NPR loves a talented terrorist.
Since Basem Khandaqji was released in the Israel-Hamas October 2025 ceasefire deal, NPR provided its listeners and readers with a puff piece – not once, but twice – about this convicted terrorist who served time in Israeli prison for his role in the 2004 terror attack that murdered three Israelis and injured dozens more. Perhaps NPR was inspired by BBC Arabic, who, in October 2025, promoted his recent book, when it published, “A Palestinian imprisoned for planning a bombing is now a prized novelist, and free.”
Basem Khandaqji is a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States since 1997, and was sentenced to three life sentences for his assisting role in the November 2004 Carmel Market bombing in Tel Aviv that killed Shmuel Levy, age 65, Tatiana Ackerman, age 32, and child survivor of the Holocaust, Leah Levine, then age 64.
CAMERA UK previously commented on how insulting it was that BBC Arabic romanticized Khandaqji, whose book was titled “The Holocaust Custodian,” given that he had actually helped facilitate the murder of a Holocaust survivor.
A spokesperson for CAMERA UK said:
“For BBC Arabic’s Doaa Fareed to uncritically romanticise terrorists [like Basem Khandaqji]—and to present their new life in Cairo with pensive, inspirational music complete with strings and piano—is not only in extremely bad taste but also an… https://t.co/iwwmKE7IRh
— CAMERA UK (@CAMERAorgUK) November 6, 2025
Khandaqji was awarded the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2024 for a novel he wrote while serving out his three life sentences in an Israeli prison, “A Mask the Color of the Sky.”
Khandaqji’s role in the Carmel Market terrorist attack was as driver to the suicide bomber, then 16-year old Amer al-Fahr. Khandaqji allegedly used a journalist identification card he procured while a student at A-Najah University in Nablus, enabling him to gain entry into Israel from the West Bank and bring al-Fahr with him so that he could enable a child to kill himself while murdering Israelis. While The New York Times previously reported Khandaqji denied the charges, NPR reported that Khandaqji “acknowledge[d] he was the one who dispatched the bomber to Tel Aviv” and despite having sent a Palestinian child to kill and die, he “did not feel regret for his actions.”
Not content to knowingly profile a terrorist and child murderer, NPR took it upon itself set the stage and justify Khandaqji’s terror activities at the time when it narrated, “It was during the second intifada, a Palestinian uprising that lasted from 2000 to 2005 in protest of Israel’s continuing occupation despite years of peace talks. During that time, Palestinian militant groups killed more than 1,000 Israelis, and the Israeli military killed several thousand Palestinians.”
Blaming the second intifada on “Israel’s continuing occupation despite years of peace talks” leads NPR’s listeners singularly to blame Israel for the hundreds of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists, particularly given NPR’s failure to provide the context that Yasser Arafat refused the proposed Palestinian state and peace deal at Camp David in 2000.
NPR decided to depict an unrepentant child killer and terrorist as merely a reformed “militant” and “prized novelist” not once, but twice. Even when given a redo, NPR cannot help itself but glorify Palestinian terrorism.