PLO English Spokesmen Clash With PA TV Messages

26 September, 2004

Source: PLO Media Watch

PLO English spokesman Ashrawi: "Peace with justice is a real determining factor of our lives."

PA TV sermon: "The Muslims will kill the Jews and rejoice"

While PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's chief English spokesperson, Hanan Ashrawi, speaks of peace and human rights, the Palestinian Authority television station broadcasts the opposite message to the Arab residents. Video footage released yesterday of Dr. Ashrawi addressing an overseas audience in English may be compared with two Arabic TV programs broadcast just last week on PA TV.

In honor of the International Day of Prayer for Peace, the World Council of Churches posted on its website today an eloquent video message from PA spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi, who declares, "Peace with justice is not an abstract value; it is a real determining factor of our lives. It is a most basic human right, and we appreciate everything you've done, in order not just to talk about peace with justice for Palestine and Israel, but also to act on that basis."

At the same time, a video address from the same Ramallah offices was broadcasting a very different message.Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) captured footage of two PA TV programs in three recent days showing official religious leaders openly calling for the genocide of Jews. In one of them, the televised sermon of Friday, September 10, Sheikh Ibrahim Madiras told the Arab neighbors of the Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza:

"The Prophet said: the Resurrection will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them. The Muslims will kill the Jews, rejoice [in it], rejoice in Allah's Victory. The Muslims will kill the Jews, and he [the Jew] will hide. The Prophet said: the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: O servant of Allah, o Muslim this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him! Why is there this malice? Because there are none who love the Jews on the face of the earth: not man, not rock, and not tree everything hates them. They destroy everything. They destroy the trees and destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth, and the day of our victory, Allah willing, will come."

Click here for a brief clip of the televised footage of the above sermon.

While Ashrawi speaks in English of "courage, conviction, integrity and a genuine commitment to peace with justice," Muslim religious leader Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Maadi presents the killing of Jews not merely as the will of Allah, but also as a necessary stage in history that should be carried out now. On September 12, Maadi said on his weekly PA TV show:

"We are waging this cruel war with the brothers of the monkeys and pigs, the Jews and the sons of Zion. The Jews will fight you, and you will subjugate them. Until the Jew will stand behind the tree and rock. And the tree and rock will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

Click here for a short video clip from Dr. Maadi's Sept. 12th show.

Numerous times in recent years, Arab religious leaders and academics in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority have taught publicly that the Islamic teaching calling for the murder of Jews applies today. Even Ashrawi herself, according to PMW Director Itamar Marcus,
"did not condemn in Arabic the suicide bombing that killed tens in a Jerusalem pizza shop, or the hundreds of civilians murdered on buses, in recent years. Not even once... The first public statement against suicide terrorism in Arabic was made by Ashrawi only in an open petition she signed with other Palestinians in the Al-Quds newspaper on June 19, 2002... However, even a simple reading of the petition shows that she explicitly does not reject terror as a tool when it is politically effective, but only when it causes political damage. The petition does not include a single word of condemnation of suicide terrorism, and does not rule out terrorism at times when it is an effective tool. It deals entirely with the negative political results of suicide terrorism now for her cause."

Marcus concludes: "Ashrawi is not a moderate by any Western standard. She is a slick terrorist supporter who understands the importance of public relations, proper timing and spin for terrorism."