Europeans Praise Palestinian Leader Who Promotes Terror Attacks

Europeans Praise Palestinian Leader Who Promotes Terror Attacks

EU makes “Inspired By Her” video of the Palestinian governor of Ramallah, who shamelessly supports murderous attacks against innocent Israeli civilians.

By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel

The European Union’s office devoted to the Palestinians marked International Women’s Day by making a video for its Arabic Facebook page singing the praises of Ramallah area governor Laila Ghannam, who has a long history of anti-Israel vitriol and praise for Palestinian terror attacks against innocent Israelis.

The video was exposed by Palestinian Media Watch, which publishes English translations of Arabic language media that most Westerners would never see.

The European Union’s Palestinian office created a number of videos focusing on prominent Palestinian women under the hashtag “#InspiredByHer.” It wasn’t clear just how Ramallah and El-Bireh District Governor Laila Ghannam inspired the Europeans given her clear track record of supporting bloodthirsty terror.

“The EU’s choice of Ghannam as role model is simply outrageous,” said Maurice Hirsch, director of Legal Strategies at PMW. “Alongside her other activities, Ghannam constantly hails and glorifies Palestinian terrorists, including mass murderers.”

Hirsch documented Ghannam’s long history of public comments in praise of Palestinian terrorism. Over the years, Ghannam has repeatedly praised terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, a member of a Palestinian terror squad that carried out the “coastal highway massacre” in which 37 Israeli civilians, 12 of them children, were murdered.

Mughrabi was again this year featured as a role model on official Palestinian Television during a special International Women’s Day program.

In 2016, to celebrate the anniversary of the massacre, Ghannam commented on the Ramallah city Facebook page,saying that “the blood of our female Martyrs flows in the veins of every Palestinian and that the woman [Mughrabi] was and will remain a pioneering symbol and man’s partner in the struggle and decision making.”

Two years ago, Ghannam visited the family of one of the terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terror organization, who planted the bomb at a popular hiking location that killed 17-year-old Israeli student Rina Shnerb and critically injured her father and brother. Instead of condemning the terror attack and its perpetrators, Ghannam claimed that Israel’s reaction to the bombing was an attack on Palestinian civilians.

Ghannam also made a public visit to Um Nasser Abu Hmeid, a Palestinian woman admired in the PA for being the mother of five convicted terrorists who are all serving life sentences for murder of Israelis, where she demanded the release of all jailed Palestinian terrorists, calling them “brave” and “lauded.”

A previous PMW report on Ghannam’s support for Palestinian terror resulted in her being stripped of an award given to her by the Philadelphia City Council. In 2015, Philadelphia Councilwoman Maria Sánchez retracted the award and a citation of honor given to Ghannam, saying she “fully and unequivocally” denounced Ghannam’s statements supporting terrorism.

For her part, Ghannam said she doesn’t care what Philadelphia thinks.

“We are not interested in citations of honor that require us to slander our fighters and our supporting pillars as terrorists,” Ghannam said in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.

Hirsch called on the EU to wake up and pull the video from its Facebook page.

“Given her extensive support for terror and terrorists, PMW is calling on the EU to immediately remove the video it created, and erase all EU support for Ghannam,” Hirsch said.

The post Europeans Praise Palestinian Leader Who Promotes Terror Attacks first appeared on United with Israel.
United with Israel