Official Palestinian television devoted much of its programming this past Friday (May 13) to attacking Israel and Jews in general, as part of the lead-up to the 57th anniversary of “Al-Nakba”-The Catastrophe-as Palestinians call events of 1948.

Coming less than two weeks before Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is set to visit Washington to seek aid and to proclaim his successes in promoting moderation and democracy, the Palestinian propaganda campaign illustrated how, sometimes, it seems that little has changed in the Palestinian media after the death of Yasser Arafat.

This article focuses on one particular element of Friday’s coverage: some of the anti-Semitic highlights from the mosque address of Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris, the white robed cleric who led the broadcast prayers at the Sheikh Zayid Sultan al-Nahayyan Mosque in Gaza.

Sheikh Mudeiris, who is a noted supporter of Osama Bin-Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization, did not waste time and from the first word of his sermon attacked Jews over the centuries for their “immorality” and “corruption.”

In a speech dedicated to “The Catastrophe,” Sheikh Mudeiris mixed a traditional Muslim phrase with today’s politics.

“Praise be to Allah whom we to praise even for what is hateful, and [praise be to Him] for having made heroes of us to withstand what the Jews have done to us,” declared the young rotund, bearded cleric as he clutched his gold-trimmed white robe.

He unleashed scathing charges against “the Jews who the Prophet [Muhammad] warned had killed their prophets, distorted the teachings of their Torah and corrupted their way of life.”

Most Jews were treacherous and unreliable, Sheikh Mudeiris said, and the Prophet Muhammad and his follower Abu-Bakr were correct in fighting them and evicting them first from Muhammad’s base city of Medina and then from ancient Arabia.

“Israel is a cancer among the Islamic peoples,” the sheikh shouted at the crowd kneeling at his feet.

Sheikh Mudeiris said that the Jews would have killed Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, just as they had killed their own prophets, if Muhammad had not outmaneuvered them.

“I don’t ask you to read the Quran [for this]. I know you read the Quran….Bur for those who do not. All you have to do is read history. Ask the British what they did with their Jews. In the sixth century (CE/AD), according to the Christian calendar. They were thrown out for 300 years.

Ask the French what they did with their Jews.”

The young charismatic cleric also accused the Jews of idolatry of “corrupting their morality.” In previous speeches in recent weeks, he and other mosque speakers on Palestinian television and radio have said that there is an Israeli-American plot against the Arab states, and called for holy war against both Israel and America.

“Palestine is the doorway for all the world-between Asia and Europe.

“The Jews are responsible for all dissension on this earth. The Jews are behind the suffering of all peoples.

“Ask the French. They burned their Talmud because of the dissension they [the Jews] stirred there.

“Ask Portugal what it did with the Jews. Ask Tsarist Russia what it did with its Jews who were conspiring to kill the Tsar.

“And don’t ask Germany what it did with the Jews. Because it was the Jews who brought Nazism which led to the destruction of the entire world.

“When the Jews burnt the world with their Zionist movement which moved countries to hurt Germany economically, when they moved Russia, Britain, France and Italy, and Germany’s anger against the Jews grew strong.

“What happened to the Jews happened to them, and it was one of the worst crimes in history, but it is not as great a crime as what the Jews did to the people of Palestine?!

“And what the Jews are doing today, isn’t that a crime. Their use of bulldozers, destroying homes, impoverishing their inhabitants. Is it not a crime to kill our children in the ruins of their houses?”

The quotations above are only a small portion of the sermon broadcast on Palestinian television on May 13, 2005.

[For a general picture of the Palestinian media this week, see inter alia www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=25187,
www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=25179,
www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=25170,
/bin/content.cgi?ID=2147&q=1 ,
/bin/content.cgi?ID=2146&q=1 ,
/bin/content.cgi?ID=2141&q=1 ,
www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=25207.]

Dr. Michael Widlanski teaches political communication and comparative politics 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. Widlanski was the NYTimes campus correspondent at Columbia University, 1974-1976, a reporter-researcher in the NYTimes Jerusalem bureau, 1980-82, Middle East Correspondent for The Cox Newspapers/Atlanta Constitution/Boston Globe, 1982-89.

He has also served as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem.

He has also served as a special advisor to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem.

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