PA daily op-ed glorifies most lethal terror attack in Israel
The following op-ed glorifies terrorist Dalal Mughrabi and her 1978 terror attack, known as the Coastal Road Massacre, in which 37 civilians were killed. Mughrabi and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel's Coastal Highway. PMW notes have been added to the article where necessary.
“In 1958, in one of the refugee camps in Beirut, the baby daughter of a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, Dalal Mughrabi, gave her first cry, only to witness later on the tragedy of her refugee nation…
In 1978, the revolution had to tackle the [Israeli] so-called ‘invasion of South Lebanon,’ and there was an urgent call for a quality operation (i.e., terror attack). (PMW note: There was no Israeli operation in Lebanon until after Mughrabi’s terror attack took place). Commander-Martyr (Shahid) Abu Jihad decided to respond to this Israeli attack in a different way, and planned a landing operation on the Palestinian coast… (PMW note: The attack took place on the Israeli coast)
On March 11, 1978, Dalal and her group disembarked from two rubber boats on the Tel Aviv beach (PMW note: The beach they landed on was 70 km north of Tel Aviv). There, they headed to the main road and hijacked a bus carrying 30 passengers, most of them soldiers, and an additional bus, bringing the total number of passengers to 68 (PMW note: There were over 70 civilian hostages).
Dalal Mughrabi’s cell loaded them onto one bus, and took them to northern Palestine (PMW note: The bus was traveling southbound towards Tel Aviv, and the entire attack took place in Israel, not “Palestine”) by way of the road connecting Jaffa and Haifa. The Israeli army forces pursued them with planes, helicopters, tanks and armored cars, in a continuous exchange of fire that lasted the entire way, until the bus was stopped near Herzliya. There, a fierce battle, tantamount to a real war, broke out between the cell and the Israeli special forces, led by Ehud Barak. (PMW note: There were no Israeli special forces, no planes, helicopters, tanks or armored cars. The hijackers were stopped by a road block set up by local police. A firefight ensued between the hijackers and the police. Ehud Barak was not present.)
When [the Israeli forces] stormed the bus, the cell blew it up, killing all the soldiers and others on it. (PMW note: None of the hostages were soldiers.) Dozens were killed. The cell continued to resist with gunfire until their ammunition ran out, at which point Barak ordered [his forces] to liquidate them on the spot. (PMW note: Barak was not present. One terrorist, Hussein Fayyad, was captured alive and released from prison in the Jibril Agreement in 1985).
Dalal’s body is still somewhere in Palestine (PMW note: Her body is in Israel), and remains as a tree growing and blossoming in the soil of the homeland.”
Notes: 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 planned many deadly Fatah terror attacks killing 125 Israelis. This included the most lethal in Israeli history, the hijacking of a bus and killing of 37 civilians, 12 of them children.
Kamal Adwan was responsible for Fatah’s terrorist operations and was a senior member of Black September. He and Kamal Nasser were killed by Israeli forces in April 1973.