PMW’s Itamar Marcus told EU MPs that they funded the education that led to the Oct 7 terror [Israeli Weekly, Makor Rishon]

• “A tense silence prevailed in the European Parliament hall in Strasbourg when Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) Director Itamar Marcus presented to those present how the European Union’s (EU) tax money is used to encourage terror".
   
• “The terror attacks are a direct result of a PA educational agenda that is funded by European money, which built and shaped the generation that fulfilled it in practice [on Oct. 7].”

The following is the opening of the article in the Israeli weekly Makor Rishon, describing Itamar Marcus’ presentation to EU members of parliament at a conference. Marcus told the EU MPs that PMW had warned them for decades about the hate-filled, terror-promoting Palestinian educational materials that they were funding. It was this PA terror environment that brought about both the Oct. 7 atrocities, and the 98% of Palestinians who are “proud” of the slaughter. 

To see the full presentation click here.

“A tense silence prevailed in the European Parliament hall in Strasbourg when Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) Director Itamar Marcus presented to those present how the European Union’s (EU) tax money is used to encourage terror.

Appearing on the screen were videos from the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) summer camps, in which youth were seen training to shoot an abducted and handcuffed man. Afterwards, the atrocities of Oct. 7 were broadcast on the screen, and the connection between the videos was clear. The terror attacks are a direct result of a PA educational agenda that is funded by European money, which built and shaped the generation that fulfilled it in practice [on Oct. 7].

This was just one of the shocking messages that came up in the conference on the fight against Antisemitism through education and schoolbooks, which was initiated by the Action and Protection League (APL). ‘We have been researching the Palestinian media for more than 20 years,’ says Marcus. ‘We follow their Twitter and Facebook, and as well as their educational activities such as summer camps. There we see how the Palestinian child is educated to think that the Jew and the Israeli are the embodiment of evil in the world.’

According to Marcus, the idea that the PA is better than Hamas is a false belief. ‘The PA is the source of the problem. It publicized the topics that were to be preached in the Friday sermons two weeks after Oct 7, in all the PA mosques, and one of the instructions was to cite the tree and rock Hadith, which speaks about how in the future the Muslims will kill the Jews who will hide behind trees and stones. This is a message of genocide, and it told Palestinians that they saw the massacre not as a nationalist act, but as a religious act.’

Marcus employes cyber researchers who monitor more than 100 Telegram channels of Hamas and Fatah.

‘Ninety-eight percent of the Palestinian residents are proud of the massacre,’ he explains, and notes that this is not a new phenomenon. ‘In 2011 we exposed that the PA pays salaries to terrorist prisoners,’ says Marcus. ‘No one knew that – not in Israel and not in the world. Two months later in the US Congress and in European Parliaments, I challenged it at the parliamentary representatives: “Look where your money is going. You pay $350 million per year to salaries for prisoners and “Martyrs’” families.” They were in shock.’

[Question:] What can be done against the data you are presenting?

‘The problem is the PA,’ answers Marcus. ‘At the conference I presented a video in which [PA Chairman] Mahmoud Abbas ‘Abu Mazen’ is seen calling on the phone the murderers of [Israeli] soldier Avraham Bromberg in the 1980s, after they were released from prison [in January 2023], and he told them: “You are symbols, you are an models for the PA.” We have ample evidence that Mahmoud Abbas and his advisors are encouraging Antisemitism. All of them should be in prison. And when we find evidence in the schoolbooks of antisemitic material, we can exert pressure on the Palestinian minister of education through European states that are funding the PA.’”

[Makor Rishon, Israeli weekly, Nov. 24, 2023]