A new report by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) demonstrates that Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) school system continues to indoctrinate Palestinian children to believe that ‘Palestine,’ both as an idea and as a country, encompasses all of Israel. A recent children’s quiz broadcast this week on Abbas’ Fatah-controlled PA Television shows Palestinian children who have absorbed this message. PMW reported:

Children on the TV program routinely identified every Israeli city and landmark as part of the State of “Palestine.” Haifa, Ashdod and Eilat are described as Palestinian ports, the Sea of Galilee is said to be a Palestinian lake, and the area of the Palestinian state is said to be 27,000 square kilometers. In fact, the total area of Gaza and the West Bank totals 6,200 square kilometers, so the only way to come up with the larger measurement is to include undisputed Israeli territory in the calculation. The “State of Palestine” is said to border Lebanon and the Red Sea; in fact, these are Israel‘s borders.

In an unsettling reminder of the 2007 Hamas children’s TV program that used a Mickey Mouse character to preach hatred and world Islamic domination, the child host of this week’s PATV (Fatah) program is sitting in front of a photo of Mickey Mouse. (Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, ‘PA TV children’s quiz: Teaching about a world without Israel,’ Palestinian Media Watch, September 3, 2008).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “This latest example of Palestinian school children being indoctrinated in direct and indirect ways to consider Israel non-existent and Palestinians entitled to everything encompassed by Israel has been shown to occur time and time again the PA media. Maps that do not show a country called Israel; Israeli cities that are described as being part of Palestine; atlases used in grades 1-12 showing Israel within the pre-1967 borders as “occupied Palestine” and not listing Israel in its index of countries; textbooks that fail to mention Israel or the agreements signed with it by the PA itself; crossword puzzles that inculcate the notion that Israel doesn’t or shouldn’t exist – all these are standard fare in Abbas’ PA.

“When one reflects that numerous examples from the PA media have been shown to contain a variety of content that is clearly inimical to the idea of Palestinians accepting Israel and living in peace with it as a result of negotiations – things like Palestinian mothers supporting the quest of their children for death via suicide terrorism, official Palestinian media praising and honoring terrorists as heroes and role-models, PA-salaried clerics comparing Jews to the AIDS virus and calling for their extermination – then it is clear that we are witnessing a society that is mired in fanaticism and hate. We are witnessing a society which in its hatred of Jews and Israel produces parents who overcome their natural feelings towards protecting and sparing the lives of their children, educators who only wish to poison their students’ minds and clerics who only want to see their flock murder Jews.

“The latest PA TV broadcast is no less disturbing than previous cases of erasing Jewish national, political and religious history from PA publications because they indicate that no change for the better has taken place in Palestinian education over the past few years. Palestinians have not reviewed their attitudes and decided to embark on the road to a genuine peace and reconciliation with Israel – something that ought to lead the Bush Administration and the Olmert government to postpone any current plans to reward the PA with concessions.”