After Israel last Thursday secretively returned for burial the bodies of Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal, the two terrorists who carried out the massacre on a Har Nof synagogue in Jerusalem last month murdering four Jews at prayer and a police officer, the Palestinian Authority (PA) lost no time praising the two “martyrs.”

In the horrific attack the two terrorists beheaded two of their victims at prayer, using hatchets, knives and guns, and leaving an additional seven with horrific injuries, three of them seriously wounded. One of the two cousins was employed at a store adjacent to the synagogue.

But PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction saw fit last Thursday to praise the two on Facebook, posting a picture of their graves and calling them “martyrs…who ascended (to heaven),” reports Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

“This is the place of eternal rest of martyrs Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal of Jabel Mukaber (neighborhood) in occupied Jerusalem, who ascended (to heaven) a month and a half ago during an operation at an occupation synagogue in occupied Jerusalem. Early morning today, they were escorted to their graves at Al-Sawahreh Al- Sharqiyeh,” read the Fatah post.

The PA’s official news agency WAFA also honored the brutal murderers as “martyrs” in a report last Friday, reveals PMW.

“The citizens of Jerusalem escorted the bodies of martyrs Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal…to the place of their final rest in the Al-Sawahreh Al-Sharqiyeh cemetery, after they were held by the occupation for 37 days, and transferred to their relatives after midnight,” wrote WAFA.

PA Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein earlier this month referred to the two as martyrs when he demanded Israel return their bodies, saying “it is the martyrs’ right for us to pray for them, and this is a right according to sharia (Muslim law).”

While Abbas issued a perfunctory denunciation of the Har Nof massacre, a Fatah MP explained it was made for “diplomacy” and that Abbas “is forced to speak this way to the world.” Abbas’s PA celebrated the “heroic” attack and explained the condemnation was a lie, going on to warp the attack to be an “Israeli attack.”

The insincere nature of the denunciation was rendered all the more striking in contrast to Abbas’s flowery and lengthy denunciation in a letter to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, responding to the attack by an Islamist terrorist on a cafe in Sydney.