Unraveling the origins: PMW explains the motivation behind PA Antisemitism
By Alan Rosenbaum
While the Abraham Accords have led to many peaceful exchanges and a lessening of antisemitism, within the Palestinian Authority, the scourge of antisemitism is flourishing unabated... What are the root causes of antisemitism in Palestinian society, and how does it impact prospects for Middle East peace and coexistence?...
Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the Palestinian Authority (PA)... Marcus, who has worked tirelessly to show how the PA names schools, sporting events, and streets after terrorist murders, and has revealed the hate and terror promotion in the PA’s schoolbooks, says that the Palestinian Authority needs antisemitism to justify its entire ideology and identity. “Their identity says that the Palestinians have a 5,000-year history in Palestine and the Jews have no history here. They have to explain to their people why the Jews would leave their comfortable homes in America or Europe and come here, if they had no previous history in Israel.” Marcus explains that the Palestinians have concocted a wild theory that the Europeans invented Zionism to rid Europe of its Jewish population. In their view, everyone hates the Jews, and the Palestinians hate the Jews for the same reasons.
Denying Israel’s right to exist, says Marcus, is what gives the Palestinians the right to exist. “This has been a fundamental belief of theirs, and that’s why it will not disappear. For them to say that the Jews are not evil and hated by humanity, undermines their whole essence,” he says.
Marcus points out that the PA added religious hatred to its potent antisemitic mix. “When the PLO was founded in 1965, its first charter was completely secular. It discussed a secular state that would be part of the Arab world. Only later, Yasser Arafat understood that you could motivate people to hate by defining the Jews as enemies of Allah and Mohammed. He initiated it as a means to bring hatred to Israelis and was successful.”
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