NEW YORK – As U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni prepares to travel to the Middle East to help put an end to terrorism, Yasir Arafat’s official radio station is continuing to promote the murder of innocent Jews by praising massacres of Jews as “heroic martyrdom operations.”
In its broadcasts on March 10, 2002, Arafat’s “Voice of Palestine” Radio used the term “heroic martyrdom operations” to describe the March 9 suicide bombing in a Jerusalem restaurant that killed 10 Israelis and the massacre at a Netanya tourist hotel in which 3 Israelis, including an infant, were shot to death.
After the attacks, Arafat’s radio station “made a point of playing joyous songs,” notes Prof. Michael Widlanski of Hebrew University. “Even the background music on the PA radio and television has become suffused with songs calling for ‘martyrdom in Jerusalem’ and ‘blood for our land’.”
Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA): “Arafat is praising and promoting the murder of Jews, just as the Nazis praised and promoted the murder of Jews.”
Arafat’s official PA media regularly praise and glorify terrorists who murder Jews:
…After an Arab terrorist murdered three Israelis in the town of Hamra on Feb. 6, 2002, the PA’s official “Voice of Palestine” Radio praised the attack as “istish-haad” —an act of “heroic martyrdom.” Anchorman Nizar Al-Ghul commented: “The man carrying out the operation became a heroic martyr after killing two settlers and a soldier and wounding at least four.” (The two “settlers” were an unarmed woman and her 11 year-old daughter.) During the morning news program, a song was played that repeatedly called for “martyrs” and for acts of “heroic martyrdom” inside Jerusalem.
…When an Arab suicide bomber seriously wounded two Israelis on Jan. 30, 2002, the PA’s official “Voice of Palestine” Radio hailed the attack as “amaliya istish-hadiyya” —“an operation of heroic martyrdom.”
…When female suicide bomber Wafa Idris struck in Jerusalem on Jan.29, 2002, killing one Israeli and wounding over 150 others, the PA-sponsored newspaper Al Ayam published a front page photograph of the terrorist with three sympathetic death notices calling her a “heroine” and a “martyr.” On Jan. 31, 2002, Arafat’s Fatah movement held a rally for elementary school girls in honor of Idris. A photo in Al Ayam (Feb. 1, 2002) showed the girls carrying posters reading “The Fatah Movement…proudly eulogizes their heroine Martyr, from the Alamari refugee camp, the martyr Wafa Idris.”
(Translations courtesy of Prof.Michael Widlanski of Hebrew University.)
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The ZOA has just published a new 112-page book, The Case Against Arafat: The Campaign by Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to Destroy Israel.
The book features an introduction by Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1981-1985. Dr. Kirkpatrick is presently Leavey Professor of Government at Georgetown University and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
The Case Against Arafat is a timely and hard-hitting expose which reveals how, throughout the more than eight years of the Oslo process, Arafat and his regime have continually violated their Oslo accord obligations by collaborating with terrorists, sheltering terrorist groups, smuggling shiploads of illegal weapons into the areas they control, and actively creating a culture of hatred of Jews and violence against Israel in their official media, school textbooks, summer camps, speeches, and sermons by PA-appointed clergymen.
The public debate over future relations between America and the Palestinian Authority is now in full swing. The Case Against Arafat is sure to assume a prominent place in that debate.
For a free copy of The Case Against Arafat, please call the ZOA at 212-481-1500.