The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has pointed to continuing evidence within Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) of indoctrinating Palestinian children to view all of Israel, even within the pre-June 1967 armistice lines, as “occupied Palestine.” As the latest, routine example of this, last month, PA TV included the following exchange between the program’s host, Wallaa, and a Palestinian child on the program:
Child: “I’m from Palestine.”
Host: “From where in Palestine? We’re all from Palestine.”
Child: “I’m from Lod [Israeli city].”
Host: “Oh, Lod is a very, very beautiful city. Anyone who goes there is so lucky! Do you really go in and out of Lod?” [from the PA to Israel]
Child: “But they [Israelis] have occupied it.”
Host: “You mean you are from Lod, but you live here [in Ramallah]. Never mind, my dear. Allah willing, the day will come when we will return to Lod and to all the areas they have occupied.” (PA TV (Fatah), Sept. 22, 2009, translation in Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, ‘PA still teaches kids that all of Israel is ‘occupied,’” Palestinian Media Watch, October 19, 2009).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “This is but the latest example of Palestinian school-age children being indoctrinated in direct and indirect ways to consider Israel non-existent and Palestinians entitled to everything encompassed by Israel. It has been shown to occur time and time again the PA media, as ZOA has noted repeatedly over the years.
“Within Mahmoud Abbas’ PA, maps that do not show a country called Israel; Israeli cities are described as being part of Palestine; atlases used in grades 1-12 show Israel within the pre-1967 borders as ‘occupied Palestine’; Israel is not listed in PA indexes of countries; PA textbooks fail to mention Israel or even the Oslo agreements signed with it by the PA itself; crossword puzzles are even used to inculcate the notion that Israel doesn’t or shouldn’t exist – all these devices to delegitimize Israel are standard fare in Abbas’ PA – a terror-supporting entity to whom we give over $800 million of U.S. taxpayer’s money annually.
“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.”