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Wednesday, July 31, 2019

The Palestinian media considers accurate history to be "incitement"



Every month, the official PA news agency Wafa publishes a list of what it calls "incitement and racism in the Israeli media" as a way to counteract the work of organizations like MEMRI, Palestinian Media Watch and this blog which publicize the most hateful and insane things published in Arabic language media about Jews and Israel.

Apparently, they consider anything that accurately describes history as "incitement and racism."

Their first example this month is a Hebrew op-ed by Boaz Haetzni in Israel Hayom that says:

Camp David 2000: What we learned

19 years have passed since the Camp David Conference, where former Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to give up Judea and Samaria, Gaza and East Jerusalem, including the division of the Old City. It was supposed to be the culmination of the Oslo process: a promise of a permanent peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the solemn end of the mask of Arab claims and claims against Israel. Barak was eager to sign an agreement that would save his short and tumultuous career as prime minister, for the price of a swift liquidation sale to Israel's national and security assets.

The unprecedented concession soon led to the second intifada; A war of terror throughout the country that has cost the lives of more than a thousand people. Instead of accepting the generous offer, Palestinian Authority chairman Arafat embarked on the war; just like his predecessors in 1947, following a UN resolution on the establishment of two states, Arab and Jewish, in ridiculous proportions, and without Jerusalem. The leadership of the Yishuv then said "yes", because for them it was progress. The Arabs started the war then as well, to evade, as usual, a positive response.
Is accuracy "incitement?"We know that Arafat was involved in the second intifada - paying the Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for terrorist activity, and being behind the Karine A weapons ship to smuggle in 50 tons of arms including rockets, for example.  In an honor/shame culture, indeed it is - because the Palestinians know that they look bad for refusing peace and the reminders make them feel shame.

The strange thing is that Haetzni says far more inflammatory things later on, like a quote I've never heard before from early PLO leader Ahmed Shukairy, who was well known to have said the Arabs would throw the Jews into the sea, but Haetzni also quotes him as saying "The men to the sea, the women for us." 

I cannot find any source for that quote. But the fact that the PA considers only the first two paragraphs to be incitement and not the blatantly offensive alleged quote from Shukairy tells you a lot about their own moral system.





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