Miftah deliberately ignored PA incitement and delegitimization - and supported terrorists as heroes

Miftah, the Palestinian Arab NGO that has published a blood libel and has extolled terrorism (but deleted the offending articles when they were made public), has another initiative that has been dormant for a few years but is still very enlightening.

It is called the Media Monitoring Unit, and its goals are set forth as:

• Monitoring Palestinian Media.

• Research and advocacy activities aiming to reduce incitement, dehumanization and delegitimization of "the other"

• Educating the public to become more critical media consumers

• Fostering professionalism in the Palestinian media

In fact, Miftah teams with an Israeli organization, Keshev, an organization that monitors Israeli media from the Left. Keshev would look for bias and anti-Arab incitement in Israeli media and Miftah's unit would purportedly look for the same in Palestinian Arab media.

Miftah's part of the initiative seems to have only been active from 2008 to 2010, and some ten  reports were written and released during that time period.

Amazingly, during those two years, Miftah could not find a single example of anti-Israel or antisemitic incitement in Palestinian Arab media. No delegitimization! No dehumanization!

While a couple of the reports would imply that newspaper use of the word "martyr" to describe suicide bombers is not strictly accurate, Miftah never said that this glorification of terrorism in the media reaches the level of incitement. Moreover, the many cases of pure antisemitism and maps that erase Israel in the print and broadcast media - well documented by Palestinian Media Watch - are uniformly ignored, by the very unit that is supposedly meant to search for it and fight against it!

If a map of "Palestine" that erases Israel is not an example of delegitimization, then what is?

The steering committee of the Media Monitoring Unit included Hanan Ashrawi and Joharah Baker.

In what can only be considered a massive waste of Western money, this unit was funded by the EU and the Ford Foundation.

Even worse, in the cases that incitement was found and publicized by Israeli sources, Miftah would tend to deny that any incitement existed, and would defend the PA's honoring of terrorists. Here is Miftah's Joharah Baker in an official Miftah editorial, "Let Us Honor Our Own":

When Palestinians named a square after Dalal Al Mughrabi, a Palestinian fighter who was killed during a military operation against Israel in 1978, Israel was up in arms, claiming the Palestinians should not be allowed to name streets or squares after “terrorists.” Israeli watchdog groups and the Israeli government play on the fact that Palestinians have named streets after Abu Jihad (Khalil Al Wazir) and Yehya Ayash. The prisoner stipends are just the latest episode in the drama.

...Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are a whole other ballgame. These men and women are not imprisoned for stealing cars, or for selling drugs. They are there because they are resisting a belligerent military occupation of their land, which has oppressed them and their people for decades. The PA’s allocations to prisoners and their families is in no way an endorsement of “terrorism and violence” but rather a means of helping mostly young men and women and their families to resume a life that has been interrupted by an occupying authority. Any other country would have done the same.

Besides, countries should not interfere in the internal affairs of others. If the Palestinians want to name a street after one of their national heroes, regardless of how this person is perceived by Israel, that is their business.

Instead of promoting peace and fighting incitement, Miftah defends incitement and supports the terrorists as national heroes. (Notice how even Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for the deaths of 13 children, is considered a heroine by Miftah.)

If Mughrabi is a national hero, then Miftah can' t be too serious about being upset that newspapers refer to terrorists as "martyrs." Indeed, their objection to that is seen to be more from the perspective of accuracy rather than incitement and nationalistic support of terrorist acts.

The media review unit seems to have run out of funding. Considering that it spent more time obfuscating Palestinian Arab incitement and dehumanizing Israelis rather than exposing it, this is probably a good thing.

When will the remaining funders of this NGO that promotes incitement against "the other" realize that their money is being used for the exact opposite of what they intended?