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| Palestinian girls pose in front of Dalal Mughabi Center named after a mass murderer |
For the past two years, the PA's official Wafa news agency has had a regular weekly feature where it says it "monitors incitement and racism in the Israeli media." This is their response to groups like MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch that expose hate and antisemitism in Palestinian and Arabic media.
The results are often comical.
This week, it is claiming that a column by Yoram Ettinger in Israel Hayom is racist and inciting hate. According to its own translation, here is what Ettinger says:
Journalist Yoram Ettinger, in an article published in the Israel Hayom newspaper, said: "Palestinian terrorists are, above all, graduates of the Palestinian education system in nurseries, schools and mosques. This body is governed by the PLO, which refines the opinion of Palestinian society." The Palestinian Authority hides these principles and actions behind the mask of gentle and friendly rhetoric, to delude Israel and the Western world to believe that they support peace and coexistence, but hate education on the one hand, and coexistence for peace, on the other, are contradictions that refute the approach that claims that a Palestinian state is part of the solution to the conflict. "
Is there anything the least but incorrect in this?
However, when the PLO is looking for "incitement" they are doing it through the lens of their own honor/shame dynamic.
The Israeli monitor groups are looking through the lens of honesty. They mean to expose the hate that the Palestinians still say to each other in Arabic.
To the PLO, exposing its own hate is considered "incitement" because these are things that should remain hidden - they are shameful, and the exposure itself is considered hate and incitement!
The PLO is complaining not that the Israeli media is wrong, but that it is showing the truth that they want to remain hidden. Under honor/shame, such exposures do not prompt them to examine their own actions but to lash out at the people who expose them. Self-reflection and the desire to improve themselves have a low priority when the first and often only instinct is to hide their indefensible actions from the rest of the world.