Palestinian terrorist Nasser Abu Hamid described as ‘killing machine’

Obituary

Nasser Abu Hamid. Terrorist.

Born Gaza, October 5, 1972. Died December 20, aged 50.

Like dollars for pounds, there seems to be a shifting exchange rate for the lives of Arabs and Israelis. In 1971, abducted Israeli nightwatchman Shmuel Rosenwasser was exchanged for Fatah terrorist Mahmoud Hijazi, who had faced a death sentence. The day of Hijazi’s release would become Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.

The following year, three Israeli pilots were exchanged for five captured Syrian soldiers. A year later three more pilots were swapped for 46 Syrian soldiers. By the 1980s thousands of Palestinians were being released for a handful of Israeli soldiers. In this “market” it made sense to abduct soldiers or even to keep their remains as bargaining chips.

In June 2006, Palestinian militants popped through a tunnel from Gaza into southern Israel and, after a firefight during which two Israeli soldiers and two terrorists were killed, retreated back to Gaza with injured soldier Gilad Shalit, 19, and started negotiations to release untold numbers of criminals, murderers and terrorists from Israel. Shalit was controversially swapped for 1027 prisoners, among them the worst of hate-filled hearts. More than 50 have been rearrested for further crimes.

It’s a deadly pattern. Hamas terror founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was released in 1985, and again in 1997, and continued to encourage the extermination of Israelis. Nasser Hamid also was released twice. Like his fellow killers he had studied only in the libraries of death and adhered to a commitment to kill innocent Israelis in an effort to rid the Middle East of them, his evil often drawing strength from their indecision.

He was a leading member of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades a group listed by Australia’s attorney-general 20 years ago as a terrorist organisation. The Brigades run rampant in the Palestinian territories, threatening journalists, killing “collaborators” and sometimes politicians, and planning attacks on Israel, including some of the deadliest: a bomb at a bar mitzvah gathering in 2002 that killed 12; the Tel Aviv bus station massacre the following year that claimed 25; and three attacks the year after that claimed 33 lives.

Also, Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing in 2001 of the Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem that claimed the life of 15 innocents, including a pregnant woman and seven children, one of whom was Melbourne girl Malki Roth.

Hamid joined various Palestinian protests as a child and was arrested many times. Eventually he was convicted of murdering seven people and of attempting to murder 12 others. It is believed he killed many more.

The Brigades field officer was reportedly part of the Ramallah lynching of two little-trained reservist Israeli soldiers who, lost on the West Bank, stumbled into a Palestinian roadblock in October 2000. They were taken to a police station that locals were quickly organised to storm. The mob beat and stabbed the soldiers to death and mutilated their bodies. These were thrown out of a first-floor window and kicked and desecrated further by a frenzied crowd seeking Jewish blood, even if it was of dead men. A killer waved his bloody hands in triumph from the building’s windows.

A few weeks later, on December 21, Hamid is believed to have directed the ambush in which Eli Cohen was shot dead in a town north of Jerusalem.

Ten days later came the shooting murder of Rabbi Benjamin Kahane, whose van then crashed, killing his wife and injuring five of their six children travelling with them.

The killings continued until Hamid was arrested in April 2002 in the West Bank. He was charged and convicted of murder and received seven life terms in jail, plus 50 years. The prosecution described him as “a killing machine”. He said in court: “I have no regrets. The Palestinians have a legitimate right to fight against (Israeli) occupation. I fought.”

He wasn’t alone. The pro-Palestinian Middle East Monitor reported last week that five of his brothers are serving life sentences. A sixth was shot dead by soldiers in 1994.

Hamid was diagnosed with lung cancer 18 months ago. By last September he was perilously ill. Middle East Monitor, as the Palestinian media invariably does, reported alleged cruelties to the prisoner: “Nasser was diagnosed to have a tumour in his leg in August 2021, this was removed but doctors said he needed to have chemotherapy treatment. Israeli prison authorities however delayed his access to treatment until the cancer spread across his body.”

The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, described the “martyr’s” death as an assassination and war crime. So Hamid’s family will likely receive a lump sum and stipend from the PA’s Martyrs Fund that costs the broken, rudderless territory $440m annually.