PMW director Itamar
Marcus spoke last week to members of the Canadian Parliament and
presented a new
PMW report entitled "Canada and the
Palestinian Authority."
The report shows that the PA has misled Canada, enabling the PA to
receive Canadian funding despite its violations of explicit
Canadian conditions that it refrain from hate and terror
promotion.
The following is the
executive summary presented to MPs.
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Palestinian
Media Watch
Special Report - March 25, 2009
Canada and the
Palestinian Authority
Canada´s Foreign Policy Misled by
PA:
Canadian funding conditions consistently violated
More than a year after the Annapolis
conference,
the Palestinian Authority continues to mislead donor countries.
In English, it talks peace, but in Arabic, it:
· denies Israel´s existence
· incites hatred
· promotes terror and glorifies terrorists
By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
Executive Summary
The Annapolis Conference in November 2007 created hope for the
renewal of a peace process after years of Palestinian Authority (PA)-
supported terror. PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas assured
Israel and the world in English that there had been a sincere change.
However, in Arabic the Palestinian Authority, Fatah leaders and the
Abbas-controlled official PA media are no more peaceful towards
Israel than they were during the Arafat era. In fact, during the 12
years of PMW´s existence, there has never been a period of such
intense demonization of Israel, continuous hate promotion, terror
glorification, and open denial of Israel´s existence by the PA
(Fatah) and the Abbas-controlled media than what we have witnessed in
2008 - 2009.
Canadian Funding of the Palestinian Authority
Canada halted funding for the Palestinian Authority after the January
2006 Palestinian Authority general elections led to the formation of
a Hamas government:
"Canada became the first donor to suspend aid to the Palestinian
Authority on Wednesday, saying the new Hamas-led government had
failed to give assurances that it would recognize Israel´s right to
exist." [Reuters, March 29, 2006]
Canada reinstituted funding for the PA in July 2007 after the split
between Fatah and Hamas. On Dec. 17, 2007, at the Conference of
Donors for the Palestinian Territories, Canadian Foreign Minister
Bernier announced:
"Canada is increasing support to the peace process through additional
assistance to Palestinian reform and development... Canada will
commit $300 million over the next five years to build security,
governance and prosperity."
This commitment included a clear stipulation of specific
expectations:
"Our funding is not unconditional," said Minister Bernier... "This
contribution will be conditional on progress in negotiations and
Palestinian reforms. In every facet of our work, we will devote
special attention to the issues of hatred and incitement of
violence."
(News Release, Dec. 17, 2007 Website of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade Canada International.gc.ca)
To this day, Canada continues to fund the Palestinian Authority based
on the English- language assurances by PA leader Abbas that he
accepts Israel´s right to exist, rejects terror, and does not incite
to hatred and violence.
This report shows that in its own Arabic media,
aimed at a Palestinian audience, the Palestinian Authority violates
all these conditions.
1. Denial of Israel´s existence, calls for Israel´s
destruction:
Examples:
a. Muhammad Dahlan, a senior PA
official, stated plainly on official PA TV: " I want to say for
the thousandth time, in my own name and in the name of all of my
fellow members of the Fatah movement: We do not demand that the Hamas
movement recognize Israel. On the contrary, we demand of the Hamas
movement not to recognize Israel, because the Fatah movement does not
recognize Israel, even today." [PA TV March 17, 2009]
b. A PA TV educational geography program has been broadcast
regularly since August 2007, and most recently in January 2009,
teaching there is no Israel and all of Israel is "Palestine:"
"... another section in
Palestine ...Ashkelon in the south, until Haifa, in the Carmel
Mountains. Haifa is a well-known Palestinian port... To its north, we
find Acre. East of Acre, we reach a city with history and importance,
the city of Tiberius, near a famous lake, the lake of Tiberius
[Kinneret- Sea of Galilee]. Jaffa, an ancient coastal city, is the
bride of the sea, and Palestine´s gateway to the world."
Note that all of these are Israeli
cities, spread over the entire country.
c. Official PA schoolbooks describe a Middle East without
Israel:
"Coastal states differ in terms of
their access to water sources, such as...: states located on sea
coasts with accesses to two seas, for example: Palestine and Egypt to
the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea."
[Physical Geography and Human Geography, Grade 12, p. 105]
"Palestine has a long coast facing the Mediterranean sea and a
short coast on the Gulf of Aqaba."
[Health and Environment Studies, Grade 8 (2003), p. 130]
Note that the Israeli city of Eilat is on the Gulf of Eilat (Aqaba).
"... The Tiberias Lake [Sea of Galilee], in Palestine"
[Physical Geography, Grade 5, p. 25]
Israel is painted over in the colors of the PLO flag in PA government
Census Bureau announcements. These announcements were aired on PA TV
(Fatah) - often several times a day - during and after the Annapolis
conference at the end of 2007. Maps similar to this one continue to
appear on official web sites in 2009 [see below].
2. Hatred is actively promoted as policy for children and adults.
Hate videos, libels and lies remain a backbone of PA TV.
Examples:
a. The official PA newspaper,
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, has propogated a long-standing blood libel
against Israel, falsely accusing Israel of conducting horrific Nazi-
like medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners:
"Many of the male and female inmates received injections from
needles they had not seen before, and which caused their hair and
facial hair to fall out permanently ... others lost their sanity, or
their mental condition is constantly deteriorating... and some are
suffering from infertility." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 4, 2008]
b. Another wild accusation concerns the deployment
of "supernatural rats" against Arab residents of Jerusalem´s Old
City:
"... [Israeli] settlers have been bringing chests filled with rats
and releasing them in the Old City´s [Arab] neighborhoods... the
[Arab] residents´ efforts to counter this infestation have failed,
especially since cats run away from these rats because of their size
and ferocity... All of the conventional efforts to kill them have not
succeeded... which compels Jerusalem´s [Arabs] today to face the
dangers of settlement and the infestation of rats..." [Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida, July 18, 2008]

c. PA TV has been broadcasting a music video from 2007 to
February 2009, with the repeated refrain, "
My enemy, my enemy."
Israel is called a
"snake, coiled around the land." The
hate video denies Israel´s right to exist and anticipates Israel´s
destruction:
"You have no choice, O enemy, but to leave my
country."
3. The PA openly glorifies not only past but current terrorists,
venerating terrorist murderers - even those who have murdered since
Annapolis.
Examples:
a. The suicide terrorist in the
Israeli city of Dimona, the killer of the eight Jerusalem yeshiva
students, arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh and other terrorists were all
glorified as Palestinian heroes in official PA newspapers and
television in 2008.
b. In February 2009 the PA glorified the terrorist who murdered
three civilians and seven Israeli soldiers in a 2002 ambush. The
terrorist and his action were praised as "the hero of the
Intifada... [doing] what tens of brigades and platoons, and hundreds
of missiles and heroic stories, failed to do."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 17, 2009]
c. On March 11, 2009, PA TV broadcast a special program
commemorating and celebrating the 30th anniversary of the most deadly
terror attack ever carried out in Israel - a bus hijacking that left
37 civilians dead. The program opened with the narrator glorifying
this attack as "one of the most important and most prominent
special operations, executed by the Palestinian revolution by sea, on
the coast between Haifa and Tel Aviv. This operation, carried out by
a team of heroes and led by the heroic fighter Dalal
Mughrabi... ."
4. Far from distancing itself from earlier Arafat
ideologies, the PA leadership continues to advocate Israel´s
destruction.
Example:
PA Fatah MP: "It doesn´t mean that
we don´t want the 1948 borders [i.e. destroy Israel], but in our
current political program, we [Fatah] say we want a state on the 1967
borders..."
[PA TV Aug. 25, 2008]
Contrary to the perception that Hamas alone preaches terror,
violence and denial of Israel´s right to exist, this PMW
Special Report documents that the PA-Fatah leadership and
media promote the same message. In contrast to the moderate message
that it conveys to the English-speaking world, the Palestinian
Authority´s Arabic-language world continues to be imbued with hate
promotion and promises of Israel´s expected destruction.
Canada is directly funding
the responsible government frameworks.
The report
1. Denying Israel´s right to exist, rejecting Israel´s existence and
advocating its destruction
2. Hate promotion and demonization for children and adults - PA Hate
Media
2.1 Libels and lies
2.2 Hate through videos and demonization
3. Honoring and glorifying
terror
3.1 Murderers since Annapolis deemed
heroic
3.2 Other past terrorists - likewise
deemed heroic
3.3 PA lauds terrorist-mass murderers as heroes
4. PA Political and Religious
Leaders - hatred in Arabic
4.1 PM Mahmoud Abbas - in Arabic
4.2 Other PA political and religious
officials (MPs, party leaders, etc.)
5. Conclusions