Palestinian Anti-Semitism

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September 22, 1997

When General Ghazi Jabali, commander of the Palestinian police, heard about the arrest warrant issued against him by Israel, he said: “This reminds me of Goebbels’ methods”. The comparison is not surprising if one monitors the official publications of the Palestinian Authority. For example: “Every year, the Jews inflate the number of Holocaust victims. Having profited from talk of their murder, they increase the numbers from time to time.” Another quote: “The Jews belong to a colonialist entity, they are nothing but thieves.” This is not the way peace is built.

On Monday, Commander of the Palestinian Police General Ghazi Jabali reacted with derision to the arrest warrant and extradition request issued against him by Israel the previous day. He said, “This reminds me of Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda minister) who said ‘tell lies and lies, and in the end they will believe you. ‘The same is true of the Jews. It is a disgrace that they are issuing an arrest warrant against me. Apparently they have learned Goebbels’ methods.”

The extradition request against General Jabali was issued by Justice Minister Tzahi Hanegbi in the wake of Jabali’s involvement with the Palestinian police unit which, according to Israel, was sent by Jabali to kill Jews. At the end of last week, an arrest warrant was issued against Jabali by an Ashkelon court.

Against this background, Jabali’s remarks should have provoked a storm. But anyone who monitors the statements and publications of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in recent weeks would not have been surprised. Charging Israel, Zionism and its leadership with Nazism, as well as denying the Holocaust, have become a daily routine, meshing with theories of nefarious Israeli plots. This educational battle is being waged by the official PA radio and television, as well as the newspapers financed by Yasser Arafat, which have recently adopted a strident, uninhibited and undisguised anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist line.

Resemblance Between Ben-Gurion and Hitler

Last Wednesday, for example, just one day before the suicide bomb attack at the pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, a wide-ranging article appeared in Al-Hayat Al-Jadeedah, the official mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority. The article, authored by Palestinian writer Nabil Salam, presented a learned historical analysis which concluded: “Since its establishment, the racist Zionist entity has been implementing various forms of terrorism on a daily basis which are a repetition of the Nazi terror. This proves the shared roots of Nazi and Zionist thought. This also explains the cooperation between the Jews and the Nazis during World War II, through which was revealed the forged claims of the Zionists regarding alleged acts of slaughter perpetrated against the Jews during the same period.”

Prior to these observations, the writer assesses the historical development of Judaism and Zionism, asserting they have sought to rule over great financial wealth, and have “influenced the formulation of racist-terrorist theories such as the Nazi theory.” Citing quotations from the Talmud through David Ben-Gurion, the author enlightens his readers with the following conclusion: “There is no difference between Hitler and Ben-Gurion, and if there was a difference at all, it was one of quantity and not one of substance. Anyone who investigates the crimes of the Zionists…discovers explicitly the complementary traits between Zionism, which is a racist terrorist movement, and the Nazi movement.”

The Holocaust as a Profitable Investment

That which was said in abridged form in Nabil Salam’s text was said explicitly and more extensively in an interview with Palestinian writer Ahsan al-Agha during a “cultural program” broadcast two weeks ago on Palestinian television. Al-Agha’s interviewer outlined the factual basis for the conversation: “It is well-known that every year the Jews exaggerate what the Nazis did to them. They claim there were 6 million killed, but precise scientific research establishes that there were no more than 400,000.”

The guest, Mr. al-Agha, who is a teacher in Gaza, replied: “I think we are talking about an investment. They (the Jews) have profited materially, spiritually, politically and economically from the talk about the Nazi killings. This investment is favorable to them and they view it as a profitable activity so they inflate the number of victims all the time. In another ten years, I do not know what number they will reach. Last year, for the first time, a statistic appeared according to which 1.5 million children were killed by the Nazis. This number was not previously known…If this number was indeed correct, then someone would certainly have remembered it…In my opinion, it is an investment, and as you know, when it comes to economics and investments, the Jews have been very experienced ever since the days of the Merchant of Venice.”

The head of the Palestinian Broadcasting Authority is Nabil Amar, a former PLO ambassador in Moscow. Amar serves as an adviser to Yasser Arafat and is a member of the Higher Committee in the talks with Israel. He is also the publisher and chief editor of the newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, whose employees receive their salaries directly from the PA budget. It is therefore not surprising that in tandem with the official radio and television, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda conveys the line dictated from above. And the line is unmistakable.

For example: three days before the suicide bombing on the Jerusalem pedestrian mall, the newspaper published two instructive articles. The first was an interview with an “Islamic author” by the name of Safi Naz Kassam who offered a number of diagnoses regarding Judaism and Zionism: “There is no people or land named Israel,” she said. “Israel is our patriarch Yaaqoub, peace be upon him, and the children of Israel are the sons of Yaaqoub…. We are the children of Israel…. These people are the children of the Zionist entity, they are the children of the colonialist entity, they are nothing more than thieves. They came and took land which does not belong to them. Therefore, the normalization of relations with them is impossible… even if Palestine remains occupied for hundreds of years.”

And with regard to Zionism, the author states: “These Zionists are not fit to establish a nation or to have their own language or even their own religion. They are nothing more than a hodgepodge.

To complete the reader’s education, the same issue of Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda surveys “research” carried out by Ahmed al-Awadeh under the headline: “The History of the Conflict Between Muslims and Jews.” The research claims that the Jews live by the Talmud and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The conflict between Muslim and Jews is an eternal conflict, similar to the conflict between mankind – the Muslims, and Satan – the Jews, and how unfortunate the Palestinians are that they have to serve as the Muslims’ avant garde in the eternal battle of the Muslims and all the nations against the “nation of Jews.”

The Attackers – Rabin’s Assassins

These anti-Semitic publications, accompanied by breathtaking “factual diagnoses” regarding the character and soul of Jews and Zionists, appear daily in the Palestinian media. They are intended to provide broad popular education to the readers, which serves as the infrastructure for the charges against Israel and its leaders floated by the PA.

In the wake of the most recent suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the allegations became more pointed and turned into an explicit theory regarding a wide-ranging Zionist plot. Last Friday, the day after the bombing, the official PA news agency published the Palestinian leadership’s decisions. It was a gripping document in which a number of instructive items were raised. “All the facts we have, which were supplied by the Israelis,” says the statement, “show that behind these operations stand foreign elements who were aided and assisted by extremist Israeli elements, those who also murdered Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.”

But that is not all. The Israeli government, according to the official Palestinian statement, is aware of this and is attempting to hide the details from the public, as well as the collaboration which the killers received from within the Israeli establishment.

And so the circle is closed and the modus operandi of the government of the Zionist-Jewish entity is revealed, one which is not at all surprising in light of the basic characteristics of Zionism, as they are known to the Palestinians from previous official publications of the Palestinian Authority.

The Vatican’s Jerusalem Agenda

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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September 22, 1997

Did Shimon Peres make a deal with the Vatican?

Consider the evidence:

On Sept. 10, ’93, just three days before the signing of the Declaration of Principles in Washington, the Italian news magazine La Stampa reported that part of the peace deal was an unwritten understanding that the Vatican would receive political authority over the Old City of Jerusalem by the end of the millenium. The newspaper reported that Shimon Peres had promised the pope to hand over the holy sites of Jerusalem the previous May and that Arafat had accepted the agreement.
In March ’94, the Israeli newsmagazine Shishi published an interview with Mark Halter, a French intellectual and close friend of Shimon Peres. He said he delivered a letter from Peres to the Pope the previous May, within which Peres offered the Vatican hegemony over the Old City of Jerusalem. The article detailed Peres’s offer which essentially turned Jerusalem into an international city overseen by the Holy See.
In March ’95, the radio station Arutz Sheva announced that it had seen a cable sent by the Israeli Embassy in Rome to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem outlining the handover of the Old City of Jerusalem to the Vatican. Two days later Haaretz published the cable on its front page. The Foreign Ministry explained that the cable was genuine but someone had whited out the word “not.” ie We will not transfer authority to the Vatican. Incredibly, numerous Bnei Brak rabbis who had cancelled Passover meetings with Peres over the issue of the cable accepted the explanation and reinvited him to their homes.

The Foreign Ministry’s Legal Affairs Spokesperson, Esther Samilag, publicly complained about “various capitulations” to the Vatican. She was immediately transferred to a post at the Israeli Embassy in Katmandu, Nepal.

MK Avraham Shapira announced in the Knesset that he had information that all Vatican property in Jerusalem was to become tax exempt and that large tracts of real estate on Mount Zion were given to the pope in perpetuity.

Jerusalem’s late Deputy Mayor Shmuel Meir announced that he had received “information that properties promised to the Vatican would be granted extra-territorial status.”

Beilin was forced to answer the accusations. He admitted, “Included in the Vatican Agreement is the issue of papal properties in Israel that will be resolved by a committee of experts that has already been formed.” If so, this committee has not since released any proof of its existence.

With all this in mind, how do we interpret the Vatican’s current position on Jerusalem?

The following report, circulated by MSANews may shed some light on that:

Vatican City, Jun 14, 1997 (VIS) – Archbishop Renato Martino, apostolic nuncio and Holy See permanent observer to the United Nations, spoke June 9 on the status of Jerusalem at the New York headquarters of the Path to Peace Foundation. The archbishop addressed members of this foundation as well as U.S. members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. He began by briefly summarizing the “well-known and long-standing position of the Holy See with regard to Jerusalem. He stated that Jerusalem “for us, of course, along with the rest of the Holy Land, is that special link between heaven and earth, that place where God walked and ultimately died among men. And of course we recognize that others revere Jerusalem as the city of David and the prophets and the city known to Mohammed…. It is a spiritual treasure for all of humanity, and it is a city of two peoples, Arabs and Jews, and of the three monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam.”

Archbishop Martino added that “in recent years it has been increasingly difficult to break through the political and media-imposed stranglehold on the question of Jerusalem.” he recounted Jerusalem’s recent history, recalling in particular the UN’s General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 calling for Jerusalem to be considered a ‘corpus separatum’ under the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations,” a resolution which Israel accepted. He pointed out that, in addressing the gridlock which has resulted from the 1967 Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, “the Holy See has therefore advocated the granting to Jerusalem of an ‘internationally guaranteed special statute. That is the phrase used by Pope John Paul II in his 1984 Apostolic Letter ‘Redemption is Anno’.”

This statute “asks that regardless of how the problem of sovereignty is resolved and who is called to exercise it, there should be a supra-national and international entity endowed with means adequate to insure the preservation of the special characteristics of the City, its Holy Places, the freedom to visit them, its religious and ethnic communities, a guarantee of their essential liberties, and its city plan’.”

The apostolic nuncio recalled the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel in 1993, when both signed the ‘Fundamental Agreement.” He noted Article 4 of this agreement where “both the Holy See and Israel affirm their continuing commitment to the ‘Status quo’ in the Christian Holy Places.”

He also spoke of the problems sparked by Israel’s recent authorization of “a project for the construction of settlements in occupied territory in East Jerusalem” for which “there was wide-spread international condemnation.” This issue, he reminded those present, was brought before the UN Security Council on March 7 and March 21 of this year, but without resolution “because the sole country on the Security Council which opposed the Resolution was the United States.”

An Emergency Session of the General Assembly, “organized only nine other times in the history of the United Nations” was held on April 24-25. The Holy See delegation was contacted and asked for suggestions for a Resolution, Archbishop Martino said. And he recounted the meetings, rough drafts of proposals and negotiations which followed.

The approved texts of the eventual Resolution, he underlined, contained “those points championed by the Holy See…. The General Assembly has here called for ‘internationally guaranteed provisions’ – the equivalent of the ‘internationally guaranteed special status’ called for by Pope John Paul II. This is particularly noteworthy because in this case, the Arab delegations all voted for this Resolution and therefore for this provision.”

“The Holy Places within Jerusalem,” concluded Archbishop Martino, “are not merely museum relics to be opened and closed by the dominant political authority, no matter who that might be at any given moment. They are living shrines precious to the hearts and faith of believers.” DELSS/STATUS JERUSALEM/UN:MARTINO VIS 970616 (640)

Could that supra-national entity which will oversee the international city of Jerusalem be the Vatican just as Peres promised? And how do we react to Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert’s recent announcement that he will begin negotiations with the Vatican, but “only over holy sites?”

Ras el Amud: Analysis

By

David Bedein

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September 22, 1997

Who would have imagined, even a few months ago, that three Jewish families moving near one of the great Jewish holy spots in Jerusalem, into homes that have been owned by Jews since 1902, would spark riots and media coverage, the world over.

There once was a time in America, when some people were not allowed to buy and live in houses in certain areas because of their race, color or creed.

In Germany the right to own property was taken from minorities and political opponents of the the Third Reich in 1935.

The Ras Al Amud property was originally sold to two Jews, Mr. Nissan Bak and Mr. Moshe Wittenburg, by the Turkish government about 100 years ago. They then leased the land to build Jewish seminaries there in 1928.

However, the ruling British colonial authority in Jerusalem at the time would not allow the Bak and Wittenberg families to build these schools

Instead, Ras El Amud was leased to Arab farmers for the purpose of raising wheat for the production of special “Matzot Shamurot”, the unleavened bread, for the Passover meal. During the Jordanian occupation of East Jerusalem the land was held in trust for Jewish owners by the Jordanian Government.

In 1964, when an Arab farmer who worked the land at Ras El Amud claimed it for himself, the Jordanian Hashemite court of land registration rejected the claim of the tenant farmer, because the title was still owned by the Bak and the Wittenberg families.

In 1967, Ras El Amud was transferred to the Israel Land Trust and placed under the administration of the Jerusalem Municipality.

In 1984, the Jerusalem Municipality sold Ras El Amud to a housing development corporation owned by Mr. Irving Moskowitz, an American Jew from Miami.

Ras El Amud and The Mount of Olives are located on the slope that leads to the Golden Gate to the Old City in Jerusalem.

The Golden Gate was sealed by Moslem clerics in the Middle Ages, so as to prevent the Jews buried on the Mount of Olives who “might be brought back to life during messianic times” from approaching the Temple Mount to rebuild the Jews’ Holy Temple and destroy their Al Aksa mosque.

The Mount of Olives cemetery was transformed into a military camp by the Jordanian Arab Legion in 1949, and it continues to be vandalized.

Meanwhile, the new Palestinian Authority has declared that selling land to a Jew is an offense punishable by death.

It is not only the Palestine Authority that has made an issue of Jews moving into new lands.

Since 1967, Jews buying land or establishing new Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem has been the subject of an international outcry, at times led by the United States.

In 1970, while the Jerusalem municipality debated building a new neighborhood on the the slopes that lie directly north of the city, near the grave of Samuel The Prophet, the US State Department spokesman Robert McClosky declared that such an action would be a violation of international law and an act of war. On the day following McClosky’s denunciation, the Jerusalem city council decided in a unanimous vote to build the Ramot neighborhood there. Ramot now counts 45,000 Jewish residents.

In 1974, the US state department objected to Israel building a suburb to Jerusalem on its eastern slopes. That suburb, Maaleh Edumim, now houses 23,000 Jewish residents.

Ironically, some of the Israelis who protested the Ras El Amud initiative now live in Ramot and Maaleh Edumim.

On June 5, 1997, on the thirtieth anniversary of the six day war which resulted in the conquest and subsequent annexation of East Jerusalem, Yassir Arafat sent a personal spokesman, Walid, to appear at a press forum, together with former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek and current Jerusalem deputy mayor David Cassuto. Speaking on behalf, Awad declared that the minimal requirement for peace would be the evacuation of Jews from any new Jewish neighborhood that was established after the 1967 war. Another Arafat intimate, Sayid Kenan of Nablus, declared that Palestinian Arab refugees who left their homes in 1948 would be brought to live in the Israeli settlements, – wherever they are – in Jerusalem, the west bank, Gaza or the Golan Heights.

It would seem that the prerequisite that no Jew can live among Palestinian Arabs may be a condition of the peace process that Israel may not be able to live with.

The Crisis of Confidence in the Peace Process

By

David Bedein

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September 22, 1997

What most distressed veteran US diplomat Madaline Albright on her maiden sojourn Secretary of State to the Middle East was the depth of the crisis of confidence that now exists between Israelis and Palestinians.

The current dynamics of the Oslo peace process are such that if you light a match, you might kindle a tinderbox that will devour any of the deteriorating relationship that remains between the state of Israel and the new Palestine Authority.

The trust that had been fostered over four years of the intensely negotiated Oslo Middle East Peace Process between Israel and Yassir Arafat had essentially ground to a halt on August 20, 1997, the day that Arafat’s Palestine Authority announced a formal working alliance. The Hamas bombings in Jerusalem’s crowded Machane Yehudah marketplace on July 30 and on Jerusalem’s crowded Ben Yehudah mall on Sept 4 and Arafat’s refusal to take any action against Hamas signaled that this was a new turn in the peace process that few had expected.

On Monday, September 15, 1997, Israel prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu dispatched an Israeli intelligence official to testify before the Israel Knesset Intelligence Committee that Arafat had not taken any concrete steps to dismantle the Hamas terror infrastructure. The official added that the Israeli public should brace itself for more Hamas terror attacks, which are to be expected imminently, adding that Arafat must immediately do what he is supposed to do – to dismantle terror operatives before they go into action. However, he added, Israel held no illusions that Arafat would do so.

All week long, the Israel’s Defence Forces went on high alert, sending Israeli intelligence units to conduct a massive preventive surveillance operation to stop terror groups that may infliltrate any part of Israel at any minute. The operation bore fruit, when the IDF announced on Friday, the apprehension of a terror group en route to kill the Mayor of Jerusalem.

On the very night that the IDF began its massive sweep to seek out and prevent new Hamas terror operations in Jerusalem, several Israeli families made it a point to establish their first small community on Ras El Amud.

What upset Netanyahu about Ras El Amud was its timing, not its substance. The issue of confidence building measures has also fallen victim to the crisis of the current Middle East crisis.

Jerusalem had always been a subject that would be the final stage of negotiations. A gentleman’s agreement had it that Israel would take no more unilateral motives. In the current stage of the Oslo process, gentleman’s agreements are off.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Poster Child of Peace is Terror Victim

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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September 15, 1997

Jerusalem — Smadar Elchanan was only a baby when she became a poster child for the peace movement.

Her photograph appeared in a 1984 flier that called for peace with the Arabs so that the children of Israel might enjoy a better future. The brief message on the flier mused about what life in Israel would be like when Smadar reached the age of 15.

Who would have guessed that she wouldn’t make it?

Smadar Elchanan was killed by an Islamic suicide bomber 10 days ago as she went shopping for a birthday present on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda Street. She was just two weeks shy of her 14th birthday. And in death, as in life, she has become something of a symbol for Israel.

The girl’s truncated biography is weighted with irony. Her grandfather was the late Brig. Gen. Matti Peled, a hero of the Six-Day War of 1967, who was one of the first Israeli officials to talk with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In deference to Peled, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat sent a personal envoy to Smadar’s funeral last Sunday at a kibbutz in central Israel. That was shocking in itself, but then Smadar’s mother, Nurit Peled-Elchanan, issued the coup de grace when she made a startling accusation in a radio interview: “I hold the government of Israel responsible for the death of my daughter.”

On Friday, as she sat at a round kitchen table covered with offerings of cakes, cookies, and newspaper clippings about Smadar’s death, Nurit, 48, repeated her indictment of her country’s leadership:

“I really believe it is the fault of the Israeli government more than the terrorists. Israel is breeding terrorism by heaping these humiliations against the Palestinians. By behaving like conquerors, we’ve brought it on ourselves.”

Nurit said she had voiced her opinions to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, as it happens, is a friend from childhood. He called to offer condolences. However, Smadar’s father, Rami Elchanan, was so angry that he refused to take Netanyahu’s telephone call.

The Peled-Elchanan family’s views are radical by Israeli standards, but they do reflect a growing despair over the state of the nation and the Netanyahu government. In a poll published Friday in the newspaper Ma’ariv, 72 percent of Israelis said that Netanyahu had no solution to the terror predicament. Asked how to describe the “national mood” today, 34 percent selected the answer “terrible” and 26 percent “not good.” (In contrast, only 5 percent chose “good.”)

Their frustrations were echoed Thursday by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. While she told the Palestinians they had to be “relentless” in combating terrorism, she asked Israel to stop responding with measures she said undermine the “partnership” required for peace. She left Israel on Friday, saying it was up to both sides to resume the peace process.

The apartment where Smadar grew up is in the leafy Jerusalem neighborhood of Rahavija. Inside is a comfortably disheveled home filled with houseplants and paintings. Instead of the standard death notice, the 1984 poster with Smadar’s baby picture is taped to the front door.

In Smadar’s tiny room, tacked to the walls between portraits sketched by an older brother, an artist, is a photograph of the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, architect of the 1993 peace accords with the Palestinians, and also a family friend.

Nurit Peled-Elchanan says her daughter was just becoming interested in politics, but still preferred the more conventional teenage passions of music and style. (“She tried to join the leftist youth movement, but it bored her to tears,” her mother said.) Smadar idolized John Lennon, Tom Waits and especially Sinead O’Connor, whom she emulated by shaving her own head and piercing her navel and nose.

“She liked to say, ‘Mom, I’m a bit freaky,’ but really she was quite a little girl and very feminine,” Nurit recalled. “She loved perfume. She loved to cook.”

Like others in the family, Smadar was heavily influenced by her famous grandfather, Gen. Peled. She was avidly studying Arabic in junior high school and prided herself on her views. She told her family recently about an incident on a public bus in Jerusalem when she yelled at an Israeli who was being rude to an Arab passenger.

A few days ago, when her mother, Nurit, was taking an early-morning walk, a Palestinian street-cleaner approached her to offer condolences following the bombings, which killed four other Israelis and the three suicide bombers.

“Your daughter would always say hello to me in the morning,” the street-cleaner told Nurit. He then added a personal note: “I know what it means to cry. I lost two brothers in the intifadah [Palestinian uprising].”

Not all of the Peled and Elchanan family is leftist. Smadar’s paternal grandfather, a Hungarian-born survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, traditionally supported the conservative Likud Party and voted for Netanyahu in the 1996 election. He often argued about politics with Gen. Peled, who died of cancer in March 1995.

The general maintained that the creation of a Palestinian state was an absolute necessity for Israelis to live in peace. “He believed that only with two states, divided, would we be able to overcome our differences and that only after some years separation would there be real peace,” said Nelly Levy, one of Smadar’s aunts.

The general had strong views on the West Bank and Gaza as well. He resigned from the army to protest its refusal to withdraw from those territories, captured in the Six-Day War.

In the last year of his life, Peled squabbled with his old friend Yitzhak Rabin about delays in the peace process. Nevertheless, he remained optimistic. The family recalls that a few months before his death, Peled told Smadar’s oldest brother, Elit, who is now 20, that he should try to defer joining the army until after completing university.

“In five years, by the time you are finished with university, they’ll really need educated people in the army because it will be an army of peace, not war,” Nurit Peled-Elchanan remembered her father saying.

Smadar Elchanan was buried last Sunday under a grove of carob trees at Kibbutz Nachshon, next to the grave of her grandfather. The funeral was attended by many political notables — among them former Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Dalia Rabin, the daughter of the late prime minister. Rami Elchanan read the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, losing his composure only when he came to the passage, “Whoever makes peace on high, will make peace for us and the whole of Israel.”

For many of the family’s friends and relatives, the loss of the dream was almost as grievous as the loss of Smadar herself.

“This is such a paradox. We’re looking at a family that raised its children on the values of peace and love and equality and tolerance,” said Hannah Altman, 47, an old friend of the Peled and Elchanan families. “Smadar was raised on hope for the future. Where will that go now?”

Philadelphia Inquirer: U.S. Government and European Community Finance PLO Broadcasts

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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September 15, 1997

I am a daughter of Palestine….

Koran in my right hand, in my left — a knife.

A slightly older girl with her ponytail wrapped in a checkered kaffiyeh gives an emotional recitation of a poem for Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat:

I am finished practicing on the submachine gun of return….

We swear to take vengeful blood from our enemies for our killed and wounded. We will board a bustling boat which will take us to Jaffa.

The girl approaches Arafat, who plants congratulatory kisses on her cheeks.

These are excerpts from children’s programs broadcast on Palestinian television, a facility funded in part by American aid. They are the basis of what might be called Exhibits A and B in a case the Israeli government is mounting against the Palestinian Authority. It says the fledgling Palestinian radio and television network is being used as a powerful propaganda tool to incite hatred against Israel.

The excerpts are from broadcasts aired before three suicide bombers killed four Israelis in Jerusalem on Thursday, but they are considered all the more incendiary by Israelis in the aftermath of the latest Islamic terror attack. The images of violence and death on the broadcasts are especially galling to many Israelis because of repeated pledges by Arafat to crack down on terrorism. After a June 30 suicide bombing of a Jerusalem market killed 15 Israelis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to jam the broadcasts. He didn’t carry out the threat, but he is expected to voice the complaint when Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright visits this week.

The Palestinian Broadcasting Corp. is a creature of the 1993 peace accords, which afforded Palestinians the first trappings of self-rule. The “Voice of Palestine” radio broadcasts began in 1994, television the following year.

The network was nurtured with about $500,000 in equipment and training from the U.S. Agency for International Development and with more than $6 million in aid from the European Union, according to network chairman Raddwan Abu Ayyash. A spokesman for the United States Information Service in Jerusalem said he could find records for only $70,000 in U.S. aid spent on training and TV cameras, but he added that the United States provided other funding for the network.

The network is based in Ramallah, a sun-bleached West Bank city that has become the de facto seat of government for the Palestinian Authority. Abu Ayyash, a prominent journalist who was jailed by the Israelis in the 1980s, denies the broadcasts incite, but concedes they relay an increasingly angry mood among Palestinians.

“I can’t put love longs and dances on television when people are being killed,” Abu Ayyash said, referring to Palestinians killed while taking part in attacks on Israeli soldiers. “Journalists have to be part of society and reflect what is happening on the ground.”

To some extent the debate over Palestinian media mirrors the larger debate about Arafat himself: The conflict between his conciliatory statements, usually in English, to diplomats, and his often incendiary speeches in Arabic to his Palestinian political constituency.

Israeli officials protested last month when Arafat embraced a Hamas leader and delivered an anti-Israeli tirade to supporters in Gaza in which he declared, “all options are open” — a clear implication that armed struggle remained a possibility.

Palestinian TV broadcasts the usual mixture of sports, movies, cartoons, talk shows and news. Most of it is not nearly as violent as, say, the police dramas on American television, but the shows do reflect a society preoccupied with war and struggle. In a show about the opening of Palestinian schools, girls in frilly white dresses were shown dancing — incongruously — with Kalashnikov rifles that they twirled like batons. In another broadcast, a schoolboy, asked what he got out of summer camp, answered: “I am defending the homeland and undergo training like army drills.”

There is a children’s quiz show about great figures in Palestinian history — many of whom are considered heroes by Palestinians, but terrorists by Israelis.

One show featured Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, a sheik who was killed by the British in 1935. The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, which has carried out many terrorist bombings in Israel, was named for Qassam.

The heroine of another episode was Delal Al-Magribi, a woman who commanded a bus hijacking near Haifa in 1978. Thirty-four Israelis and nine Palestinian commandos, Magribi among them, were killed. The quiz-show emcee referred to Magribi as “our sacred martyr.” Under the peace accords, the Palestinians were allowed to set up a police force, but not an army. But it is hard to tell the difference in some of the Palestinian footage — shot MTV-style with inspirational music accompanying shots of police marching in formation, drawing rifles and diving under burning barricades.

In one rapid and heavily edited sequence in a music video, an Israeli soldier is shown firing a gun. Then, a quick cut and a shot of a girl falling in a forest.

The television excerpts were taped and translated from Arabic by the Palestinian Media Review, a private, nonprofit organization run in part by former Israeli security specialists. English-language transcripts were shown to Abu Ayyash, who said they appeared to be accurate, but added that they represented only a few examples from hours and hours of programming.

David Bar-Illan, Netanyahu’s spokesman, says he is most distressed by the broadcasts designed to influence children. “The unfortunate thing is that it leaves very little hope for a better relationship between the two peoples… especially if children are being taught to hate Israelis,” he said.

Ghassan Khatib, an independent media analyst and head of the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, says the Palestinian programming has grown more militant since Netanyahu came to power in 1996, coinciding with the souring relationship between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership.

“I think in the beginning, when the Palestinian Authority first took over in 1994, they were speaking in a very moderate voice, avoiding anything that was very hostile or critical of Israel,” Khatib said. “Later, it changed. The mood became hostile. I don’t think the Palestinian Broadcasting Corp. is to blame. I think they are reflecting the views of official Palestinians.”

One article in the peace accords says that Israel and the Palestinian leadership must “foster mutual understanding and tolerance and shall accordingly abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda.” But exactly what constitutes incitement — and what is merely the free expression of opinion — is a matter of intense debate.

Itamar Marcus, codirector of the Palestinian Media Review, says the problem with Palestinian broadcasting lies not strictly in what is said, but in the mood created.

“It is a whole atmosphere of a nation preparing for war,” Marcus said.

Marcus is particularly critical of Palestinian TV’s habit of broadcasting maps of Palestine that include all of Israel — not just the West Bank and Gaza, the territories that Palestinians expect to make up a future Palestinian state.

“There is no sense here that they are willing to accept Israel as a neighbor,” Marcus said.

Voice of Palestine radio referred to Thursday’s suicide bombing as a “terrorist attack,” but in “occupied Jerusalem.”

Under an unusual structure, the Palestinian Broadcasting Corp. reports directly to Arafat, bypassing the Palestinian Ministry of Information. He is able to dictate its content while shaping a different message when addressing diplomats, Israel and the Western news media.

In September 1996, on the day before protests over a tunnel opening in Jerusalem’s Old City led to clashes in which 61 Palestinians and 15 Israelis died, Arafat told Palestinian police: “The believers shall fight for the cause of Allah. They shall kill and be killed…. Our blood is a small price to pay for the cause.”

Addressing a news conference as the clashes spread, he spoke of the need to “calm the situation down.”

Last month, during another widely broadcast speech delivered to the Palestinian legislative council during a visit by U.S. envoy Dennis Ross in which Arafat promised to crack down on terrorism, the Palestinian leader said: “We must confront them. We must confront them…. We must confront them in every sense of the word.”

Arafat carefully refrains from any references to “the Jews” or even to “the Israelis,” usually specifying that his anger is directed toward the Netanyahu government and often going out of his way to praise other Israelis. With some exceptions, the same applies to other senior Palestinian officials.

The Israeli government, however, has complained about the Mufti Ikrama Sabri, who in a recent Friday prayer broadcast by radio from Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, called for “Allah to take revenge on behalf of his prophet against the colonialist settlers who are sons of monkeys and pigs.”

Abu Ayyash and other broadcast officials contend that if they had the resources to carefully scrutinize Israeli television, they would find an equal or greater number of inflammatory anti-Arab statements.

“People sometimes make extreme statements, especially on our live shows. I can’t put plaster over their mouths,” Abu Ayyash said. “At times, I’ve tried to soften the mood, but if this is the way people think, these are the kinds of things they say.

“What I won’t do, though, is become a branch of Radio-Television Israel. That is what Netanyahu would like us to do and that is an occupier’s mentality,” Abu Ayyash said. “This is Voice of Palestine. We have to reflect our own culture and our own history.”

Barbara Demick is a Inquirer Staff Writer

Senior Palestinian Official Calls for Destruction of America and Labels it a Terrorist State

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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September 15, 1997

Following are excerpts from the Friday prayer sermon delivered by PA Mufti Ikrama Sabri at the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem on September 12, 1997.

Sabri’s sermon was broadcast on the Voice of Palestine, the PA’s official radio station, immediately following the 10 minute address by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Palestinians on the same station. Sabri is the official Mufti (senior Muslim cleric) of the PA, and was appointed to his position by Yasser Arafat.

“Oh Muslims, we must raise our voices against America, its ally Britain and all the infidel nations and say that Israel is stealing our land and establishing illegal settlements… Why does America support settlements in Israel? Are the settlements not terrorism? And therefore, America is the chief of the terrorists. Oh Allah, destroy America, her agents and her allies! Cast them into their own traps, and cover the White House with black!

Oh Muslims, our brothers in faith everywhere, the purpose of the American Secretary of State’s visit to Palestine is to support the Israeli position regarding deceitful security and fanatical settlements… The strategic covenant between Zionism and the Crusaders is a satanic alliance hostile to Islam and the Muslims and we expect no good from it. The Muslim masses in Palestine and the world over condemn Albright’s declarations issued today and in the past two days. The masses condemn America’s pro-Israeli stance, which demonstrates that global forces, the heretics, the terrorists and those filled with hate are forging an alliance against Islam and Muslims… Oh Allah, destroy America, her agents and allies! Allah, raise the flag of Islam over the Al-Aksa mosque, Jerusalem and Palestine… “

Two months ago, in his prayer sermon of July 11, 1997, Sabri also called for the destruction of America. Following are excerpts from his July sermon, broadcast on the Voice of Palestine:

“Oh Allah, destroy America, for she is ruled by Zionist Jews… Allah will paint the White House black! Clinton is fulfilling his reverend’s will to identify with Israel…. The Muslims say to Britain, to France and to all the infidel nations that Jerusalem is Arab. We shall not respect anyone else’s wishes regarding her. The only relevant party is the Islamic nation, which will not allow infidel nations to interfere…. The homes the Jews are building will become Arab property, with Allah’s help…. “

Allah shall take revenge on behalf of his prophet against the colonialist settlers who are sons of monkeys and pigs…. Forgive us, Muhammad, for the acts of these sons of monkeys and pigs, who sought to harm your sanctity.”

The Voice of Palestine is under the auspices of the PA’s Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC). According to the Philadelphia Inquirer (7th September, 1997), the PBC has been funded in part by the United States government.

Should a Publicly Funded Leah Rabin be Above Public Reproach?

By

David Bedein

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September 15, 1997

Under a special act of the Israeli Knesset, Leah Rabin receives public funding for travel and communications.

The time has come to introduce international public scrutiny of Leah Rabin’s use of Israel taxpayer funds.

Most recently, Leah Rabin signed a “peace declaration” with Yassir Arafat in Ramallah, which Arafat curiously refused to translate and distribute in Arabic.

Leah Rabin once again referred to Arafat as a “man of peace” while mentioning Israel’s current Prime Minister as a “man of war”.

The governor of Ramallah who hosted Leah Rabin, Mustafa Liftawi, planted a bomb in Zion Square in Jerusalem on July 5, 1975, killing thirteen people.

Lifatwi expresses no regrets.

Meanwhile, a clause inserted into the Declaration of Principles for the Oslo accords and signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat was that no one with a background in terror activity could be employed by the Palestine Authority

Asked about this Arab terrorism, Leah Rabin shrugged her shoulders and told the Times of London that “there were Jewish terrorists, too”.

It is not clear as to how seriously the Israeli public takes Leah Rabin. Perhaps that is why the Israel Labor Party Movement did not make much use of her during the 1996 electoral campaign.

However, Leah Rabin has a mesmerizing effect abroad.

In Leah Rabin’s public appearances abroad, she does not hesitate to mention that Israeli opposition leaders distributed Yitzhak Rabin’s picture in an SS Uniform, despite the fact that Leah Rabin knows that this is a lie.

Leah Rabin knows that sworn testimony at the Shamgar commission that investigated the murder of Yitzhak Rabin proved that Israel Intelligence officer, Lt. Col. Avishai Raviv, who reported directly to Rabin, was the only man who distributed the Rabin picture in the SS uniform and the only man who waved that picture in front of an Israeli TV camera.

Leah Rabin knows that sworn testimony at the Shamgar commission that investigated the murder of Yitzhak Rabin from more than twenty people showed that it was Avishai Raviv who implored Yigal Amir to kill Rabin.

Leah Rabin also knows that the Shamgar commission that investigated the murder of Yitzhak Rabin identifies Yigal Amir as an officer of Israeli intelligence.

Yet none of this makes it into Leah Rabin’s repertoire abroad, which are reported as tirades against Israel’s current government, which she consistently accuses of playing a hand in her husband’s murder.

With the approach of the New Year, the time has come to reconsider the standing of Leah Rabin, and to monitor every speech that she makes.

Is Diana a Role Model to Emulate?

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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September 15, 1997

Here are a few of the special stories you’ll find in this week’s issue of the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix…. Online!… as well as the Jewish community’s need for more positive role models like Princess Diana at http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/970912/diana.shtml.

Diana Spencer a postive role model for Jews? Hello?

What kind of Judaism do y’all practice out there in Arizona?

Let’s remember all the positive things your role model did:

She utterly failed (from her end) to keep her marriage together.
She cavorted about in public with the disreputable playboy son of a shady Arab businessman who the British government had refused for years to grant citizenship.
She abandoned her children with the father.
She dishonored her family, the Royal Family and England itself.

Diana Spencer haimish? I think the Yiddish phrase that more adequately describes her and all that surrounds here is “goyishe nachas.”

I certainly hope you don’t use this role model to teach Jewish ethics and foster Jewish continuity out there in Arizona.

Full Letter Given to US Secretary of State by American Hospitalized by Bomb Victim

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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September 15, 1997

September 9, 1997

Dear Secretary Albright,

As a United States citizen, I am deeply touched by your personal visit.

By the grace of God, I was spared death, as a nail-filled bomb pierced most of my body

With help from above, I will recover, but I am deeply troubled by what I saw.

As a yeshiva seminary student, I try to search for a deeper understanding of the events that I see.

And as I lay in a hospital bed, I also try to comprehend the ongoing political process.

I am deeply troubled by what I see. In December of 1992, the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin expelled 400 Hamas members from the country. Yet after intense US state department pressure, the Israel government gave in, and allowed these terrorists to return to the country. That mistake has cost hundreds of lives. I almost paid for this blunder with my life.

Secretary Albright, please do not be fooled and deceived any more. Yassir Arafat has embraced and armed Hamas leaders and has embraced their policies. It has been exactly four years since Arafat signed the Oslo accords at the White House, promising that the PLO would revoke the covenant to destroy Israel. After fours years it remains just that; a promise.

Enough is enough. Secretary Albright, precious lives are at stake. The policies that you choose are crucial. The decision not to stand up to Hamas four years ago almost cost me my life, while claiming the lives of over 300 terror victims. Your decision to stand up to Arafat could save lives tomorrow. Please do the right thing.

Respectively Yours,

Daniel Miller, age 19, student studying in Jerusalem from Miami, Fla
Orthopedic Recovery Ward
Hadassah Hospital
Jerusalem, Israel

Israel Behind the News

Palestinian Anti-Semitism

The Vatican’s Jerusalem Agenda

Ras el Amud: Analysis

The Crisis of Confidence in the Peace Process

Philadelphia Inquirer: Poster Child of Peace is Terror Victim

Philadelphia Inquirer: U.S. Government and European Community Finance PLO Broadcasts

Senior Palestinian Official Calls for Destruction of America and Labels it a Terrorist State

Should a Publicly Funded Leah Rabin be Above Public Reproach?

Is Diana a Role Model to Emulate?

Full Letter Given to US Secretary of State by American Hospitalized by Bomb Victim

Column from the Director