PA airs ‘anti-Semitic’ film as tensions mount in Jerusalem

As tensions in Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians flared, the official Palestinian Authority TV station last week rebroadcast a film documenting the history of the Fatah movement which contains anti-Semitic messages.

The video, which was aired on November 11 amid heightened tensions between Israel and the Palestinians over the Temple Mount, demonizes Jews and says the 20th century Jewish settlement in British Mandate Palestine was a European scheme to rid the continent of them, Palestinian Media Watch reported.

The movie on the Fatah movement opens with “classic anti-Semitic demonization of Jews,” the US-based media watchdog group said when the film first aired in 2013.

“The European nations felt that they had suffered a tragedy by providing refuge for the Jews,” the film says. Referring to Medieval European kingdoms’ expulsion of Jews, the Palestinian Authority film says that “faced with the Jews’ schemes Europe could not bear their character traits, monopolies, corruption, and their control and climbing up position in government.”

“In 1290, King Edward I issued a decree banishing the Jews [from England]. Following him were France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Spain and Italy,” the video explains.

The film, which was originally broadcast to mark the 48th anniversary of the Fatah movement, adds: “Later the Jews obtained the Balfour Declaration, and Europe saw it as an ideal solution to get rid of them.”