“Follow Me”

“I am waving not to part from you, but to say: follow me,” so the Palestinian boy Mohammed a-Dura ostensibly calls to his friends the children, in a film clip produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Propaganda which has recently been broadcast on official Palestinian television. Ten year old a-Dura, who was killed next to his father at the beginning of the el-Aksa Intifada and become one of its symbols, calls to Palestinian children and proposes that they become shahids [martyrs].

This comes from new research into “Palestinian Culture and Society”. The research director, Itamar Marcus, presents a number of official Palestinian film clips for children and discloses that despite its denials, the Palestinian Authority encourages its children in violent operations against Israel, and in return promises them the delights of heaven.

The official clip about a-Dura shows how immediately after his death, the boy went to heaven, a tranquil place with lots of green vegetation, fountains, beaches, and even a Ferris wheel. Little a-Dura, according to the clip, skips joyously in the sunlight, flying a kite, while in the background a song is playing: “How delightful the scent of the shahids, how delightful the scent of the earth, slaked by the flow of blood flowing from a fresh body.”

Another clip mentioned by Marcus shows the famous handshake between Rabin and Arafat at the White House, and above it says “The promise of peace is over, the time for talk is over.” In the clip, also intended for Palestinian children, and broadcast on the official Palestinian Authority television network, a boy and a girl can be seen. The boy throws aside the little car he was holding and picks up a stone, while the girls leaves her doll and also takes a stone in order to set out for the conflict.

This appeared on the May 4, 2001 edition of Maariv