Palestinan cartoon glorifies Yehudah Glick’s shooter
PA paper depicts Temple Mount activist as a snake, promises ‘Jerusalem will speak only Arabic’
A cartoon portraying Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick as a snake being strangled by his attempted assassin appeared Thursday in an official Palestinian Authority publication.
The illustration was published in The Capital City, a bi-weekly paper distributed with the Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch reported.
Glick, wearing a skullcap embroidered with a Star of David, was depicted as a snake. Mu’taz Hijazi, the gunman who in October shot Glick, appeared to be heroically overtaking the snake, while crying out “You make me mad!”
According to the report, the cover of the bi-weekly honored both Hijazi and Ibrahim Al-Akary, the assailant responsible for the Jerusalem drive-by attack that left two dead and 13 others injured, under the headline “Jerusalem will speak only Arabic.”
The Capital City lists Othman Abu Gharbieh, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, as its general supervisor.
Glick was shot and gravely wounded by Hijazi outside the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem on the night of October 29. Hijazi was killed the next morning in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Tor, after allegedly opening fire on officers who came to arrest him.
Hijazi, who worked at the Begin Center, had been arrested in 2000 and served 11 years in prison. He had originally been sentenced to six years for membership in the Islamic Jihad terror group and for participation in violent rioting. Additional time was added to his sentence after he was tried for assaulting a prison guard.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas previously praised Glick’s would-be assassin, sending his family a letter of condolence after being killed by Israeli security forces.
“With anger, we have received the news of the vicious assassination crime committed by the terrorists of the Israeli occupation army against [your] son Mu’taz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi, who will go to heaven as a martyr defending the rights of our people and its holy places,” Abbas wrote in the letter.
On Tuesday, Glick’s father told Army radio his son was awake and communicating with people around him; later Glick, now breathing by himself, called Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein to thank him for all the support he had received.
