Want to know what the Palestinian leadership teaches its people? Ask Itamar Marcus, the American-born founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch. He was here earlier this month speaking to a small audience of Jewish Federation and Israel supporters.
Founded in 1996, Palestinian Media Watch is an Israeli research institute that studies Palestinian society from a broad range of perspectives by monitoring and analyzing the Palestinian Authority through its media and schoolbooks. PMW’s major focus is on the messages that the Palestinian leaders — from the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas — send to the population through the broad range of institutions and infrastructures they control.
“Those messages can come through sports, culture, school books, children’s programs. We study the whole range of things happening in Palestinian society in order to get a really good picture of what the leadership want the people to believe and what they expect from them in terms of action,” Marcus told The Chronicle prior to his presentation here.
He said PMW works very closely with the Israeli government — including the prime minister’s office and the Foreign Ministry.
“Aside from working with the Israeli government, we take this information to governments around the world,” he continued, explaining that among those he has met with this year include members of Congress and elected officials in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.
He squeezed in a visit to Kansas City during this trip to the U.S., his fourth this year, after Jewish Federation officials learned he might be available. He had spoken to members of the Jewish Federations’ Shorashim III men’s mission to Israel in November, and the mission participants had been very impressed with what they learned.
Marcus said he meets with “decision-makers around the world so that policy can be based on an accurate assessment of what the real issues are.”
Troubling messages
So what are the messages being sent to the Palestinian people?
“The first message is demonizing or denying the national rights of Israel. The second message is demonizing Jews and denying essentially the humanity of Jews,” Marcus said.
Marcus said a third message is linked to the first two, thus justifying violence against Jews and treating those murderers and terrorists as heroes.
“You’ll never have violence if you don’t have hatred before so the Palestinian Authority creates the hatred through these messages and then we have a situation like we have today where we have teenagers and 12-year-olds and 15-year-olds running out in the streets trying to stab Jews because since they’ve been in kindergarten they have been getting these messages.”
Marcus sites dozens of examples for each of the three messages. Examples of these Palestinian messages can be found on the website, www.palwatch.org.
One such example is that there are 25 schools named after Palestinian terrorists — three after Dalal Mugrabi, who killed 12 children and 25 adults in a terrorist attack. Salach Halach, who planned the Munich massacre of the Israeli athletes, also has three schools named after him.
“The truth is the worst terrorists have multiple schools named after them. … This is the role modeling coming from the Palestinian Authority to its people, to its children. And when children are brought up to believe that killing civilians will give you fame and glory and make you a Palestinian hero, you then have a situation like you have today where not only are adults involved in terror but teenagers who are brought up on these names, on these heroes. Being brought up with these people as your heroes is going to guarantee that teenagers are going to run out there and stab Israelis because this is what you do to become a Palestinian hero.”
Arthur Liebenthal was unfamiliar with PMW before Marcus’ visit here. He found PMW’s message extremely educational and very troubling at the same time.
“I don’t think most people understand the degree of indoctrination that these Palestinian children are getting from both these government officials and their religious leaders. It’s encouraging hatred of the Jews and destruction of Israel and basically validating that stabbing and killing is what’s expected of them. I find that extremely troubling,” Liebenthal said.
“I think it’s remarkable that Itamar is traveling around the globe speaking to different governments because I would hope that all these countries that are investing in the Palestinian territories and particularly with Abbas understand exactly what that money is being used for. I think the hope of Palestinian Media Watch is that these governments understand that their money is going for this type of indoctrination of the youth, which is just going to perpetuate this hatred of Israel and this killing of Jews for generations to come. It’s extremely disheartening and extremely troubling but it’s very important that this message get out.”
The education of peace
Marcus said PMW’s message is that for there to be peace in Israel, there has to be peace education.
“That’s why we’re the good guys because no one argues with what we are exposing. When we talk about the Palestinian children being poisoned by their leaders, we talk about the children being victims as well. We want the children to have a future — Palestinian children and Israeli children and that’s a critical message. We’re not against Palestinians. We don’t make any statements about borders and where they should be. What we do say is that the peace process has to be a real peace process. It has to be one with peace education, there has to be contacts between people to let real peace exist. That’s what we are looking for.”
PMW’s Marcus said the elected officials he speaks are not “challenging the truth of our messages.” So why are these governments still funding the Palestinian Authority?
“I always tell them you’re paying for this. Do you want to pay to have those little children learn that Jews are Satan and of course, they don’t want to. The reason they don’t (stop funding the Palestinian Authority) is that they have decided that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority is the lessor of two evils and if they don’t fund the Palestinian Authority then Hamas is going to take over,” Marcus explained.
Marcus believes the only way Palestinians will stop promoting these hate messages is if there is a short-term financial crisis “where the people get so angry they throw out their leaders. There are good people in the Palestinian Authority but none of them are within any of the political frameworks.”
Marcus said it doesn’t look like the Palestinians will be able to elect new leaders anytime soon. He cites the fact that Abbas was elected 10 years ago for a five-year term.
“He’s refused to have elections since then,” Marcus said. “People want to have freedom of expression. They want to have democracy. A poll taken two months ago found that 80 percent of the people think the government is corrupt and 65 percent want Abbas to resign.”
