By DOUGLAS WERTHEIMER -EDITOR

MEDIA EXPERT ASSESSES PA HATE PROMOTION, ISRAEL DENIAL

DIFFERENT WORDS IN ENGLISH, ARABIC DEVELOPMENT COMES AFTER HOPE OF 2007 ANNAPOLIS CONFERENCE

The Annapolis Conference — Pres. George W. Bush’s effort in November 2007 to reinvigorate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations — has been followed on the part of the Palestinian Authority not by increased movements towards conflict resolution but by Palestinian hate promotion and indoctrination against Israel without parallel in the two people’s relations, Israeli media expert Itamar Marcus said here Nov. 10.

Marcus, the founder in1996 of the Jerusalem based Palestinian Media Watch (www.pmw.org.il) and its director, told the JEWISH STAR after a talk at the University of Chicago that the resulting deterioration has created “an al most impossible situation” in the region. Marcus said that among those misled by the current

Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas was Norway, which had actually increased its funding to the PA for 2008.

What Dagen Magazinet, a Norwegian daily, called “a new, detailed and sensational report about how Norwegian money is spent on the official hate propaganda against Israel” was presented last month to members of the Norwegian Parliament.

The report, co-written by Marcus for Palestinian Media Watch, argued that “well-intended funding by such countries as Norway is used for PA TV and media hate promotion” without Norway actually realizing that the country has been misled.

In English, Abbas has spoken words of peace and suggested a “sincere change” from past ways, Marcus stated in his report. “

However, in Arabic the Palestinian Authority, Fatah Leaders and Abbas-controlled official PA media are no different than they were in the Arafat era” — and in fact, they are worse, he said.

Eight years ago, Marcus had in essence predicted the outbreak of the Second Intifada from a study of Palestinian media. On Sept. 11, 2000 Marcus is sued a report which warned that “violence and hate has reached unprecedented levels this summer and has created an atmosphere of the eve of [the] outbreak of war.”

Seventeen days later Ariel Sharon toured the Temple Mount (JEWISH STAR, Sept. 28, 2008), which then became the pretext for the outbreak of violence.

Radical Islam

Marcus’s remarks came after a video-illustrated lecture to some 45 people at the University of Chicago on “Understanding the Obstacles to Peace”.

The event was co-sponsored by Chicago Friends of Israel and StandWithUs, an organization based in Los Angeles with a Chicago chapter. During his Chicago visit, Marcus also spoke at De Paul Hillel and Temple Jeremiah.

In his talk, Marcus touched on educational, historical, religious, economic, social and cultural is sues, illustrated with video clips, graphs and quotations, all presented to show how Palestinian society has adopted a radicalized interpretation of Islam.

His group, he said, aims to look at every aspect of Palestinian society “through the media window”, translating local media from the Arabic original in order to document and analyze Palestinian life, from mosque to kindergarten to sports arena.

As an example of how this radicalization permeates Palestinian life at all levels, Marcus showed a clip of a Hamas kindergarten graduation, with children dressed as fighters, play-acting scenes of jihad and death.

It continues outside school settings, as he showed by posting a group of children’s sports teams — all named after suicide terrorists. Then there’s the summer camp, named for a female terrorist.

Children’s television has become notorious for its promotion of hate, Marcus said. Marcus showed clips of Farfur, a Mickey Mouse-like character who extolled fighting President Bush, Condoleeza Rice and other American leaders, which was forced off the air by outside pressure (JEWISH STAR, June 8, 2007).

This didn’t, however, keep off the air a Hamas puppet show of an Islamic child murdering Pres. Bush.

Add to this incendiary mix school textbooks of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas that rail against Israel, Zionists and Jews, and the result indoctrination embedded in the entire educational system, Marcus said.

Appalled by this situation, Sen. Hillary Clinton, with whom Marcus has worked, has called for an end to the “propaganda to which Palestinian children are ex posed”. Current textbooks “profoundly poison the minds of these children,” she said in a video clip that Marcus showed. In 2007, Clinton and Palestinian Media Watch released a report critical of new 12th grade Palestinian textbooks.

Marcus sees this poisoning as a chief obstacle to peace. Changes in education “must at least parallel political changes,” he said.

Religion, Not Territory

In analyzing the Palestinian view of the conflict with Israel, Marcus maintains that it is not a battle for territory but for the assertion of Islamic supremacy over the Jewish state.

“There is so much hate material not at all connected to territory,” he said. Since the Second Intifada “there has been a shift to radical Islam,” he went on, with Palestinian leaders using Islamic sources to justify the murder of Jews.

Marcus provided illustrations to buttress his argument that Palestinian media is used to demonize Jews and Israelis and to deny the Holocaust. Classically anti-Semitic images portray them as a danger not only to Palestinians but to the world.

The conclusion is that Palestinians are being taught that Jews should be murdered for religious reasons as well as for self defense — mimicking classic Nazi apologetics, Marcus pointed out.

These are “two powerful components,” and they have “tremendous support among the general Palestinian population,” he said.

The glorification of death and the longing for martyrdom” that result in suicide bombings of Israel cannot be explained by economic factors or by occupation or by what maybe characterized as oppression, according to Marcus.

“Suicide terror is not an act of desperation but of aspiration,” he said. “Death is glorified, so kids aspire to it. It is better than peace or life” in their view, he said.