Newt Gingrich and the Palestinian Culture of Hate

By Alan Elsner, Editor-in-Chief

Washington, Dec. 14 – Republican Presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann both raised the way Palestinians teach their children to hate Israelis and Jews in last weekend’s GOP debate. Here are some facts about this Palestinian “culture of hate.”

• Palestinian leaders continue to promote a culture of hatred against Israel. Using media, education, and cultural structures that it controls, the PA has actively promoted religious hatred, demonization, conspiracy libels, etc. These are packaged to present Israelis and Jews as endangering Palestinians, Arabs, and all humanity. This demonization goes on in violation of the Oslo II agreement and the Road Map for Peace which explicitly called for an end to incitement.
• The Palestinian Authority and the ruling Fatah Party, led by Mahmoud Abbas, name schools, summer camps and football tournaments after Palestinian terrorists while Palestinian politicians have propagated incitement over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. They also deny any Jewish historical connection to the Land of Israel or to sites holy to Jews.
• The PA presents Jews as possessing inherently evil traits. Jews are said to be treacherous, corrupt, deceitful and unfaithful by nature. Forgeries and fiction masquerading as history are used to document and support the libel that Judaism is in essence racist and evil. Jews are said to be planning and executing heinous crimes, including burning Palestinians in ovens, murder, using prisoners for Nazi-like experiments, and more.
• In many broadcasts and editorials, Jews are characterized as the descendants of apes and pigs. “Jews, Jews! Your holiday is the Holiday of the Apes, while our holiday is the Holiday of the Christ,” said the Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on April 19, 2011.
• Jews and Israel are also likened in the media to a cancerous growth. “Sixty-three years ago, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, stood at the U.N. after the entire world granted recognition to the malignant cancerous growth known as the State of Israel…” declared Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on June 3, 2011.
• Maps are often displayed on Palestinian TV and in publications without Israel. One official PA map of “Palestine,” depicting Palestinian rule over all of Israel, was used in an official PA TV public service ad that ran daily for 3 months, Oct. – Dec. 2007.
• The PA still glorifies terrorists and suicide bombers as heroes and role models. Abd Al-Baset Udeh, killer of 30 at the Passover Seder massacre in2002, had a soccer tournament for 14-year-olds named for him. Dalal Mughrabi, terrorist bus hijacker (led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history in 1978, when she and other terrorists killed 37 civilians, 12 of them children) has had summer camps, schools, graduation ceremonies and sporting events named for her, as well as many TV documentaries honoring her. Thaer Hammad, who as a lone gunman murdered 10 Israelis in 2002, was glorified by the official PA daily as “the hero of the Intifada.”
• Palestinian publications assert that there never was a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel and that all the archeological evidence has been faked.    ”They [Israelis] know for certain that our [Palestinian] roots are deeper than their false history. We, from the balcony of our home, look out over [Islamic] holiness and on sin and filth (Jews’ praying at Western Wall) in an area that used to have [Arab] people and homes. We are drawing our new maps. When they [Israelis] disappear from the picture, like a forgotten chapter in the pages of our city’s history, we will build it anew,” declared a PA documentary on the Western Wall aired in August 2011.
• Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, is decried as a colonialist plot. Abbas himself wrote research papers claiming Zionism was a European “imperialist colonialist movement.”
• Palestinian educators and officials routinely deny the Holocaust. A PA TV children’s broadcast taught that Israel burned Palestinians in ovens, and at an exhibit in Gaza children put dolls in a model oven adorned with a Star of David and a swastika. A senior Palestinian academic taught adults on PA TV: “There was no Dachau, no Auschwitz; these were disinfecting sites.” A Hamas TV documentary explained that it was Jewish leaders who planned the Holocaust, in order to eliminate Jews who were ”disabled and handicapped”.
• In 2006, the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Higher Education introduced new 12th grade schoolbooks written by Palestinian educators who were appointed by the Fatah leadership. Palestinian Media Watch reviewed these books and found that they make no attempt to educate for peace or coexistence with Israel. Instead Israel’s right to exist is adamantly denied and the Palestinian war against Israel is presented as an eternal religious battle for Islam. “Palestinian texts contain scandalous anti-Semitic pages,” said Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. “They incite young children to hate Jews not only in Israel but wherever they live. They must be denounced by all students of history.”