Given the propaganda that comes out of the supporters of Hamas, it’s no wonder that peace in the Middle East is more an idea than a reality:
GAZA — In the Katib Wilayat mosque one recent Friday, the imam was discussing the wiliness of the Jew.
“Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas told the faithful. “They have been traitors to all agreements — go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us.”
At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the “Crusaders,” or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as “the brothers of apes and pigs,” while the Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war until Palestine is free of Jewish control.
Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the United States; its children’s programs praise “martyrdom,” teach what it calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over Palestinian land, meaning any part of the state of Israel.
Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan. While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.
Since Hamas took over Gaza last June, routing Fatah, Hamas sermons and media reports preaching violence and hatred have become more pervasive, extreme and sophisticated, on the model of Hezbollah and its television station Al Manar, in Lebanon.
And what they are telling the adults is bad, what’s even worse is what they are teaching the children:
Another children’s program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” has become infamous for its puppet characters — a kind of Mickey Mouse, a bee and a rabbit — who speak, like Assud the rabbit, of conquering the Jews to the young hostess, Saraa Barhoum, 11. “We will liberate Al Aksa mosque from the Zionists’ filth,” Assud said recently. “We will liberate Jaffa and Acre,” cities now in Israel proper. “We will liberate the whole homeland.”
The mouse, Farfour, was murdered by an Israeli interrogator and replaced by Nahoul, the bee, who died “a martyr’s death” from lack of health care because of Gaza’s closed borders. He has been supplanted by Assud, the rabbit, who vows “to get rid of the Jews, God willing, and I will eat them up, God willing.”
When Assud first made his appearance, he said to Saraa: “We are all martyrdom-seekers, are we not, Saraa?” She responded: “Of course we are. We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our homeland. We will sacrifice our souls and everything we own for the homeland.”
When this is how you are educating the next generation of Palestinians, how can we assume anything other than that you are preparing them for yet another war ?
April 1st, 2008 at 9:21 am
Tenth Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly on the Item”Illegal Israeli Actions in the Occupied East Jerusalem and the Rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, 7 April 2002
……..Mr. President,
The Security Council has passed a number of important resolutions on Palestine. Two of these resolutions, 1402 and 1403, call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian territory without delay. However, Israel has yet to withdraw its forces from Palestine. Instead, the Israeli army has invaded more Palestinian towns. Resolution 1405 welcomed the Secretary-General’s initiative to send a fact-finding mission to investigate the events in Jenin. But after many days of prevarication and obstruction, Israel eventually forced the Secretary-General to disband his high-profile fact-finding team. The problem is that the Security Council still does not seem to know what to do when the Israeli Government chooses to ignore the Security Council’s authority.
To people throughout the world it makes little difference whether the Security Council has met virtually everyday on Palestine or whether the Security Council authorised, mandated or merely welcomed the deployment of the fact-finding team. The point is that the Security Council unanimously agreed that it is in the best interest of both parties, the Israelis and the Palestinians, and indeed the entire international community, that the truth behind the events in Jenin be established. The accusations, suspicions and controversy behind what actually happened in Jenin have not died down, nor are they likely to do so. As the Secretary-General said in his letter to the President of the Security Council on the disbanding of the Jenin fact-finding team dated 1 May 2002, “I regret being unable to provide the information requested by the Council in resolution 1405, and especially that the long shadow cast by recent events in the Jenin refugee camp will remain in the absence of such a fact-finding exercise”.
Through its own actions, the Israeli Government has led us to the perception that the truth is something that they would wish to hide. But as we all know, the truth will ultimately prevail.
Mr. President,
The people of Palestine look to the General Assembly as their last recourse. Every Member State has an obligation to take a stand on the crisis in the Middle East. This is no time for moral ambivalence and double standards. The time has come to allow the wider international community to articulate its views and to send a clear and unambiguous message to the Government of Israel that international law and human rights are non-negotiable. This resolution before you seeks to do precisely that. We wish to leave the Government of Israel in no doubt that its recent military incursions far exceeded the boundaries of the right to self-defence.
Furthermore, we want it to be known that Israel’s actions cannot be justified on the grounds of counter-terrorism. Combating terrorism does not license any State to disregard international laws and humanitarian norms. There can be no valid comparison drawn between the fight against international terrorism and fighting against the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people to end foreign occupation…………………..
http://www.nam.gov.za/media/020705is.htm