While the Palestinian Authority (PA) is obsessed with demonizing Israel and its treatment of Palestinian terrorist prisoners, the truth paints a very different picture.

Terrorist Nasser Abu Hmeid was arrested in 2002. Following his conviction for the murder of seven Israelis — Eliyahu Cohen, Binyamin and Talia Kahane, Gad Rejwan, Yosef Habi, Eli Dahan, and Salim Barakat — he was sentenced to seven life sentences. Recently, while still in prison, Abu Hmeid developed lung cancer.

According to many senior PA officials, Israel implements a system of intentional “medical neglect.” Others embellish the libel, saying that in Israeli prisons, there is “premeditated medical execution,” and that Israel is implementing a policy of “slow death” for the imprisoned terrorists.

In contrast to the distorted and libelous PA picture, the reality couldn’t be more different.

While in prison, Abu Hmeid’s cancer is being treated with the utmost professionalism, and his mother, accompanied by one of her other children, was even being allowed to enter Israel to visit him in the Israeli hospital where he is receiving treatment, along with the terrorist’s brother:

Latifa Abu Hmeid: “Honestly, Nasser’s situation is severe, severe. In other words, yesterday [Jan. 7, 2022] when I saw him I said that this isn’t Nasser. … Nasser is in a coma and connected to 100 devices. … [I said] let me see him and touch him so he will feel that I am his mother who is inside [the prison]. [The guards said] no, impossible, in other words, from a distance of two meters. After we talked a while and so forth they capitulated a bit. In other words, we confirmed that it was Nasser.”

Basel Abu Hmeid, brother of Nasser Abu Hmeid: “My brother Nasser is currently in the Barzilai Hospital and is suffering from cancer. Of course, I saw him yesterday for 10 minutes. His situation was severe and even very severe.”

[Official PA TV News, Jan. 8, 2022]

Following the visit, PA TV broadcast a cartoon depicting Abu Hemid as a lion, lying in a hospital bed, covered in a Palestinian flag, with his mother looking at him:

Abu Hmeid was originally taken to the hospital in October 2021 to undergo an operation for lung cancer, but refused the operation because he rejected Israeli security measures meant to protect Israelis:

Nasser Abu Hmeid … was returned from the Israeli Barzilai Hospital to Ashkelon Prison on Wednesday [Sept. 29, 2021], after he refused to wait to have a surgery performed for him the next week, and this was in protest against the measures, restrictions, and stringencies that were implemented against him by the prison guards in the room. … It should be noted that prisoner Abu Hmeid from the Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah has been imprisoned since 2002, and he was sentenced to 7 life sentences and 50 years.

[Official PA TV News, Oct. 5, 2021]

Despite his refusal to accept the security precautions, Abu Hmeid underwent the operation he needed in November.

In December 2021, Abu Hmeid was again taken to Barzilai hospital. Refusing to acknowledge that lung cancer is often a fatal disease and that the post operation period is often fraught with complications, the PA-funded Prisoners’ Club claimed that the reason Abu Hmeid was taken back to hospital was because the surgeon who operated on Abu Hmeid was a “non-expert”:

Official PA TV newsreader: “The [PA-funded] Prisoners’ Club noted that prisoner Nasser Abu Hmeid was transferred to the Barzilai Hospital in severe health. The prisoner is suffering from the results of a surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his lung, which was performed in November [2021]. In the surgery a tube to remove air was implanted, but afterwards it became clear that a non-expert doctor implanted the tube in the wrong place. It should be noted that prisoner Abu Hmeid is one of five brothers who the occupation sentenced to life, and they have an additional brother who is a Martyr.”

[Official PA TV News, Dec. 5, 2021]

The PA, however, did admit that Abu Hmeid is a terrorist killer.

And Abu Hmeid is not the only terrorist in his family. In fact, he has five brothers who have all also murdered Israelis. In direct recognition of the terror contribution of the Abu Hmeid family, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas chose Latifa Abu Hmeid, the mother of the terrorists, to lead the PA request to receive “Member State” status in the United Nations. The PA has further honored her several times, and paraded Um Hmeid as an icon, symbol, and role model for the Palestinian public.

Ultimately, as a reward for having six terrorist murderers in the family, every month the PA pays the Abu Hmeids $13,223 (42,400 shekels) as part of its “Pay-for-Slay” terror reward policy:

While Palestinian leaders encourage their people to kill innocent Israelis and pays them for it, Israel allows a mother to visit her dying terrorist son. That’s the true tale of the two sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, Adv. is the Head of Legal Strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.

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