Honoring Palestinian Women Terrorists on International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day, which was celebrated around the world this week, is not exactly the Palestinian Authority’s favorite holiday, given its longstanding policy of treating women as third-class citizens.

Even those self-described human rights groups that are strongly biased in favor of the Palestinian Arab cause acknowledge the PA’s systemic mistreatment of women.

Amnesty International’s most recent annual report had this to say: “Women and girls were not protected by Palestinian authorities from gender-based violence and discrimination.”

The last annual report of Human Rights Watch likewise offered just one sentence on the subject, but it was revealing: “There was no change to personal status laws for Muslims and Christians that discriminate against women.”

The Global Campus of Human Rights (GCHR), a network of universities that train human rights professionals, addresses the PA’s treatment of women in various reports on its website.

The GCHR acknowledges that under the Palestinian Authority, “Palestinian women and girls continue to face discrimination within their society…Various forms of physical, emotional and financial gender-based absences are prevalent, including domestic violence.”

Women living under PA rule “face discrimination in job promotions, encountering more obstacles and difficulties in career advancement than men,” the GCHR notes. “Women are only considered suitable for certain jobs such as teaching, nursing and other service-oriented roles…Gender-based discrimination significantly hinders the professional and public progress of young women.”

There is, however, one type of woman whom the PA idolizes—female Arab terrorists.

On official PA Television this week, the host declared that “Starting with Laila Khaled, thousands of women wrote the history of Palestine with their endurance, women who led the struggle…”

Khaled “struggled” by leading the hijackings of TWA flight 840 in 1969 and El Al flight 219 in 1970, during which a flight attendant was shot and seriously wounded.

Khaled was not the only woman terrorist celebrated by the PA this week.

A senior PA official, Ramallah District Governor Laila Ghannam, announced on her Facebook page that in honor of International Women’s Day, “we remember our female prisoners” (imprisoned terrorists) and “also pray for the souls of the female Martyrs and leaders who paved the way to freedom with their blood, from Dalal Mughrabi to Samiha Khalil…”

(Translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)

Khalil was repeatedly jailed by Israel because of her involvement with the terrorist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Mughrabi was the leader of a heavily-armed gang of eleven terrorists who came ashore in northern Israel on March 11, 1978. On the beach, they encountered American Jewish nature photographer Gail Rubin, the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.). Mughrabi shot her dead.

Then she and her comrades hijacked a bus and murdered 36 of its passengers. At one point, they set off grenades inside the bus, causing it to catch on fire. According to the courtroom testimony of one of the survivors, Mughrabi grabbed a Jewish child and threw her into the flames as the other terrorists clapped.

That’s the kind of woman whom the Palestinian Authority honors—the one who tears a toddler from her mother’s arms and hurls the child into a raging fire.

On International Women’s Day in recent years, the PA’s television shows, social media posts, and public programs celebrated other women terrorists, including:

— Fatima Bernawi, who planted a bomb in Jerusalem’s Zion Cinema in 1967.

— Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, who took part in numerous terrorist attacks in 1967-1968, and died in the explosion of a bomb she was making.

— Zakiya Shammout, who planted a bomb in an Afula market in 1969, murdering one shopper and injuring dozens more.

— Theresa Halsa, one of the hijackers of Sabena flight 571 in 1972; one passenger was killed, and two others were wounded.

— Wafa Idris, who set off a 22-pound suicide bomb in front of a Jerusalem shoe store in 2002, murdering an elderly passerby and wounding more than 100 others.

— Attaf Jaradat, who is currently imprisoned for assisting the terrorists who carried out a fatal 2021 sniper attack in which one Israeli was murdered and two were injured.

These are the women whom the PA celebrates.

Why don’t international women’s rights groups find this offensive?

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. Follow him on Facebook to read his daily commentaries on the news.