Fatah glorifies Mothers’ Bus terror attack
Images and text posted on the official Fatah Facebook page
Posted text: “Today [March 9, 2019] is the anniversary of the heroic operationin Dimona on March 7, 1988 (i.e., Mothers’ Bus attack, 3 murdered) led by [Khalil Al-Wazir] ‘Abu Jihad’ (i.e., terrorist, responsible for murder of 125), carried out by heroesMuhammad Al-Khanafi, Muhammad Al-Husseini (sic., Issa), and Abdallah Kallab.
At 6:45 a.m. that Monday morning in 1988, there was a group of Palestinian self-sacrificing fighters (Fedayeen) that reached the road leading to Dimona after a journey full of troubles and hardships in the desert.According to the meticulous plan that Abu Jihad made, it was decided to break into the [nuclear] reactor in Dimona, the Holy of Holies of the Hebrew state (i.e., Israel), by taking control of a bus transporting its employees and to take those inside it hostage. The self-sacrificing fighters stormed the Aroer checkpoint and launched a fusillade of gunfire on its soldiers. Afterwards, they surprisingly got out of their vehicle, continued on foot to the side of the road, and waited for the decisive moment when the blue Volvo bus would pass. The moment the self-sacrificing fighters could get on the bus and take control of it at gunpoint, the bus made its way towards the reactor in Dimona.
The soldiers of the checkpoint and their commanders were briefed on what had happened, and the alarms were immediately activated in the offices, homes, and vehicles of the entire military, security, and political leadership in Israel. Within minutes ‘the dead awoke’ in Israel,and the skies of the area were filled with helicopters that lowered hundreds of armed masked men well trained in dealing with situations of this kind. On the ground, patrol vehicles of the army, police, and border police, alongside ambulances and fire engines, followed the blue bus that reached a distance of just seven kilometers from the nuclear reactor (sic., Aroer Junction where the bus was stopped is approximately 30 kilometers from the reactor). At that point, commando soldiers fired intensively at the wheels of the bus, which became a lifeless body.
According to Abu Jihad’s plan, the plan was to divide the bus’ passengers into three groups, and each one of the self-sacrificing fighters would take control of a group and lead them at gunpoint as hostages until they would enter the reactor. The flood of military reinforcements around the bus did not cease, the number of helicopters rose, and they landed on the ground one after the other. Hundreds of officers and commando soldiers converged around the bus on high alert. Then Israeli Minister of Defense [and later Prime Minister] Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Shomron, and Southern Commander Yitzhak Mordechai came to the site.
From inside the bus, the commander of the operation (i.e., terror attack) requested through a megaphone to meet with the Red Cross representative so that he could ask him to release the prisoners from the beginning of the [first] Intifada (i.e., Palestinian wave of violence and terror against Israel, approximately 200 Israelis murdered, 1987-1993), whose number stood at 9,000 Palestinians then. The self-sacrificing fighter repeated his request again and again: to bring the Red Cross representative in one of the dozens of helicopters circling them, or else we will be forced to eliminate the bus’ passengers, one dead person every half hour.Before the grace period ended, the shots of the snipers from outside the bus came from every angle, and the unequal battlebetween three people and a number of Israeli army companies broke out – at this remote and isolated point, at a distance of just seven kilometers from the mythological reactor.
The Israeli authorities imposed a heavy cloak of secrecy over the details of the Dimona operation, and asked the media outlets to stick solely to what came from the official Israeli spokesperson, without exception. Official Israeli sources reported the deaths of three experts who worked at the factory (i.e., the reactor) in addition to a number of wounded people.
[Then Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs] Shimon Peres responded to the incident at the time and said: ‘We are dealing with an enemy that no longer differentiates between any of the accepted means and is prepared to reach any Israeli target.’ It was decided that the Israeli War Council (sic., Israeli Cabinet) convene the same day, and it was decided to assassinate Abu Jihad, who engineered this operation. This took place in Tunisia on April 16 [1988]’ (PMW found no evidence of Peres making such a statement, and reportedly Peres initially opposed a proposal to assassinate Abu Jihad –Ed.)”
The images show terrorist Abu Jihad and the terrorists who carried out the Mothers’ Bus attack.
Mothers’ Bus attack – 3 Israelis – Miriam Ben-Yair, Rina Shiratzky, and Victor Ram – were murdered when the bus they were on that was carrying workers to the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists Muhammad Abd Al-Qader Muhammad Issa, Muhammad Khalil Saleh Al-Khanafi, and Abdallah Abd Al-Majid Muhammad Kallab on March 7, 1988. The attack is referred to as the Mothers' Bus attack because many of the passengers were working mothers. The terrorists were all killed by an Israel Police counter-terrorism unit.
Abu Jihad (Khalil Al-Wazir) - was a founder of Fatah and deputy to Yasser Arafat. He headed the PLO terror organization's military wing and also planned many deadly Fatah terror attacks in the 1960’s - 1980’s. These attacks, in which a total of 125 Israelis were murdered, included the most lethal in Israeli history - the hijacking of a bus and murder of 37 civilians, 12 of them children.