NEW YORK – The Palestinian Arab massacre of eleven Israelis in Ashdod was preceded by constant incitement to hatred and violence against Jews in the official Palestinian Authority media, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) points out.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “It is no mystery what inspires young Arabs to murder Jews. Their leaders, newspapers, and television tell them that killers of Jews are heroes; that all of Israel is ‘occupied Palestine’; that Israelis are ‘sons of apes and pigs’, terrorists, and abusers of Arab women; and that they ‘deserve death.’ The question is: why does the Bush administration continue to indirectly help sponsor this hatred, by giving the Palestinian Arabs $215-million each year?”
Yasir Arafat’s Fatah-Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack along with Hamas, and an Al-Aqsa leader, Abu Qusai, praised the massacre as “a natural response to the massacres perpetrated against our people.” Large crowds of Palestinian Arabs in Jenin and Jabalya celebrated the attacks by honking their car horns, firing guns into the air, and distributing candy to passersby. The PA did not prevent the celebrations. (Jerusalem Post, March 14, 2004) Israel Television reported (March 14, 2004) that in describing the attack, Arafat’s Fatah referred to the site of the attack which is within pre-1967 Israel as “Israeli-occupied Ashdod.”
Sermons by PA-appointed clergymen, and broadcast on the official PA media, have been inciting hatred daily. For example, according to the U.S. government’s Foreign Broadcast Information Services (FBIS), PA Television on March 13, 2004, carried a sermon by Sheikh Ibrahim Mudayris, from the Zayid Bin-Sultan Mosque in Gaza, in which he said that “the Jews” are “the sons of apes and pigs” and are “extremists and terrorists who deserve death, while we deserve life, since we have a just cause.”
FBIS also reports that the PA’s Voice of Palestine Radio station on Feb. 6, 2004 carried a sermon by the PA-appointed Sheikh Yusuf Abu-Sneina, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, in which he said that an Arab-Israeli agreement based on acceptance of Israel within the pre-1967 borders “violates the Islamic law. The land of Palestine is an Islamic land, which must not be relinquished.” He concluded: “O Allah, help Muslims improve their situation and defeat Your enemy and their enemy. O Allah, destroy the Muslims’ enemies.” (Translation courtesy of IMRA)
Meanwhile, the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida marked International Women’s Day (March 9, 2004) by publishing a cartoon portraying Israel as mistreating Arab women. The cartoon showed Palestinian Arab women trapped by chains made of the Star of David.
The PA media also continues to portray Israeli as terrorists, blaming Israel for bombings undertaken by Arabs. For example, after a Palestinian Arab suicide bomber exploded prematurely on March 6, accidentally killing two PA policemen, PA Television reported: “Yesterday two members of the Palestinian National Security were killed during a bombing by the occupying forces near the Bet Hanoun crossing.” (Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch)