On PA televison, young kids incite to violence against Israelis
Encouraged by presenter of kids’ show, young Palestinians glorify weapons and death, vow to ‘take vengeance’
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
The Palestinian Authority’s official TV station broadcast a children’s program earlier this month in which small children recited poems glorifying weapons and death and celebrating the slaughter of Israelis.
In an episode of ‘The Best Home’ — broadcast on January 20 and publicized by the Israeli monitoring organization Palestinian Media Watch — a girl and a boy recited the words,
“We want to speak openly, with no hesitation and with no fear
World, hear and see, my rock has turned into an AK-47 [assault rifle],
Your words are true, Yasser Arafat
O mountain, the wind will not move you.”
On January 6, an episode of the same program featured a young boy, Muhammad, reciting a poem which read,
“Today, O our West Bank, our Gaza, raise your voice
O our land, the time has still not passed
As we expelled them from Gaza and Sderot
As we slaughtered them in your streets, Beirut
For you, Yasser Arafat, for you we shall die
After the night comes the light of day, and the fig leave will be removed…
Tomorrow we will take our vengeance, and their leader will be carried in a coffin
We, Fatah [the biggest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization], are a storm, and our blood is food for the revolution…”
The boy was congratulated by the program’s host.
Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman have repeatedly blamed incitement from the PA for fueling terrorism against Israelis.
Earlier this month, in the wake of a deadly terror attack in Jerusalem in which a Palestinian truck driver rammed his vehicle into a group of Israeli army officer cadets, killing four of them, Liberman pointed a finger at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for inciting Palestinian violence, saying attacks on Israelis were the direct result of inflammatory rhetoric ordered by Ramallah.
During a tour of a West Bank army headquarters with Netanyahu, who lambasted the Palestinian leadership for failing to condemn the lorry attack, Liberman went a step further, saying that “the worrisome thing is that terrorism and incidents in the field are the result of orders from on high — direct orders from Abbas to imams in mosques to incite [to violence].”
United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed in December after the outgoing Obama administration abstained, condemned “incitement and inflammatory rhetoric” on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In July 2016, the Middle East Quartet — which comprises the United Nations, the US, the EU and Russia — published a report criticizing Israeli settlement expansion but also slamming Palestinian incitement to violence.
In May, Abbas told Arab leaders in Cairo that PA-controlled media outlets and school programs did indeed incite against Israel but that Israel did the same against the Palestinians.
