PA MEDIA GLORIFY TEL AVIV BOMBER

PA Media Glorify Tel Aviv Bomber as Martyr - Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook (Jerusalem Post)

The PA-controlled media glorified the bomber in Friday night's terror attack on a beachfront Tel Aviv night club as a shahid (martyr who died for Allah) - the highest level of human achievement for a Muslim. By granting shahid status to the murderer, the PA media are portraying bombing as a positive religious act.

Sunday's front-page coverage of the story in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda featured a giant color photo of the terrorist at the top of the page, with the caption: "The executor of the Tel Aviv operation, the shahid Abdullah Badran." Another photograph shows his mother holding a picture of her son, captioned: "The mother of the Shahid." The newspapers Al-Ayyam and Al-Quds also referred to "the family of the Shahid."

Given this ultimate veneration of the act of murder, condemnations of the suicide attack within the Palestinian-controlled media have focused on the "poor timing" and the fact that the attack was a violation of the agreement between Abbas and Hamas. The killings were detrimental to PA policy - nothing more. As in the Arafat years, the act itself was not portrayed as immoral or wrong.

Under the new leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, the message to Palestinian society remains essentially unchanged. PA leaders condemn the potentially negative ramifications of a terror attack, but not the act itself.