On Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 8, 2002, PMW Director Itamar Marcus was interviewed on Israel Radio’s “Reshet Bet” about Palestinian anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Reshet Bet is Israel’s most listened-to radio station, capturing over 34% of the radio listening public, over one million listeners, daily.

The Interview:
EK Hello, Itamar Marcus, Director of the research institute Palestinian Media Watch.

IM Good evening.
EK Can you point out for us trends of negative attitudes towards our very existence here?

IM We have noted in the last five years that in the Palestinian world there is not only a rejection of our existence here, but a rejection of Jews because they are Jews, everywhere in the world. It is not only anti-Zionism, but also classic anti-Semitism with all the horrific elements we have known in the past. The Jew is evil in his very essence, he is the enemy of God, and even - there is a lot of this lately - a Moslem religious obligation to murder Jews.

Beyond that, they stress repeatedly that Redemption, what they call “The Hour”, or Resurrection Day, will not arrive until the Moslem kills the Jew, and the Jew will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rock or the tree will say “servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come kill him!”

Now, although this source is more than a thousand years old, the Palestinians are applying it as obligatory today. It has been broadcast at least 10 maybe 15 times and we´ve seen it in writing. Today the PA teaches that it is the obligation of every Moslem to kill a Jew anywhere he may be. This is not a question of borders, and not a question of politics. Kill the Jew because he is a Jew, because Allah demands it.

EK Does this concept interlace throughout all Arab countries?

IM There are various aspects to the Arab anti-Semitism. The first, that Jews are inherently evil, is in all the countries. The second, that the Jew is a threat, a danger, is in all of them, as well. What is more openly stressed among the Palestinians is the third facet, that they are commanded to kill Jews everywhere. The Arab states, on the whole, focus on rejection of Israel as a state and rejection of Jews. What the Palestinians have added is the element of the obligation to kill Jews everywhere.

EK So we´re talking, I guess, about Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia; right?
IM Yes.Recently a Saudi newspaper published an ominous libel.
EK About the Purim pastries, the Homentaschen.

IM Yes, the Homentaschen. But you should listen to the language to appreciate just how vicious it is. “This holiday, Purim, requires of the Jewish nation to provide human blood so that the men of that faith can prepare the needs of the holiday. The fact that the Jews bleed humans in order to carry out the act is well-based in history, that is the reason that they were oppressed and ostracized in Europe and Asia throughout the ages…”

In other words -the Arabs are blaming Jews´ eveil for historical anti- Semitism. We are to blame because it is we use the blood of the non- Jews t… The article cxontinues:

“The victim must be a young, but mature, Christian or Moslem. His blood is taken and dried to become a powder” You can see, this is not a general accusation, it is a detailed libel.

EK They apologized for it.

IM Yes, they apologized for it. But the fact is that were it not publicized, they would not have retracted it.. We´ve seen more disturbing things. I commented earlier on the obligation to murder Jews. Let me just read something that will show how serious it is. Here is a preacher, Dr. Youssuf Halabiyeh, who is a member of the Palestinian Sharia [Islamic Law] Rulings Council, who appears frequently on TV as a senior official, a man who determines religious law. He said: “Have no mercy for the Jews any place, in any land. Fight them wherever you are. Everywhere you find them, kill them. Kill the Jews and the Americans who are their like. The Jews understand only force. Have no mercy on the Jews.” And this is not the only example among many.

EK Yes. We are talking about the official government press in all these states. Is there any independent press?

IM In the PA there is some private press, but even that is controlled.

There are also assaults on Jewish tradition, not only on Jews. They say that all the evil of the Jews comes from our traditions. Again, I will give you an example. Let’s look at an article by a senior authority, the Dean of History in a universitity.

He writes: “The commandments of their Torah or their Talmud say that we are goyim, that is, non-Jews, [the Jews] view those who are not Jewish as savages or as their servants. They [non-Jews] have not a single human right and it is permissible to destroy them. It is permissible to kill them.”

They say this and repeat it incessantly: all the evil that emanates from us comes from the Torah, the Talmud or from our very nature. Again, it has nothing to do with politics. It is a matter of essence and it breeds a deep-seated hatred in Palestinians.

EK We´re talking about articles, cartoons.

IM Yes. We appear in cartoons as various types of monsters. For example, they chose the last day of the previous century to run a caricature of an elderly Palestinian labeled “the twentieth century” standing, speaking to a young Palestinian, “the twenty-first century”. In between the two is a Jewish midget. He is ugly, his bloated face gives him an inhuman look. The elder, experienced man points to the monster and says “this was the disease of the century”. This Jew with a kippa on his head and a Star of David is the disease of the century.

EK It is Holocaust Memorial Day Eve. Do we find denial of the Holocaust, and Nazi themes, in the Palestinian Arabic press?

IM On the one hand, they deny that there was a Holocaust. On the other hand, they say that the Jews are now doing what was done unto them in the Holocaust. Yet another angle: a Ramallah book wholesaler published its bestseller list and the number six bestseller was Hitler’s Mein Kampf. So there is quite a bit of interest. When a society teaches that you are obligated to kill Jews as an ideal, there is going to be interest in Nazism. But as a rule, they deny the Holocaust. I´ll give an example, an article that appeared in the official paper last year. “In his recently published book on the Holocaust, an American researcher scientifically and chemically proves that the figure of six million Jews burnt in the Nazi camps is a lie, a figure fabricated for propaganda purpose. The chambers in the camp were not big enough to accommodate even 1% of the numbers discussed.” The article goes on and asks: “Has the hen that lays golden eggs for the Jews everywhere not reached its expiration date?”

This is their attitude. We, in our evilness, invented the story of the Holocaust, for the purpose of monetary gain, and the hen laying golden eggs profits us financially and profits us politically. We stole “Palestine”, they teach as a result of the “myth of the Holocaust”. Everything that happens, even the Holocaust, is turned, in their hands, into a tool to vilify the Jews.

EK Itamar Marcus, thank you. (PMW.ORG.IL 04/15/02)