Hamodia praises PMW for exposing PA antisemitism

Headline: Credit Where It’s Due

Israel’s announcement in June of plans to build 770 apartments in Gilo, a neighborhood in Yerushalayim, prompted a particularly harsh State Department response. Spokesman John Kirby accused Israel — which was building in an area that will remain part of Israel under any conceivable peace agreement — of “continuing this pattern of provocative and counterproductive action, which raises serious questions about its ultimate commitment to a peaceful, negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”

No such condemnations were issued in the direction of the Palestinians for refusing to come to the peace table, for inciting their young to kill Jews, for rewriting history in a way that erases any Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael. Until now.

In its just-released annual report on religious freedom, the State Department cited the Palestinian Authority’s official media for presenting anti-Semitic material. The report indicated that PA programming “carried religiously intolerant material” that “denied a historical Jewish presence in Yerushalayim” or referred to Jews as “evil.”

(True to form, on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, declared that the entire city belongs to Islam and the Arabs, and must be defended against the Jews.)

To the uninitiated, the State Department’s conclusion might not appear like much of a revelation. After all, thanks to organizations like Itamar Marcus’ Palestinian Media Watch, we’ve seen endless films of three- or four-year-old children holding knives, making stabbing motions in the air and cursing Jews, to the cheers of their doting parents and teachers.

We’ve seen the Palestinian school texts that have erased Israel from the maps, the imams ranting and raving from the pulpit about the need to kill Jews, and the anti-Semitic programming on PA communication outlets.