Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat should long ago have been discredited by news agencies. Erekat, after all, is the one who claimed that over 500 Palestinians were ‘massacred’ by Israel in Jenin, April 2002. This, of course, was utterly false, yet the media continue to lend credence to Erekat’s statements.
Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook of Palestinian Media Watch now have a report exposing Erekat’s duplicity, a la his boss Arafat, in glorifying suicide terrorism in Arabic, while condemning it in English:
Upon hearing that three Palestinian children, aged 13, 14 and 16, were caught by Israel on the way to a suicide mission, Erekat was quick to create the impression for the English media that the PA opposes such actions.
“That´s absolutely unacceptable,” Erekat told the Associated Press. “Our children should have hope and a future and should not be suicide bombers. We want them to be doctors and engineers.”
The great hypocrisy of Erekat’s statement is that he and the PA leadership have been the driving force indoctrinating PA children to aspire to Shahada – Death for Allah. As PMW has reported, it was only a few months ago that Erekat and other top PA leaders, including Yasser Arafat, sponsored a soccer tournament honoring 24 Shahids (“Islamic Martyrs”), including such arch-terrorists as Yechya Ayash, the first Hamas suicide-bomb maker, who masterminded the Palestinian suicide bombings; Adin Al Kassam, the name of the suicide terrorist wing of the Hamas; Raid Carmi, a regional head of a suicide terrorist unit; Jamal Mansour of Hamas; and Salah Drowza of Hamas.
As a sponsor, Saeb Erekat was present at the tournament honoring the terrorists, and personally distributed the trophies. [Al Ayyam, Sept. 21, 2003, Al Quds, Sept. 29, 2003]
Read the whole report, and keep this in mind the next time Erekat is quoted in your local paper.
