By Itamar Marcus, Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, February 27, 2004.
Introduction
Despite continuing United States and Western European support for Palestinian
political aspirations, the tightly-controlled official Palestinian Authority (PA)
media relentlessly incites hatred and violence against the US and the West.
A principle of PA ideology is to present the various conflicts around the world
involving Muslims and Arabs as part of a war between civilizations that the
West led by the United States is fighting against Islam and the Arab world.
They incite their people to support violence because the US “runs a dirty war
against all that is Arab and Muslim.”
As victims they, the Palestinians, will lead the war against the West. The
editor of the official PA daily, echoing Bin Laden ideology, insists there exists a
“American-European-Russian alliance”, promoting Muslim-Arab subjugation, and
that the Palestinians are at the forefront of the war that will “shake the earth
under the feet of the blood and oil sucking neo imperialists, the thieves of
natural resources murderers of nations.”
President Bush, in this global war context, is depicted not merely as a leader of
the “enemy United States”, but is the enemy of all civilization, the “Fuhrer of
the globalization era,” a greater danger than Hitler, leading the world to
destruction: “The new Fuhrer will return the world to the Stone Age,”
while Hitler only left “tens of millions of dead.”
Given this Palestinian ideological hatred against the US it is not surprising to
find active opposition to tracking down the terrorists who murdered 3
Americans diplomats in Gaza in October.
Both Arafat advisor Jibril Rajoub, and the Union of Palestinian Journalists
called the American pressure on the PA to find the killers “extortion.”
The Journalists Union even condemned a PA daily for publishing a US
State Department ad offering a reward for help in finding the terrorists. The ad
was likewise called “extortion.”
As mentioned above, this anti American hatred continues at the very time that
the US continues to give political and financial support to the PA.
Indeed, the Palestinian editor had no trouble placing the news item rejecting PA co-operation in
finding the murderers of the three Americans on the very same page as a large
ad by USAID offering scholarships to Palestinian students. The great irony is
that those three Americans murdered by Palestinians were in Gaza to grant
USAID scholarships to Palestinians.
It is significant that the PA doesn’t limit its hatred of the US to attacks on
current US policy and leaders, but teaches as a recurring theme that America is
rotten at the essence. The PA often delegitimizes America’s founding years as
the theft of land, and this week attacked the killing of “Indian children” by the
early American settlers.
The total message the PA continues to send to its people is that the US and the
West are paramount enemies of the Palestinians and the Arab world, and must
be fought.
The following are selections from articles that incite hatred and violence against
the US and the West that have appeared in recent weeks in the PA media.
1. Bush is “Fuhrer of the globalization era”
“The world stands today at the edge of a dangerous slope which threatens the
destiny of all humanity. The President of the most powerful nation in the world
suffers from megalomania and thinks he’s a prophet. He uses military force to
rearrange the world as he likes. …
No doubt that the personality of President Bush will be juicy material for
tens of psychology books, for he has many characteristics of historical figures
that left a negative impact on course of global history lead by the Fuhrer of
Germany, Adolf Hitler, and his Nazi and racist proclamations …
The Cuban President, Fidel Castro who has deep knowledge of President
Bush’s history already called him ‘Fuhrer of the globalization era or the new
world order’. But he forgot that the Fuhrer of Germany, Adolf Hitler, ruled
one state, with limited options at the stage where humanity hadn’t reached its
current level of frightening scientific and technological development.
While the ‘Fuhrer of the new world order’ received the reins of an
American empire with more than half the world’s weapons of mass destruction,
with frightening economic, financial, and technological potential. And while the
German Fuhrer’s adventure ended with tens of millions of dead and wounded,
and partial destruction of several countries this adventure of the new Fuhrer
will return the world to the Stone Age.”
2. Union of Palestinian Journalists and Jibril Rajoub: US pressure to find
murderers of Americans is “extortion”.
“The Union of Palestinian Journalists announced that it views with severity the
steps of the Palestinian newspapers, who published paid advertisement on the
fifth of this month, from the US State Department, announcing the reward of
$5 million to anyone who will bring information leading to the arrest of those
responsible for the attack …
The Union emphasized, that the advertisement is an affront
to national sovereignty, and contributed to the state of extortion and the
pressure that the US is applying against on the Palestinian Authority in this
matter.”
“The security advisor of President Yasser Arafat, Jibril Rajoub … blamed
Washington for extortion in the affair of the killing of the three Americans in
Gaza last October … :
Count Bernadot was murdered in 1948 and to this day his murderers
were not arrested and not brought to trial. Many Americans were murdered in
Iraq and Afghanistan, without locating the murderers. Israel attacked an
American ship in 1967 and those responsible were not brought to trial. Why do
the Americans insist on extorting us …?”
3. The Palestinians will “shake the earth under the feet of the blood and
oil sucking neo-imperialists – the American-European-Russian alliance”
“The right wing lobby, controls Washington and runs a dirty war
against all that is Arab and Muslim. It is a Fascist right that formed an alliance
with the Fascist Israeli Colonialists …
he American European Russian alliance is acting to empty the
International institutions, both the UN and the High Court of Justice, of their
content …
It may be that the Europeans think that the submission of the Arab
regimes turned the Arab land to wasteland and that the subdued nations won’t
act against the neo-imperialism, but they are wrong. This is because the torch
of struggle, which accompanies our nation for nearly a century against all types
of imperialism, will not be extinguished, but will
continue to lead the Arab nation and will continue to awaken the Arab nation to
shake the earth under the feet of the blood and oil sucking neo- imperialists, the
thieves of natural resources and murderers of nations.”
“ the American enemy … the Arab land, in Palestine and
Iraq in particular, will ignite under the feet of the intruders …
The political and military balance of power is not completely against the
Arabs …
There are very vulnerable spots and internal crises that the Bush Sharon
alliance suffer, and the Arab resistance is able on the various burning fronts â¦
to force this alliance to pay a dear price.”
4. “Destruction that the Americans did to Indian children”
“ the destruction that the Americans did to Indian children … we
read from time to time testimonies and documents, among them an article by a
writer from Atlantic Monthly that exposes the colonialists invasion, that
committed the white man against the children …
On the return from the mission to destroy the Indians in the year 1637
under the command of John Endicott an eyewitness describes: ‘When they saw us on their beaches they hurried to approach us in blessing and
called to us, ‘Hello’. When we reached the river the Indians soon figured out,
that we came to burn their fields and destroy them.'”
