Documenting Palestinian criminality

Isi Leibler

We are told, day after day, that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a genuine moderate committed to achieving a peace settlement with Israel. In addition to the international community, even some Israelis – admittedly a dwindling minority – also chant this mantra.

Abbas and his spokesman Saeb Erekat bolster this theme by uttering soothing statements in English, endorsing peace to the gullible international community. Yet they speak with forked tongues because to their own people, in Arabic, they deny Israel’s right to exist and promote vicious hatred against Jews. They also claim to have reneged violence. But the PA never conceded that terrorism was immoral. They simply concluded that having failed to achieve their objectives by violence, their goals could best be promoted by temporarily suspending terrorism in order to gain Western support. Abbas made it clear that he "had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965" and was only opposed to terrorist attacks "at this time" for tactical reasons and that "in the future things may change." Yet, even within this framework, Fatah has still succeeded in killing more Israelis than Hamas.

The true objectives of the PA are reflected in the poisonous hatred against Jews and Israel inculcated to their people through the broad range of institutions they control, permeating every level of society – from kindergarten on.

This can be traced to the very inception of the Oslo Accords. Before that, the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, while far from ideal, was certainly better than now, when polls indicate that 84% of Palestinians endorse the murder of Israelis.

In addition to denying Jewish sovereignty, the PA from the outset indulged in the most horrendous demonization, describing Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs, comparing them to Nazis while simultaneously praising Hitler, accusing them of stealing Palestinian body parts, using human blood during Passover, promoting AIDS, and many other loathsome blood libels.

This defamatory torrent directly affects Israel’s diminished standing in the international community.

In response to this, an important book compiled by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik titled "Deception: Betraying the Peace Process," has just been released. It meticulously documents the poisonous behavior of the Palestinian Authority during 2010 and 2011 throughout the broad range of institutions they control. It will become an important source for pro-Israeli activists and provide irrefutable evidence in response to those denying the criminality pervading Palestinian society.

Itamar Marcus founded Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) in 1966 as a nonprofit organization to monitor the Palestinian media. Its documentation of Palestinian behavior, including systematically taping Palestinian State TV, became important sources for parliamentarians and serious journalists throughout the world. His briefing of U.S. legislators was a major factor contributing to the prevailing pro-Israel orientation of Congress and the American people.

The book and the PMW website (www.palwatch.org) chronicle obscene examples of incitement, especially in the wake of the release of the terrorists in the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange. Abbas, who publicly embraced these mass murderers, summed up the PA approach when he stated, "Every prisoner is for us a saint and we must exalt him." He subsequently appointed Mahmoud Damra, a notorious terrorist, as his adviser.

The state-controlled Palestinian media sanctified the murders committed by the released terrorists. Thus Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who orchestrated the suicide bombing at the Jerusalem Sbarro restaurant, which killed 22 civilians including seven children, was quoted proudly proclaiming she would do it again; Abbas al-Sayed who perpetrated the Passover suicide attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya that killed 30 Israelis was described by Abbas as a "hero" and "symbol of the Palestinian Authority."

Only recently, while commemorating the 47th anniversary of Fatah, Jerusalem's Grand Mufti Muhammad Hussein, the PA's highest religious authority appointed by Abbas, proclaimed that the killing of Jews was a major Islamic goal required before the Islamic Resurrection. The moderator introducing him, reiterated that "our war against the descendants of apes and pigs is a war of religion and faith."

And just last week PMW reported how the PA State TV conveyed “greetings” to Hakim Awad, the barbaric and unrepentant murderer of the Fogel family, which included a 3-month-old infant and children aged 4 and 11 years old. His mother was honored on the program and conveyed “greetings to dear Hakim, the apple of my eye, who carried out the operation in Itamar, sentenced to five life sentences." His aunt also related to “Hakim Awad, the hero, the legend." How can people claiming to be promoting human rights conceivably associate themselves with a regime that adulates such monsters on its controlled television outlets?

The book itself chillingly provides documentation demonstrating how an entire generation is brainwashed into absorbing a culture of death and slaughter. Palestinian children's programs promoting hatred and evil are incorporated into textbooks, music videos and summer camps all blatantly indoctrinating the sanctity of Shahada (martyrdom) and murder of Jews.

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, purportedly the most moderate of all Palestinian leaders, is cited for his speech praising four terrorists and sponsoring of a Palestinian children’s summer camp in which the participants were divided into groups labeled with the names of terrorists including a notorious bus hijacker.

Marcus and Zilberdik point out how, in the course of one day, a Palestinian child can walk on a street named after the mass murderer Abu Jihad, to a school named after the founder of Hamas, where he will read hate-filled textbooks, work in a computer room named after a suicide bomber, spend the afternoon at a soccer tournament with the teams named after suicide bombers, go in the evening to the Abu Iyad community center, the orchestrator of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and finally return home to view anti-Semitic cartoons on TV before going to bed.

After reading this book, a number of questions come to mind.

The U.S. Congress was considering terminating the funding of the PA general budget unless it terminated incitement, glorification of suicide bombers as heroic role models, payment of more than $5 million a month for “salaries” to 5,500 terrorists in Israeli prisons, and pensions to the families of terrorists. Why did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ask them to desist?

Why does Prime Minister Netanyahu so frequently pay lip service to Abbas as a peace partner and, other than very recently, fail to systematically highlight the criminality of the Palestinian leaders? If our prime minister agreed not to publicly highlight these evils in order to placate U.S. President Barack Obama, we are likely to pay a bitter price. If the civilized world is made aware of the culture of death and hatred that permeates Palestinian society, we would be in a far stronger position in the ongoing war of ideas.

And finally, how can President Obama and Western countries justify their repeated vitriolic condemnations of Israeli construction in Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem and yet have so little to say about a society that indoctrinates its children with such a barbaric worldview? How can U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton validate her silence over these issues after having so passionately condemned Palestinian incitement against Israel when she was a senator?

After reviewing these horrific texts that document such a savage state-imposed Jihadi culture, it is surely delusional to view the current Palestinian leadership as peace partners. Such a calculated policy of deception reflected by the disparity between reality and duplicitous statements designed for foreign consumption is not merely an expression of malice. It is a manifestation of a determined policy to poison the people against any possible accommodation with Israel. It provides a devastating response to the question raised in the introduction to the book. Was a genuine peace process ever intended?

The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com.

He may be contacted at ileibler@netvision.net.il.