A Palestinian Authority (PA) police officer attacked and wounded three Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers on Oct. 31, 2016. The terrorist assault, by PA security forces officer Muhammed Turkeman, went ignored by major U.S. news media outlets.

According to The Times of Israel, Turkeman approached an IDF checkpoint called Focus that is outside of the Jewish community of Beit El, and “opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle at the troops stationed there (“Palestinian cop wounds 3 IDF soldiers in a shooting attack,” Oct. 31, 2016).” Turkeman was shot and killed by IDF forces, but not before he had managed to wound three of them, one seriously.

A Lexis-Nexis search of U.S. print news media, including The Washington Post, USA Today, The Washington Times and USA Today, showed not a single mention of the terrorist attack.

Fatah, the movement that dominates the PA and is often labeled “moderate” by many in the Western press, celebrated the terror attack. In a Nov. 1, 2016 report, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization which monitors Arab media in eastern Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), pointed out that on their Facebook page Fatah praised Turkeman as a “heroic martyr” and a “martyr police officer.”

PMW noted that Fatah also shared an image on social media of Turkeman in his police uniform and carrying an AK-47. Additionally, “A picture of the Al-Aqsa Mosque appeared together with photos of the terrorist in one of the posts. This connects the terrorist and his attack to the ‘defense and protection’ of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, perpetuating the Palestinian Authority’s libel that the al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger from an Israeli attack.”

Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, also lauded Turkeman’s assault. Further, Hamas “encouraged members of the Palestinian security services to carry out similar attacks,” The Times of Israel reported.

This is not the first instance of PA security forces perpetrating a terrorist attack.

As CAMERA noted, a PA intelligence officer named Mazen Hassan, attempted to murder IDF soldiers at the Hizma checkpoint on Dec. 3, 2015 (“Where’s the Coverage? Palestinian Official Shoots Israeli Soldier”) before he was shot and killed. That incident also received scant media coverage.

The United States, other Western countries and the European Union have supported PA security forces with money, training and equipment as a result of the 1990s Olso accords that led to the establishment of the authority and limited self-rule—provided that Palestinian leaders recognized and sought to make peace with Israel.

According to a March 18, 2016 United States Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, U.S. Foreign Aid to Palestinians, that security aid is “aimed at countering” U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and “establishing the rule of law for an expected Palestinian state.”

What that Palestinian state might look like can perhaps be discerned from its institutions and apparent values and those tasked with upholding them.

The Dubai Entertainment and Media Organization, which runs the Dubai Film Festival, co-produced Leila Sansour’s film “Open Bethlehem,” which was recently shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as part of the Palestine Film Festival. Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, is well known for employing foreign workers in slave-like conditions. (Screenshot from DVD.)

This past weekend, The Palestine Film Festival hosted a showing of “Open Bethlehem: A Big Film About a Small Town” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The film is a documentary produced by Leila Sansour, a pro-Palestinian activist who spent her childhood in the city.

The film, which was shown at the MFA on Saturday, October 29, 2016, is about what you can expect from pro-Palestinian human rights activists. It highlights the impact of the security barrier on the residents of Bethlehem without providing any detail about the suicide bombings that prompted its construction early in the last decade. The movie is intended to make Israel look bad and the Palestinians to look innocent. (Apparently, we should all know by now that nothing is ever the fault of the Palestinians.)

Die-hard anti-Israel activists will love the movie, but as a source of usable and meaningful information about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the choices Palestinians must make for their lives to improve, the movie fails, and fails miserably.

The film, which lasts 90 minutes, is pretty self-referential, to the point of narcissism. It’s all pretty underwhelming. Nevertheless, the film got a four-star review from The Guardian in 2014.
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The malice and lies about Israel that emanate from the United Nations and its various bodies are endless and frequently ignored by the media as well as officials and pundits. Last week’s Arab/Muslim-led resolution effectively negating Jewish religious and historical ties to the Temple Mount touched a nerve — perhaps because the lie is so bizarre.

A November 1 Boston Globe editorial strongly denounced the assault on history and Israel’s legitimacy, saying:

The United Nations’ animus toward Israel took a truly deplorable turn last week with the passage of a resolution implicitly denying the Jewish people’s historic connection to the holiest site in Judaism.

That site is Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, so named for the two Jewish temples that stood on the site for almost nine centuries — the first built by King Solomon nearly 3,000 years ago, the second destroyed by the Roman legions under Titus in 70 A.D. One needn’t be a Bible scholar or a historian to know that the cultural, religious, and emotional bonds that link the Jews to Jerusalem are unparalleled. For millennia, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have been central to Jewish self-awareness — and thus to Christianity as well, since the Temple figures prominently in the Gospels’ account of the life of Jesus.

The Globe further noted:

Malicious distortions of history are not trivial. In the Middle East as elsewhere, such falsifications have triggered wars and incited bloodshed. So it is reassuring that the UNESCO resolution has been vigorously denounced, and not only by Israel. Crystal Nix-Hines, the US ambassador to UNESCO, slammed the organization’s pronouncements on Jerusalem as “continuously one-sided and inflammatory” and regretted that the latest resolution wasn’t defeated. In Prague, Czech parliamentarians voted overwhelmingly to repudiate the UNESCO resolution. Even Ban Ki-moon, the outgoing UN secretary-general, issued a rebuke, warning that dishonest revisionism “will only feed violence and radicalism.”

The Globe did its own important part too in reiterating for readers the facts — and the immorality of using lies to harm and isolate Israel.

Top Palestinian Authority (PA) official and perennial media favorite, Saeb Erekat, recently proclaimed his “admiration” for imprisoned terrorists.

According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in eastern Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Erekat offered words of praise terrorists in an Oct. 19, 2016 edition of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official PA daily newspaper.

Erekat, referring to Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for committing acts of terrorism, said:

Our brave prisoners, who gave and sacrificed their freedom for Palestine and its freedom, are worthy of aid, support, and constant activity by us in order to release them and put an end to their suffering. The prisoners’ cause is a national and central cause, and we bow our heads in admiration and honor of the prisoners’ sacrifices, for their acts of heroism, and for their ongoing battle with the occupation.

As CAMERA has highlighted before, many Palestinian officials consider all of Israel to be an occupation on what they believe should be only Muslim-ruled lands.

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida also stated that the release of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists is “at the head of the priorities” of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. PMW noted that terror-masterminds Abdallah Barghouti, Ibrahim Hamed and Abbas al-Sayid were among the terrorists whom drew Erekat’s admiration. Those three terrorists alone were found by Israeli courts to be responsible for the murders of more than 120 Israelis in terror attacks during the Second Intifada (2000-05).

Erekat served as chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority when Israel and the United States offered a two-state solution to the Palestinians in exchange for peace and recognition in 2000 at Camp David and 2001 at Taba. He also served as chief negotiator when Israeli Prime Minister Olmert a Palestinian state with its capital in eastern Jerusalem in 2008 following the Annapolis Conference. Each offer was rejected without a counter proposal, by Palestinian Arab leadership.

Despite his rejections of peace and praise for terrorists, many in the press often mislabel Erekat as a moderate, treat him as a reliable source and provide him with a platform to push his propaganda.

The Washington Post, for example, published an Op-Ed by Erekat—a mere five days after his praise for terrorists—in which he blamed Israel for the lack of peace and a Palestinian state (“As long as Israel continues its settlements, a two-state solution is impossible,” October 24, online). Erekat claimed that Israeli “settlements,” are expanding. In fact, as CAMERA has pointed out most of the expansion within these Jewish communities in the West Bank is due to natural population growth; high birth rates and not newcomers from other parts of Israel (see, for example, Washington Post Treats State Department, Palestinian Allegations as Facts, Aug. 4, 2016).

Erekat, decrying what he views as the Obama administration’s inability to confront what he calls the problem of “settlement expansion,” tells ,I>Post readers that “strong statements” alone by the U.S. administration “are not going to move us toward” a two-state solution.”

Erekat does not offer an explanation as to how bestowing honors for terrorists advances the cause of peace or a two-state solution. Unfortunately, The Post failed to ask this question as well.