Incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faces an alarming threat to any hope of a brokered Middle East peace. Some of the $40 million already committed to “moderate” Fatah president, Mahmoud Abbas, is feeding children a steady drumbeat of indoctrination to kill Israelis, with idealized images of virgins who await suicide bombers. Whistleblower has secured advanced copies of inflammatory videos collected from the West Bank by the private organization Palestinian Media Watch. They show what children in the schools are currently being taught in lessons and through T.V. shows. This brainwashing from “moderate” Fatah is little different from the propaganda put out by Hamas, which was condemned as a terrorist organization by the United States in 1995 and by the European Union in 2003.
In these videos, young children are taught to regard martyrdom in suicide bombing as a glorious aim.
The most upsetting 2008 clip might be that of uniformed elementary school children, enthusiastically reciting a poem for Palestinian Independence Day that ends: “I have let my land drink my blood, and I have loved the way of the shahada (martyrdom for Allah).”
In these videos, a 13-year-old child calls in and recited a poem praising Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist who killed 12 children and 25 adults in a brutal 1978 bus hijacking. “We come to finish your journey,” the child says.
A particularly insidious clip portrays the "Holocaust" as what Israel did in the past to rid themselves of the handicapped and then blamed the Nazis to gain sympathy. This theatrical video, made in 2004, suggests that Israelis are baking hundreds of Palestinian children in ovens—shocking even as a metaphor.
Another fake video copies what the Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis and suggests falsely that the Israelis are doing the same things to the Arabs.
When visiting Western countries and speaking English, Abbas is careful to strike the chord of moderation and compromise. But at home in the West Bank, talking in Arabic to his own people, he voices support for convicted terrorists now in Israeli prisons. And although he U.S. State Department has been working behind the scenes to eliminate the anti-Jewish and pro-martyr venom in Palestinian schools, Palestinian Watch compilation shows that Fatah is ignoring the State Department, offering indoctrination instead of education.
The key question for the incoming Obama administration is whether it can be a peacemaker while sending American taxpayer dollars to foment vitriolic hatred. Whistleblower asked Fatah why it incites children. A spokesman who would not be identified, said "there may be individuals acting on their own, but the Palestinian Authority cannot control every single person's behavior, just as the Israeli government cannot control the actions of every Israeli citizen." He stressed that the Palestinian Authority "does not condone any such incitement to violence". But as Palestine Watch notes all the inflammatory school videos are not from private individuals but all from TV owned and operated by Palestinian Authority.
Gerald Posner is the award-winning author of 10 best-selling books of investigative nonfiction ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism ( www.posner.com). He also has written dozens of articles for national magazines and newspapers. He is a regular contributor to NBC, CNN, CBS, and MSNBC. Posner lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.