Students at the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary Mixed School, which was built with funds from the Belgian government. (Photo: Facebook)

One of the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s greatest role models for girls and women is the 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, including 12 children.

Although 47 years have passed since the Coastal Road Massacre, the PA is still adamant about teaching girls and women to be like Mughrabi.

At a recent reading event in the PA Tulkarem Education Directorate (a branch of the PA Ministry of Education), high school girls read and discussed a novel about terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi:

Posted text: “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.”

[PA Tulkarem Directorate of Education, Facebook page, Jan. 22, 2025]

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.

The text on the image in the middle at the bottom above says: “Dalal Mughrabi, the legend that does not die.”

A student draws Dalal Mughrabi.

Hanging in the foreground is the PA map of “Palestine” — with the location of the Coastal Road Massacre marked on it.

Last year, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) 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.

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:

When a representative of Fatah Women’s Commission was interviewed in 2023, she stressed that Mughrabi is the “best example” and that everyone knows “who Dalal Mughrabi is”:

Representative of the Fatah Women’s Commission Nufouz Al-Fara: “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.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV News, March 12, 2023]

Emphasizing the power and abilities of women, 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” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 12, 2018].

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.