| Submit your comments on this article |
| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Hamas Praises Savage Attack on Jewish Settlers in Arabic, Denies Responsibility in English |
| 2011-03-14 |
| The barbaric attack by a Palestinian Muslim on a Jewish family living in the West Bank settlement of Itamar on Saturday has been widely reported (see here--Atlas Shrugs has photos here). Five innocent people--two parents and three of their children--were savagely stabbed to death in their sleep. On the English section of the website of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, there was only the following short statement, denying any responsibility on the part of Hamas for the attack: Palestinian National Movement Hamas official Ezzat Al-Rashak said that the movement is not responsible for the murder of the five family members from the Itamar settlement. Al-Rashak confirmed that harming children is not part of Hamas' policy, nor is it the policy of the resistance factions. He also confirmed that the possibility that the incident was carried out by settlers for criminal motives should not be ruled out. But on the Arabic section of the website, an article was published praising the attacker as a 'mujahid' and deriding the slain Jews as "Zionist usurpers." What's worse, at the time I checked there were 34 comments on the article posted by readers, all praising the attack and the attacker (I translated the first 17 or so). Curiously, while the Hamas statement in the English article raised the possibility of the act being carried out by settlers, in the Arabic article there's no doubt that the attacker was a Palestinian 'mujahid'. |
| Posted by:tipper |