June 19, 2020
Nabil Nassar shared a Facebook post announcing that he had been appointed “Secretary of the Fatah Movement in Canada.” The current Chairman of Fatah, Arabic for “Conquest,” is Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah is regularly described as a “moderate” political party by mainstream Western media.
In January of this year, Nassar shared an image hailing the “martyr commander Ali Hassan Salameh,” mastermind of the infamous 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. On June 7, Nassar released a statement in the name of Fatah’s “Canada Region” mourning the passing of Ramadan Shalah, former leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which Public Safety Canada calls “one of the most violent Palestinian terrorist groups.”
Nassar has a long record of praising terrorists on social media. In 2018, B’nai Brith exposed his glorification of terrorists such as Karim Younis, Raed al-Karmi and Ahmad Nasr Jarrar, who was hailed as a “martyr” by the Hamas terror group after he perished while resisting arrest for his role in the murder of an Israeli rabbi. Nassar deleted the posts afterward, but B’nai Brith has preserved screenshots of them.
In March of 2019, Nassar made a post hailing Dalal al-Mughrabi as “The epitome of the Palestinian woman… a symbol of resistance and pride.” Al-Mughrabi led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, in which 37 Israeli civilians, including 12 children, were murdered.
“This questionable appointment by Mahmoud Abbas’ political party raises real concerns about his supposed commitment to peace,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “How can Canadians or Israelis believe Abbas’s claims of opposing terrorism if he does not honour these commitments when handing out honours in Canada?”
B’nai Brith asked Hala Abou-Hassira, General Delegate of the Palestinian Authority in Canada, whether Abbas was aware of Nassar’s track record when he appointed him as his Canadian Fatah delegate — and, if not, whether he considered Nassar’s pro-terrorist posts acceptable. No response was provided to these questions.
