New York — Official Palestinian Authority (PA) broadcast media have sharply increased hate propaganda against America, Israel and Jews in recent days, including declaring that the United States will be destroyed as well as explicit and implicit calls for suicide attacks on Israeli civilians and kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. Recent features on PA media included also a singer crooning the words, “Oh, Lord, martyrdom is [being done] for you” while pictures of prominent Palestinian women suicide bombers, clad in white, floated beatifically across the screen. The singer appeared as part of a music video aired on April 22 on the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) television network, which is under the direct control of PA president and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Independent Media Review Analysis, April 22).
PA media have also broadcast in recent days ferocious attacks on Jews and Judaism uttered by Hamas officials, including the following “This is Islam, that was ahead of its time with regards to human rights in the treatment of prisoners, but our nation was tested by the cancerous lump, that is the Jews, in the heart of the Arab nation… Be certain that America is on its way to utter destruction, America is wallowing [in blood] today in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is defeated and Israel is defeated, and was defeated in Lebanon and Palestine… Make us victorious over the community of infidels… Allah, take the Jews and their allies, Allah, take the Americans and their allies… Allah, annihilate them completely and do not leave anyone of them.” (PA TV, April 20, 2007, translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch, April 23).
Other recent features in PA Media (Independent Media Review Analysis, April 22):
- In a mosque speech during a Friday prayer address at the Sheikh Zayad Bin-Sultan mosque in Gaza on March 30, which was broadcast on PA TV, Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan explicitly called for killing Jews, citing a Hadith-or oral tradition-attributed to Muhammad, Islam’s founder: “The Day of Judgment will not arrive until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, until the Jew hides behind the stones and the trees; and each stone or tree will say: Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”
- The PA’s ‘Voice of Palestine’ (VOP) radio, also under Abbas’ control, has resumed regular airing of the song ‘Felastin Arabiyyeh’ (’ Palestine is Arab’), which includes specific praise for “martyrs” acting against “the cowardly enemy.”
- PBC television and VOP radio have, in the last month, referred increasingly to “al-‘udu al-sihiyouni” (“The Zionist Enemy”) or “al-kayaan al-sihyouni” (‘The Zionist Entity’) or simply “al-‘udu” (“The Enemy”).
- “The only language the enemy understands is force,” declared several different members of Abbas’ PA cabinet in broadcasts dedicated to ‘The Day of the Prisoner’ in the past three days.
- While Abbas has told Israeli officials and American officials that he is working for the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, PA officials appearing before Palestinian audiences say that the Palestinians are entitled to use the “Zionist soldier” [Arabic” “al-jundi al-sihyouni”] to extricate thousands of convicted Arab terrorists from Israeli jails.
- Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli towns in the Negev over the weekend were not mentioned in the PA media, while Israeli retaliatory strikes at the rocket launchers or terrorists trying to infiltrate Israeli cities are regularly condemned as “aggression,” and the terrorists lauded as “martyrs” and noble citizens. Thus, VOP radio stated of a Palestinian terrorist group that had launched rockets at Israeli civilians in Sderot before being killed by Israeli forces, “Nine more martyrs reached the heavens in the last 48 hours.” The killing of the rocket crew and armed terrorists in Jenin and Nablus was described by Dr. Mustapha Barghouthi, the PA Information Minister as “crimes against humanity.”