According to a recent report in Palestinian Media Watch, “One of the Palestinian Authority’s greatest role models for girls and women is terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi.”
By Rachel Avraham
According to a recent report in Palestinian Media Watch, “One of the Palestinian Authority’s greatest role models for girls and women is terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. She led the attack that – until Oct. 7, 2023 – was the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history, known as the Coastal Road Massacre. Together with other Fatah terrorists, Mughrabi hijacked a bus in 1978 and murdered 37 civilians, of which 12 were children.” 70 others were wounded in the terror attack.
It is now 2025 and the Palestinian Authority aims that Dalal Mughrabi will be a role model that Palestinian girls and women can aspire to, 47 years after the Coastal Road Massacre. As the PA Tulkarem Directorate of Education recently announced on their Facebook page: “As part of the reading challenge, the [Tulkarem] Education Directorate participated along with the Fir’aun High School for Girls in a wave activity aimed at discussing the novel ‘After the Last Shore’ by Dr. Adwan Nimr Adwan, as part of the reading challenge program.” The novel is about the terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi.
Palestinian Media Watch asserted, “Photos from the event show drawings, paintings, and decorations featuring Mughrabi that were made by the students. A display at the activity had many images representing terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi.” One of the images had the caption “Dalal Mughrabi: The Legend that does not die.” According to Palestinian Media Watch, “Hanging in the foreground is the PA map of “Palestine”, with the location of the Coastal Road Massacre marked on it.” Palestinian Media watch added that they also posted pictures of young Palestinian high school girls, painting images of Dalal Mughrabi.
This is not the first time that the Palestinian Authority schools glorified a female terrorist as a role model for young girls. According to the report, “Last year, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that the Hebron Education Directorate used books to teach children that murderers of Israelis are role models. On National Reading Day, young schoolgirls were reading a children’s book about Islamic Jihad terrorist and female suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat. She carried out a suicide attack at a restaurant in Haifa on Oct. 4, 2003, murdering 21 Israelis and wounding over 50.”
Palestinian Media Watch added: “For decades, PMW has exposed the magnitude of praise and honor paid to murderer Mughrabi. The endorsement of her killings comes from the top of the PA and Fatah. The PA, for example, has named at least 5 schools after Dalal Mughrabi, and PMW has documented the direct influence on young women whose “life’s ambition is to reach the level” of such a terrorist murderer.”
As one young girl from the Dalal Mughrabi High School for Girls proclaimed, “Dalal Mughrabi is a great leader, who raised more and more people and worked for the Palestinian cause to protect the homeland by defending Jerusalem. This fighter might have died and her soul ascended to Heaven, but still our mothers give birth to thousands of girls like Dalal and she still walks among us. Dalal Mughrabi has given us a lot. I personally am proud to attend the Dalal Mughrabi School, which bears this pioneering name. My life ambition is to reach the level that the martyr fighter Dalal Mughrabi reached.”
A teacher at the same school declared, “Dalal Mughrabi is a fighter who carried out jihad and struggle from the beginning of her life. She was one of the brave female fighters who carried out martyrdom seeking operations (terror attacks). We in the Ministry of Education had the honor in naming our school after the martyr Dalal Mughrabi, so that her eternal memory will stay for a long time.
Representative of the Fatah Women’s Commission Nufouz Al-Fara similarly declared on PA TV: “The Palestinian woman has set out on her path, and the best example of her giving is sister Dalal Mughrabi. There is no one among us who does not know who Dalal Mughrabi is, the fighting Martyr revolutionary who sacrificed [her life] with her comrades for the goal that is always desired, which is liberation and establishing our Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem.”
According to Palestinian Media Watch, current PA Minister of Women’s Affairs Muna Al-Khalili praised the murder of 37 Israelis as a “quality resistance operation that 20-year-old Martyr Dalal Mughrabi led.” The minister further stressed that Mughrabi “proved that Palestinian women are capable of carrying out the most difficult missions.” She added that a woman was chosen to lead the attack “to convey a message to the Palestinians and to the world regarding the significance of the role of women in the national struggle… in laying the foundations of a society in which social justice prevails for the future State of Palestine.”
