Abbas wrote to the parents of the attacker last year that “we see in her a martyr who watered the pure earth of Palestine with her blood.”
By HERB KEINONPalestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 71st United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan, New York, US September 22, 2016(photo credit: REUTERS)
That the Palestinian Authority has not condemned Sunday’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem is simply “outrageous,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman David Keyes said on Monday.“Last year President [Mahmoud] Abbas praised a terrorist who tried to run over an Israeli,” he said of Abbas’s praise last March for a Palestinian woman who tried to run over a soldier in Gush Etzion. “That sent a clear message. His silence this year is telling.”Abbas wrote to the parents of the attacker last year that “we see in her a martyr who watered the pure earth of Palestine with her blood.”This type of message, Keyes said, teaches Palestinian children that these types of actions are acts “of heroism instead of terrorism.”