The aftermath of the Palestinian stabbing attack in Netanya on Thursday evening. Photo: Channel 2/Screenshot.

Thursday’s shocking Palestinian terrorist murder of a 13-year-old girl prompted the usual praise from Palestinian Authority (PA) outlets. Muhammad Taraireh was hailed as a martyr for stabbing and murdering 13-year-old Hallel Ariel, a US citizen, as she slept in her bed.

“Martyr (Shahid) Muhammad Taraireh, who carried out today’s operation in which one female settler was killed, and a male settler was injured,” read the post on Fatah’s Facebook page as translated by Palestinian Media Watch.

The terrorists’ mother said her son made her “proud,” and called him a hero and a martyr. “Allah willing, all of them will follow this path, all the youth of Palestine,” Taraireh’s mother told a local Hebron news outlet.

This brutal murder came shortly after Abbas’ senior advisor Sultan Abu Al-Einein called for Palestinians to decapitate innocent Israelis. “Every place you find an Israeli, cut of his head,” said Al-Einein.

The terrorist’s family will now begin receiving monthly payments that the PA gives to all terrorist families.

Blatant praise for terrorists is expected from Palestinian officials and significant segments of the Palestinian population. Yet the silence emanating from the broader Muslim world following such brutal attacks is similarly disturbing.

In a blog posted by The Times of Israel, Muslim interfaith activist Nadiya Al-Noor blasts Muslim hypocrisy in the context of Palestinian terrorism.

I have seen firsthand the casual, destructive anti-Semitism that plagues the Muslim community. I have heard it from the mouths of our religious leaders, from our politicians, and even from our otherwise peaceful, liberal Muslim activists. I have witnessed in horror the desperate attempts to justify Palestinian terrorism from people who I once respected. Why? Why do we decry all other types of terrorism, but bend over backwards to legitimize violence against Israeli Jews?

Too many Muslims seek to justify such terrorism by citing the Israeli “occupation,” relying on “anti-Semitic lies fed to us by Al-Jazeera,” such as the canard that Israelis seek to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Al-Noor writes. Too many Muslims refuse to refer to Israel by name, “refuse to call violence against Israelis ‘terrorism,’ and we hypocritically scream, ‘Resistance is not a crime!'”

Al-Noor bravely opines, “stabbing a little girl to death in the one place where she was supposed to be safe is certainly not “resistance.”

“We’ll stand up against the persecution of Christians, atheists, Hindus, Shias, Ahmadis, and anyone else who is persecuted,” she wrote. “We will sob to the heavens if a Palestinian is killed, but when it comes to Palestinian terrorism against Jews, we either turn a blind eye to it, or we twist the story to make the terrorists into the victims. This is unacceptable.”

“When you make excuses for terrorists, you support terrorism.”

Al-Noor’s observations directly relate to strategies adopted by US Islamist organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which routinely condemns acts of terrorism worldwide — but never when it comes to Israelis.

Steven Emerson is the Executive Director the Investigative Project on Terrorism (www.investigativeproject.org) where this article first appeared.