PMW director briefs foreign ambassadors in Knesset
By Itamar Marcus & Barbara Crook

At the request of Diaspora Affairs Minister Natan Sharansky, PMW director Itamar Marcus today briefed a group of 80 ambassadors and diplomats in the Israeli Knesset about PMW´s latest report on Palestinian Authority (PA) promotion of genocide against Jews. This event comes a day after Marcus and Minister Sharansky held two joint news conferences to present the report to the Israeli and foreign media.

The report, Kill a Jew - Go To Heaven, written by Marcus and PMW associate director Barbara Crook, examines the way in which the leadership of the PA has taught, and continues to teach, an ideology of virulent hatred of Jews and Israel that mandates the killing of Jews as a religious obligation. The report documents how the PA has systematically built a three-tiered case against Jewish existence, much as a prosecutor would build a legal case in a court of law to demand a death sentence. At the briefing, Marcus presented many examples from the PA-controlled print and broadcast media, including numerous video excerpts, to show the systematic way in which this hatred of Jews is promoted by the PA´s religious, political and academic elites, and taught through cultural, educational, religious and even entertainment frameworks.

Click here to see full report on the PMW web site. www.pmw.org.il/KJGH.htm

Responding to Marcus´s presentation, Minister Sharansky said his statement to the media: "Even as the Palestinian Authority works to prevent a few hundred terrorists from attacking Jews and Israelis, it prepares hundreds of thousands more. As in Nazi Germany, there is an entire ´culture of hatred´ in Palestinian society today, from textbooks to crossword puzzles, from day camps to TV music videos and calling for the murder of Jews, as Jews, is the end result."

The following is a front-page article from the Jerusalem Post before the report was released:

Jerusalem Post Op-Ed, Jan. 25, 2004:
Sharansky: PA promotes genocide
By Hilary Leila Krieger

At a press conference timed to coincide with events marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Diaspora Affairs Minister Natan Sharansky will on Tuesday assert that the Palestinian Authority, even under new chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is engaged in the "promotion of genocide" against the Jewish people.

The "Kill a Jew - Go to Heaven" presentation, compiled by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israel-based organization that monitors incitement in Palestinian society, and distributed under Sharansky´s auspices, accuses the Palestinian media of dehumanizing Jews similar to ways the Nazis did.

A fundamental message broadcast in sermons, academic discourse and even children´s shows, according to report co-author Itamar Marcus, is that "the Jews are an evil force, and it´s inherent to the Jews, and therefore they have to be killed."

In the run-up to the PA election on January 9, Abbas met with the head of the Palestinian Broadcasting Authority and asked him to check all programs aired on PA television to prevent the broadcast of inciting material. Since then, Marcus said that nationalistic programming calling for violence against Israel has decreased somewhat, but that anti-Semitic rhetoric has remained unabated.

He pointed to January 14, when he said an imam gave a sermon declaring, "The days of the pilgrimage to Mecca remind the Muslim of the connection to his history and remind him of his past glory and the lowliness of the Jews, who today rule the world; how Muhammad expelled them from Medina in retribution for their actions and their hostility and their corruption, and not on false charges, not unjustly. No, it was retribution for their hostility toward Islam."

It is important to document this phenomenon, he said, because many people view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as centered on political issues, when the Palestinians have tied redemption to killing Jews. "It´s not connected to borders, it´s not connected to compromise, and no compromise will be reached [once] it´s a battle of God against the Jews."

"As in Nazi Germany, there is an entire ´culture of hatred´ in Palestinian society today, from textbooks to crossword puzzles, from day camps to TV music videos," Sharansky charged in a statement issued by his office ahead of the press conference. "Calling for the murder of Jews, as Jews, is the end result."

The presentation comes ahead of Israel´s National Day Against Anti- Semitism on Thursday and the same day´s ceremonies at Auschwitz. It will be made available in English as well as Hebrew to engage the international community.

"The whole world has to be aware of anti-Semitism, because it isn´t just the problem of the Jews. It´s the problem of any democratic society," a Sharansky aide said. "The world has to understand what we are dealing with. It´s not only whether there was a bombing yesterday or not. If you don´t change the atmosphere in books or on TV, it won´t be enough."

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