Hizballah And Palestinian Authority Escalating Anti-American Propaganda

Hizballah is now placing an unambiguous “bulls-eye” on the United States, calling America and its leaders state terrorists, and symbolically placing America in the same “enemy” class as “the Zionists” – Israel.

“Here is the head of terror,” proclaims a Hizballah propaganda film montage Sunday morning on Al-Manar television, showing the face of President George Bush.

As faces of dead and wounded children appear on the screen, crude pictures of bombs rain down on the pictures, all of them labeled “MADE IN AMERICA.”

A similar though less pronounced change has occurred in the media propaganda of the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas, which receives millions of dollars in American aid.

Nazir al-Ghul, anchorman of Voice of Palestine radio, began Sunday morning broadcasts with a condemnation of American transfers of precision laser-guided bombs to Israel.

The change in the Abbas regime’s view of America is not unexpected, because the Abbas and his Fatah movement have-for more than a week, at least-been supporting the killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers as a legitimate form or “muqawwama”: “resistance” in Arabic.

A cartoon in the Abbas-controlled Fatah newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida this week, dated July 19th, 2006, depicted an Arabic holding up a bandaged hand in a sign of victory in which the fingers were kidnapped Israeli soldiers.

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The tough anti-Israeli and anti-American attitude of the supposedly moderate Abbas regime has been largely ignored or excused by Israeli policy makers and Israeli army intelligence analysts (such as former intelligence chief Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash) since Abbas publicly referred to Israel as “al’udu al-sihyouni”-the Zionist enemy-during his election campaign.

Identical terminology is used by Sheikh Hassan Nasserallah, the leader of the Iranian-financed and trained Hizballah, though Hizballah does so incessantly and without even a trace of camouflage, as is often the case with the PA.

Both Hizballah and PA news and interview shows include coverage of the war in Lebanon and Gaza in which Israel is condemned for hurting innocent civilians, but neither Hizballah nor the PA has condemned, criticized or even frowned on the killing and wounding of Israeli civilians by indiscriminate Hizballah and Palestinian attacks.

“Notice how scared and confused they are,” noted a Hizballah commentator Friday afternoon to his colleague on Al-Manar television as they reviewed films from Israeli television showing bloodied Israelis against the background of destroyed buildings in Haifa and Nahariya Israel.

For their part, the official Palestinian Authority made no attempt to hide their delight at the deaths of Israelis in or near Lebanon.

Al-Ayyam, a Palestinian paper controlled by Abbas’s Fatah movement, had a cartoon this week that showed an explosive mine-shaped like Lebanon-waiting to blow up an Israeli naval vessel.

The largest Palestinian newspaper, Al-Quds, which is also vetted by Abbas and the PA, has featured several cartoons this week showing Israelis burying themselves in a grave marked Lebanon, in quicksand marked Lebanon, or Prime Minister Ehud Olmert being hung out to dry on a clothesline.

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The same newspaper’s lead story Sunday morning is about the “martyrdom” of “a 21-year old youth.”

The sympathetic story features a member of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, Ahmad Abu-Awad, the rocketeers who have been trying to attack Israeli cities or Israeli soldiers trying to suppress the rocket fire on Israeli cities.

© 2006 Michael Widlanski Associates [Material may be cited with source attribution]

Dr. Michael Widlanski is a specialist in Arab politics and communication whose recent doctorate dealt with the Palestinian broadcast media. He is a former reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times,The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post.