Washington Post quotes PMW director in article about Israeli government video on PA incitement
Washington Post quotes PMW director in article about Israeli government video on PA incitement
Headline: Israel’s Netanyahu blames children’s shows for Palestinian terror
by William Booth
JERUSALEM — There’s been a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis over the last four months, violence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says is spurred by incitement from Palestinian officialdom.
The Israeli leader and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan have been showing foreign diplomats a short video of clips taken from kiddie shows, alongside speeches and interviews by Palestinian leaders, that the Israelis say is evidence the Palestinian Authority is stoking “a culture of hate.” Netanyahu said he personally showed the video posted here to Secretary of State John F. Kerry last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The two-minute video begins with a little girl on Palestinian Authority TV reciting a poem that includes the lines “my toys are the rock and the rifle,” though it does not include the later lines, “Ask not where my childhood is, for it lies buried beneath ruins and ashes.”
In another bite, kiddie TV host Walaa Battat of the show “Children’s Talk” asks a young lad what are the 1948 lands of Palestine? And he says Haifa, Jaffa, Acre and Nazareth — all cities that today are in the State of Israel. “The ’48 lands are all ours and will return to us, right?” Battat prompts the boy. [PMW bulletin: Official PA TV to kids: Israel will cease to exist]
Next up is a clip from Sept. 16 showing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas seemingly praising the recent attacks. “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem,” says the Palestinian leader to a group of activists. “This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah." [PMW bulletin: Abbas: We won't allow Jews' "filthy feet"]
Then there is an Oct. 17 interview with Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, who says, “These are individual acts of bravery, and I am proud of them. I congratulate everyone who carried them out.” [PMW bulletin: PA official on Palestinian terror attacks: They are “acts of bravery, I am proud of them”]
The sourcing for the third segment of the video is problematic. It shows children reading poems, but the camera work is amateurish. “O barbaric apes, O wretched pigs, Jerusalem is not your den,” one kid reads.
Itamar Marcus, director of the Israeli group Palestinian Media Watch, said he was sorry the prime minister used the ape poem from sources he could not identify. “It was not a great choice,” he said. “It is very frustrating for me.” The point, Marcus said, is that the incitement comes from official Palestinian sources — it is not so relevant what ordinary Palestinian kids say, but what the Palestinian Authority airs on media outlets it controls.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/25/watch-o-barbaric-apes-netanyahu-shows-kerry-video-of-palestinian-incitement/]