The Palestinian Celebration of Dalal Mughrabi

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Dalal Mughrabi is the female terrorist who led the PLO terrorists responsible for the Coastal Road Massacre in 1978, in which 38 Israelis, 12 of them children, were murdered. This was, and remains, the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history. The terrorists had arrived by boat from Lebanon, but having miscalculated, they landed 40 miles from their intended target, a luxury hotel in Tel Aviv. They pulled up onto a beach where a nature photographer, Gail Rubin, was taking pictures; Mughrabi asked Rubin where they were, and once she answered, Mughrabi murdered her. The nine terrorists then walked less than a mile up to the four-lane highway, opened fire at passing cars, and hijacked a white taxi, killing all of its occupants. Setting off down the highway in that taxi toward Tel Aviv, they then managed to hijack a chartered bus carrying bus drivers and their families on a day outing, along the Coastal Highway. During the ride, the terrorists shot at and threw grenades at passing cars, shot at the passengers, and threw at least one body out of the bus. At one point they commandeered Bus 901, traveling from Tel Aviv to Haifa, and forced the passengers from the first bus to board it.

Later, the terrorists stopped, and one of the perpetrators got out and fired directly into a passing car, killing a teenager, Omri Tel-Oren, and injuring his father Hanoch. Sharon Tel-Oren, Omri’s mother, testified: “We were in our station wagon, driving along the coastal highway. We saw something odd ahead – a bus, but it seemed to be stopped. Then we saw someone lying on the road. There was shattered glass all over, children screaming. Then we heard the gunshots. Omri was asleep in the back seat. The bullet passed through the front seat and hit his head, killing him instantly. Then the terrorists on the bus started their mass murder of the passengers.”

In the end, Dalal Mughrabi and her fellow terrorists were responsible for the deaths of 38 Israelis, 12 of them children, and for wounding 170, some of them very seriously. Mughrabi and eight other terrorists were killed at the scene; two others survived.

Nan Jacques Zilberdik of Palestinian Media Watch has the story of Muna al-Kurdi, an activist in the affair known as “Sheikh Jarrah” (that’s where the Palestinians are trying to present a simple landlord and tenant dispute as an attempt by Israel to “Judaize” east Jerusalem by pushing out all the Arabs. Muna al-Kurdi’s role model is Dalal Mughrabi. She keeps a photo of Mughrabi posted on her cell phone. The story of al-Kurdi’s unsavory heroine-worship is here: “Jerusalem Arab activist’s role model is terrorist murderer of 37,” by Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch, June 8, 2021:

Abbas’ Fatah party promotes a terrorist who led the murder of 37, 12 of them children, as a “role model” for young adults.

Fatah highlighted a picture of “rebel Muna Al-Kurd” holding her cell phone adorned with an image of Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist murderer who led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history, known as the Coastal Road massacre, in 1978. She and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel’s Coastal Highway and murdered 37 of the civilian passengers, 12 of them children, while wounding over 70.

Fatah wished Al-Kurd a life in “defense” of Jerusalem “like your role model Dalal Mughrabi”:

Posted text: “The occupation forces arrested rebel Muna Al-Kurd at her home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood [of Jerusalem].
May you live as a rebel defending our Jerusalem, like your role model Dalal Mughrabi.”

[Official Fatah Facebook page, June 6, 2021]

Al-Kurd is an Arab activist and resident of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which since mid-April has been the center of Arab protests against the eviction of Palestinian families living illegally in properties owned by Jews (see further details below).

For decades, the PA and Fatah have promoted murderer Mughrabi as a role model especially to youth, as exposed by PMW. Be it by naming schools, streets, sports tournaments, , and summer camps after her, celebrating her birthday, or glorifying her in school books, the PA has brainwashed Palestinians to see this terrorist murderer as the epitome of Palestinian pride and achievement.

As the cover adorning Al-Kurd’s cell phone clearly shows, the PA’s brainwashing has succeeded in turning a child murderer into a Palestinian role model.

Dalal Mughrabi has been elevated by the PA to the status of “martyr,” and a model for Palestinian girls to emulate. They are not taught about, much less encouraged to admire, Palestinian females who may be painters, writers, scientists, doctors, agronomists (if there are any such people). The one female figure who is constantly presented to them as worthy of emulation is the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. The PA, as noted above, has named schools, streets, plazas, summer camps, sports tournaments, and more, after Dalal Mughrabi, a cold-blooded murderer (Gail Rubin), a child-killer, and a participant in mass murder. Schoolbooks and children’s television programs have celebrated her act of “resistance.” By those the Palestinians choose to honor shall ye know them.

It would be salutary if Dalal Mughrabi, and the murders she committed and the massacre she participated in were better known to the American public. That public, having been subject to the constant repetition in the media of anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian sentiments, has an insufficient grasp of the depravity of the Palestinians’ topsy-turvy moral code. Joe Biden and Antony Blinken should publicly raise the issue of Dalal Mughrabi’s scandalous beatification (Islamic edition) so that it starts to get the attention it has long deserved. Mahmoud Abbas should be asked what, if anything, he intends to do about the PA’s honoring of Mughrabi, and to make clear that future aid to the PA will depend, among other things, on the removal of Mughrabi’s name from all those schools, streets, plazas, sports arenas, tournaments, and summer camps. And her “glorious story” must be removed, too, from the schoolbooks that impressionable young Palestinian girls read, so that they no longer grow up hoping to emulate her.

Dalal Mughrabi should also be brought up by pro-Israel members of Congress, not only on the Senate and House floors, but also when they deliver speeches outside Congress, or tweet their thoughts, striving to make the public aware of Dalal Mughrabi and of the murders she committed, murders that have made her the female figure that young Palestinian girls are taught most to admire and emulate. As it will be impossible for the Palestinians and their willing collaborators to deny what Dalal Mughrabi did, or at this point to remove her name from all those streets, squares, schools, sports events, summer camps intended to honor her, she will become an albatross for the Palestinians, and a godsend for the Israelis.

First published in Jihad Watch.