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PA daily devotes article to the life of a terrorist killer, praising his virtues

Headline: “Baha Alyan – Martyr and intellectual”
     “Baha Alyan, 22, from the village of Jabel Mukaber, stood out among the young people of Jerusalem as an intellectual and a person with initiative, full of energy and good looking, until he was executed by the occupation on the 13th of this October [2015]. He who surrounded the walls of Jerusalem and its streets with thousands of readers in March 2014 (i.e., human chain of Palestinian readers, surrounding the walls of Jerusalem which Alyan helped organize), died as a Martyr a year later. On March 3, 2015, Baha wrote: ‘On the same day I met 10,000 intellectual Palestinians.’ Such a great number would not have been possible in a city which the occupation is choking and killing the life of, if not for the determination of a young person in his early 20s to emphasize its Arab and Islamic identity… Baha did not sleep during the latest aggression against Gaza, which continued for 51 days, and claimed over 2,200 Martyrs. Arin Khalil from the At-Tur neighborhood said: ‘He knocked on [the doors of] homes to collect aid for the residents of Gaza, and was not discouraged when they turned him away empty-handed.’… Baha wrote his ten commandments, the most prominent of which were that no faction should adopt him (i.e., claim he was connected to them), that no one should mourn his death as a Martyr, and that he should not be seen as a number. He commanded love between the people, and not to exhaust his family with questions, as his death as a Martyr was for the homeland. (i.e., reference to post on Facebook written by the terrorist before his attack, see below) Since the bullet kills the body and not the soul, the young men and women of Jerusalem hurried to call to organize a chain of readers every year to honor Baha’s soul. This is because before his death as a Martyr, he sowed the importance of reading and a love of it, and of protecting the homeland with minds, in the minds of the [Palestinian] residents of Jerusalem.”

Jerusalem line 78 bus terror attack - On Oct. 13, 2015, two Palestinian terrorists, Baha Alyan (22) and Bilal Ghanem (23) boarded Israeli bus no. 78 in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv neighborhood with a gun and a knife and attacked passengers, killing 2 and wounding 4 Israelis. Alyan was shot and killed by an Israeli security guard at the scene and Ghanem, a Hamas operative who served time in Israeli prison in 2013-2014, was wounded.

Before the attack, Baha Alyan wrote “10 commandments of every Martyr” on his Facebook page:

“1. I instruct the factions not to take responsibility for my Martyrdom-death, for my death was for the homeland and not for you.
2. I do not want any posters or T-shirts, as my memory will not only be a poster hanging on the walls.
3. I instruct you not to exhaust my mother with questions meant to win over the sentiments of the spectators and nothing more.
4. Do not sow hatred in my son’s heart. Let him discover his homeland and die for his homeland, and not in order to avenge my death.
5. If they [Israel] wish to demolish my home, let them do so, since the stone is not more precious than the soul created by my God.
6. Do not grieve over my Martyrdom-death, grieve over what will happen to you after I am gone.
7. Do not look for what I had written before my Martyrdom-death, look for what is the reason behind my Martyrdom-death.
8. Do not cry out in my funeral procession or push each other, but be only pure during the funeral prayer, nothing more.
9. Do not turn me into another number you count today and forget tomorrow.
10. I will see you in Paradise.” [Fatah Twitter account, Oct. 13, 2015]

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