations with no guarantee of a peace accord.
In these two paragraphs the New York Times whitewashes the outrage. Notice the construction of the first sentence in the second paragraph. The implication is that people who kill defenseless victims for a political purposes are only “widely viewed” as terrorists and apparently only in Israel.
The truth is that in a civil society men like Abd Rabbo would not viewed as political prisoners but as the terrorists they are. In almost any other context Westerner would be appalled at a society that celebrated cold blooded killers.
But Palestinian society is a society where a man can discuss a double murder as casually as he might describe his buying a soft drink. This is a society where his mother thanks God that her son is a cold blooded murderer. And this is a society where both son and mother are revered.
This is the society that Israel is told it must make peace with. Does John Kerry worry about the future of Palestinian society?
Postscript: Elder of Ziyon notes that a number of international organizations fund Ma’an, including the National Endowment for Democracy (which is funded by both Congress and the State Department), the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative and the United States Institute of Peace. There’s more on Ma’an’s funding at NGO Monitor. Do these organizations know what kind of vile programming they are funding?
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