Abbas Refers to Mass Murderers as 'Freedom Fighters'

Abbas Refers to Mass Murderers as ‘Freedom Fighters’
October 18, 2011  The Israel Project.

Jerusalem, Oct. 18 - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, welcoming returning Palestinian prisoners from Israel, stood alongside Hamas leaders and hailed the Palestinian terrorists as “freedom-fighters.”

Abbas also said Palestinians were still waiting for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a leading member of his Fatah party, serving life sentences for high-level planning and funding of terrorist attacks; Ahmad Saadat, secretary-general of the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine convicted for planning the assassination of an Israeli government minister in 2001; Ibrahim Hamed, a Hamas military commander in the West Bank responsible for killing dozens of Israelis and five Americans; and Abbas Sayed, responsible for the suicide terror massacre in the Park Hotel in Netanya in which 30 people were killed and another 140 injured, during a Passover holiday Seder.

At the same ceremony, Hamas’ West Bank leader Hassan Youssef called for Palestinian unity against the Israel, the Zionist enemy. Hamas, an Islamic fundamentalist group, is armed and financed by Iran. Listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Community, Hamas has vowed to destroy Israel. Its Charter calls on adherents to kill Israelis and Jews wherever possible.

An Israeli government official told The Israel Project: “People who call murderers freedom-fighters – that is unacceptable.”

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