TEL AVIV – Following the release last Friday of the body of a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist, a Palestinian Authority governor accused Israel of executing the youth in cold blood for no reason – despite the fact that prior to his death, the terrorist had left a message urging his family not to mourn his death since “marytrdom beckons me… and I will be a groom in Paradise.”
Last month, Border Police officers shot and killed Qatiba Zahran as he attempted to stab one of them at a West Bank junction.
The day after his death, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused the “occupation authorities” of executing him in cold blood. The Foreign Ministry further claimed that the entire episode of the stabbing of the soldiers was a “loathsome” lie invented by Israel.
“The occupation authorities, as is their custom, justified the cold-blooded execution of young Zahran by means of loathsome stories of the sort they [spread] whenever [they carry out] a field execution, while knowing full well that young Zahran posed no danger to the occupation soldiers at the checkpoint,” the FM said.
After Israel released Zahran’s body last week, Issam Abu Bakr, the PA Governor of the youth’s hometown of Tulkarem, conveyed his condolences to the terrorists’ family, saying that it was more proof that Israel’s “targeting of civilians has become routine.”
Abu Bakr added that the terrorist’s death “only increases the determination of our people and its leadership to steadfastly [continue] on the road toward establishing our independent state with Jerusalem as its capital,” according to an article by Palestinian news agency Al Watan translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Yet neither the PA Foreign Ministry nor the governor took into account the plethora of evidence provided by the dead youth himself that he set out to carry a terror attack with every intention of dying.
In a letter to his parents, Zahran requested that they do not mourn him since he had long yearned to become a martyr in order to “avenge the blood of the martyrs in Palestine” and join the Prophet Muhammad in Paradise as well as the “prophets, righteous people, martyrs, and the virtuous.”
The note, which he called his last will and testament, was shared all over Arabic social media. It begins by blessing Allah who “protects the mujahideen and humiliates the cursed Jews.”
He also told his family that by martyring himself, he would be able to vouch for 70 relatives to receive entry into paradise as per the Muslim tradition.
“Oh my family members, know that I did not leave you out of distress or out of a wish to be far from you, but because martyrdom for the sake of Allah beckoned to me after I had [long] been yearning for it,” Zahrdan wrote, before beseeching his mother, “Do not weep for me, but ululate in joy, for these are the nuptials of your martyred son.”
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