‘Moderate’ Fatah Names Children’s Summer Camp After Murderer

Fatah, the movement that dominates the West Bank-ruling Palestinian Authority (PA), has named a children’s summer camp after a terrorist. Major media outlets routinely describe both Fatah and the PA as “moderate.”

An April 7, 2018 report by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), the Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem, provided details.

PMW cited an article in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official daily newspaper of the PA, which noted:

“The Fatah Movement’s Jenin branch, in cooperation with [Fatah’s] Jenin region leadership, held the third coexistence camp under the title Martyr Abu Jihad Camp (i.e., terrorist, responsible for murder of 125), and this was at the [PA] National Security [Forces] camp Horsh Al-Saada. The camp will last for an entire month, three days a week, and 600 students from the [Fatah] High School Shabiba will participate in it.”

Abu Jihad was the nom de guerre of Khalil al-Wazir, one of the founders of Fatah. Among other atrocities, al-Wazir planned the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 38 civilians—11 of them children. He also oversaw the assassination of U.S. diplomats in Khartoum, Sudan, in March 1973. In total, an estimated 124 Israelis were murdered in terrorist attacks that al-Wazir planned and/or participated in.

Israeli commandos killed al-Wazir on April 16, 1988. Yet, Palestinian officials frequently herald him as a hero, celebrating his crimes. Al-Quds University in Jerusalem has an Abu Jihad museum that honors the murderer. The university is supported by the PA and receives grants from European governments. It also has a partnership with Bard College, a university in New York (“Palestinian University Honors Terrorist With ‘Cultural Event,’” CAMERA, Feb. 16, 2016).

As CAMERA has noted, the current Vice President of Fatah, and the deputy to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, is a man named Mahmoud al-Aloul. Al-Aloul served as al-Wazir’s deputy and is also nicknamed Abu Jihad. His February 2017 ascension to Fatah’s number two post was widely ignored by major media outlets like The Washington Post and USA Today.

The press often describes Fatah as “moderate,” ignoring its persistent support, political, social, economic and otherwise, of anti-Jewish violence. As CAMERA has highlighted, Palestinian summer camps, sports tournaments, T.V. shows—even street names and clothing stores—frequently glorify those who murder Jews.

In a speech four days after the Op-Ed in an official PA daily, Fatah and authority head Mahmoud Abbas claimed “we are fighting terrorism more” than the U.S. (“Abbas decries ‘big conspiracy’ facing Palestinian cause,” The Times of Israel, April 11, 2018). Most Western press outlets ignored Abbas’ assertion—and not a single one has reported on Fatah’s summer camp plans.