Israeli-Arab Town Of Nazareth Holds Children’s Event Honoring Terrorist

TEL AVIV – Nazareth, a predominantly Arab town in northern Israel, held an anti-violence event for children last week in honor of a Palestinian terrorist who murdered Israelis in Jerusalem last year.

The “Nazareth Reads” event, held in conjunction with the Inma’a Association for Democracy and Capacity Building, glorified Palestinian terrorist Baha Alyan, who carried out a shooting and stabbing attack on a Jerusalem bus in October 2015, killing three Israelis.

The event saw hundreds of children sit and read in a line that stretched from the plaza of the Spring Square within Nazareth’s old city to the Church of the Annunciation, according to Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch.

According to Palestinian news agency Ma’an, the previous year Alyan had organized a human-reading chain event around the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, which was attended by thousands of people.

Alyan was shot and killed by Israeli police after carrying out the attack together with accomplice Bilal Abu Ghanem. Ghanem, a Hamas terrorist who was incarcerated in an Israeli prison from 2013-2014, was shot and taken into police custody.

Saeb Masawrah, a resident of Nazareth who initiated the event, told the Arab-Israeli news site Arab48, “We saw fit to establish the largest and longest chain of readers in the city of Nazareth as a completion of the message of Martyr Baha Alyan, who came out of Jerusalem. We are gathering here in order to emphasize our unity as Arabs everywhere, and we will complete the message in all of the Arab cities and villages.”

In February, Breitbart Jerusalem reported that a Palestinian university near Ramallah also held a human reading-chain in honor of Alyan.

Hebron University called Baha Alyan, who boarded a bus in Jerusalem with fellow terrorist Bilal Ghanem and attacked passengers with knives and a gun, a “martyr” and “fighter” whose dream was to “create a reading culture in a society which suffers from the bitterness of occupation.”

In September, a leadership program by the Palestinian scouts was named after the “martyr” Alyan.

Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old former elementary school principal from Glastonbury, Ct. and peace activist who marched with Martin Luther King, died in Alyan’s bus attack.

His son, Micah Lakin Avni, campaigned against Palestinians glorying his father’s murderer, saying “Scouts don’t lie, terrorists do.”