PA ceremony celebrating dead terrorists handed over by Israel is no surprise - PMW documents frequent instances of PA terror glorification

On May 31, Israel delivered 91 bodies to the Palestinian Authority. The PA gave them full military funerals, complete with coffins draped in Palestinian flags and a 21-gun salute. While PA President Mahmoud Abbas didn't speak, he laid wreaths on the coffins and presided over the ceremony. The secretary-general of his office, Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim, and the PA's state-appointed mufti, Muhammad Hussein, both gave eulogies, in which they declared that the souls of the dead were urging other Palestinians to "follow in their path."

It could have been any state ceremony for fallen heroes anywhere­except that many of the "heroes" whose path Palestinians were being urged to follow were vicious terrorists who collectively killed more than 100 Israeli civilians. But this blatant state-sponsored incitement elicited no protests from either Israel, the U.S., or the European Union.

Nor is this exceptional: The monitoring organization Palestinian Media Watch documents almost daily incidents in which PA officials, the PA-controlled media, or PA-funded organizations glorify anti-Israel terrorism, reject Israel's right to exist, or deny the Jews' historic connection to the Land of Israel. Yet even Israel rarely protests, while America and Europe almost never do. Nor have the U.S. and Europe ever conditioned the hundreds of millions of dollars a year they give the PA on curtailing such incitement. For decades, the accepted wisdom has been that what matters is preventing violence and promoting a two-state solution; as long as the PA remains officially committed to the both, why upset the applecart over secondary issues?