CNN’s Jake Tapper took his peers to task for making a martyr out of convicted Palestinian terrorist Walid Daqqa on The Lead Wednesday.
Tapper started by pointing out a poster honoring Daqqa at a Yale protest, then discussing his case in detail.
“Walid Daqqa, the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail, died of cancer while in custody last week,” said Tapper before quoting Amnesty International’s sorrow over the “[d]eath in custody of Walid Daqqa as a cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life.”
“Much of the news media coverage of Walid Daqqa’s death after his 38 years in prison was along these lines. Many stories barely, if at all, even mentioned why Walid Daqqa was in the Israeli prison to begin with,” Tapper continued before offering some clarity:
He was in prison because he was part of a militant group that killed this 19-year-old Moshe Tamam. If the coverage mentioned Tamam at all, it called him an Israeli soldier, which he was in the sense that virtually every Israeli 19-year-old is a soldier because that country has conscription.
But at the time that he was kidnapped and murdered, Tamam was not serving as a soldier. He was on leave and he was visiting his girlfriend. In 1984, Walid Daqqa was part of the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The original mission of his cell was to kidnap an Israeli soldier into Syria, bring him to Syria to use as a bargaining chip. That’s according to Israeli security sources.
So a PFLP cell commanded by Walid Daqqa kidnapped Moshe Tamam at Beit Lid Junction. At first, they hid him in one of the terrorists’ houses for two days, the Israeli security source told me. But when they realized that they would probably get caught on their way to Syria, they decided to murder him.
Moshe Tamam was taken to an olive grove near Mevo Dotan, where the members of PFLP shot him once in the head and once in the chest, killing him. They then abused the body with the knife, unquote. His corpse was found four days after his abduction.
“Now, Walid Daqqa was not the shooter, and he denied his involvement and commanding role in the PFLP cell. But he went through a trial, and the court ruled that Walid Daqqa was an equal participant in the murder of this 19-year-old Israeli. In prison, Walid became a writer and by some accounts he matured and changed, which of course erases the murder in which he participated not at all!” argued an incredulous Tapper, who went on to read a statement from Tamam’s niece:
“Instead of leaving us alone, for the following years, The murderer, Walid Daqqa, kept being a terrorist from his prison cell,” she said. “He was glorified by our enemies. They teach about him in schools. They made a play about him. He was an inspiration to many other terrorists who later followed his footsteps and murdered innocent victims.”
She continued: “The most upsetting thing is that while we lost my uncle when he was only 19, Amnesty International, which is supposed to be an international human rights organization, glorifies this evil murderer, not even mentioning what he did. They are actually doing international gaslighting to terror victims. The truth doesn’t matter to them.”
“‘It is heart-wrenching that Walid Daqqa has died in Israeli custody,’ said Amnesty International. Heart-wrenching?!” marveled Tapper. “I ask this sincerely: Does it wrench the heart of anyone at Amnesty International that 19-year-old Moshe Tamam was murdered? Anyone?”
Watch above via CNN.
