Incitement in Today’s Mosque Speeches

(February 4, 2005-1330 Jerusalem/6:30 a.m. NY)

The official Palestinian news media today broke Mahmoud Abbas’s promise to halt incitement to violence and hatred in the course of radio and television news programs as well as the regularly scheduled speeches from Friday’s mosque prayers.

A 30-year-old Gaza man who was killed while attacking an Israeli checkpoint with hand grenades was said to have carried out ‘istish-haad’: a heroic martyr’s death.

There was no hint of official condemnation or even reservation over the man’s actions, though Abbas and other Palestinian officials are demanding that “Israel cease its violence it all its forms” as well as releasing from jail captured Palestinian terrorists.

“The Jews came and they threw us out of cities, our villages and our land,” declared Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris in a fiery televised mosque speech from Gaza in which he also identified the Palestinians insurgent Arab terrorists fighting Western forces in Iraq.

“Palestine is a sweet land for our lord, and they [the Jews] came from their lands and threw us out,” cried Sheikh Mudeiris, a rotund bearded preacher who receives his salary, like other mosque officials, from the Palestinian National Authority (PA).

Sheikh Mudeiris, who is known as a fiery preacher with close ties to the Al-Qaeda movement of Osama Bin-Laden, delivered a relatively calm speech by his usual standards, although he periodically interspersed his own remarks with his own stylized chanting of verses from the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

“We can return to the borders of ’67 [all of the West Bank and Gaza] by policy [i.e. political means], but we cannot return to the borders of ’48 [i.e. present-day Israel] with policy,” declared Sheikh Mudeiris, hinting broadly that only taking up arms against Israel would solve the Palestinian refugee situation.

“Our tears and our hearts demand that we return there [Israel],” declared Sheikh Mudeiris. Repeatedly in his 40-minute sermon or khutba he hammered home the words “They came from their lands and they threw us out.” Although Mudeiris did not mention the United States by name, he hinted broadly that Muslims around the world were right to fight America and the West.

During its regular radio and television broadcasts Friday, official PA media continued to refer to “the American occupation army” in Iraq being attacked by “resistance forces,” a term it also uses for Palestinians attacking Israelis.

The major Palestinian newspapers, which are vetted and subsidized by the Abbas-led PA, also continued their harsh anti-Israeli and anti-American stance, some employing venomous cartoons.

The Al-Ayyam daily, for example, produced a Friday cartoon depicting a skeleton walking with a ballot box in Iraq under the caption “Successful elections.”

(See www.al-ayyam.com/znews/site/template/caricature.aspx?Date=2/4/2005.) Al-Ayyam February 5, 2005 internet edition Al-Quds yesterday (February 3 Thursday) depicted an Israeli soldier, carrying a flag labeled “threat,” shooting at an unarmed Arab carrying a flag labeled “calm.”

(See pdf.alquds.com/2005/2/3/page32.pdf) )

“What tortures we are suffering Palestine,” said Sheikh Muderis in his speech from the Sheikh Sultan al-Nahayan Mosque in Gaza.

“Women [i.e. Palestinian women convicted of terrorism] are in jail and are giving birth in jail. Two-year-old children spend their whole lives in jail.”

Later in his remarks Mudeiris criticized wide-spread corruption in Palestinian society and in the Arab world, and he hinted broadly that righteous Muslims had the right to take up arms against such corrupt officials.

Earlier this week, PA President Abbas promised Israeli officials that he would end broadcast incitement to violence and hatred, and Israel’s Channel 2 even broadcast a puffy feature with PA television managers in Gaza promising to end incitement.

In its own Arabic language media, however, the PA has remained silent, and it has not used the microphones of Sawt Felasteen (Voice of Palestine) nor PBC (the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation) to urge Palestinians not to attack Israelis.

Dr. Michael Widlanski teaches political communication at the Rothberg School of Hebrew University. His doctorate, “Palestinian Broadcast Media In the Palestinian State-Building Process: Patterns of Influence and Control,” was based on eight years of research involving more than 7,000 hours of monitoring Palestinian radio in Arabic as well as television and newspaper surveys.