[{"author":[{"about":"","name":{"he":"","en":"barbara demick"},"id":7,"citeName":{"he":"","en":"Demick, B."}}],"tagIds":["190","193","1035","1036","1037","1045","1329"],"date":{"type":"firestore/timestamp/1.0","seconds":1027123200,"nanoseconds":0},"lang":"en","authorId":[7],"tags":[],"indexId":"index1","contentType":"Article","id":216,"title":"'Martyrdom' Dreams Take Root Early in the West Bank (excerpts)","imageUrl":"","published":true,"description":"The Los Angeles Times commented on the release of a PMW report. Importantly, The LA Times' Barbara Demick pointed out that Palestinian officials condemn suicide bombings because they do not advance the Palestinian cause (but not because they are immoral).","news":false,"content":"JERUSALEM – A winsome 11-year-old girl smiles shyly at a talk-show moderator and answers questions about her ambitions.
\n“Martyrdom is a beautiful thing. Everyone longs for martyrdom,” the girl says. “What could be better than going to paradise?”
\nThe show aired early last month on the official television station of the Palestinian Authority and is just one example of how thoroughly the concept of the martyr has infused Palestinian culture and the official media. Suicide bombers are celebrated in television programming, popular music, religious sermons and textbooks. A poem in a seventh-grade reading book says, “I see my death, but I hasten my steps toward it.” The unlined faces of the latest “martyrs” smile with childish innocence from posters plastered on the walls of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
\nA furor erupted last month when the Israeli army released a photograph, seized during a West Bank raid, of a Palestinian infant dressed in the outfit of a suicide bomber, with a red scarf around his head and a belt of fake explosives around his waist. Although a relative dismissed it as a gag photograph snapped at a family party, the “baby bomber,” as he was dubbed by the Israeli media, struck Israelis as proof positive of a deadly craze…
\nMany Israelis charge that the Palestinian leadership under Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat has deliberately cultivated the culture of the martyr in an attempt to recruit children as terrorists. Two polls published last month show that more than 60% of Palestinians support suicide bombings within Israel. But many are also concerned about the phenomenon and its impact on their children.
\n“I am afraid to let my son watch television,” said a Palestinian translator, who asked not to be quoted by name. “My son is only 4 years old. All the time, he used to say that he wants to be a journalist when he grows up. His grandfather – he is a cardiologist – keeps saying, no, he should be a doctor. We were joking with him a few days ago, asking which will it be? And he says, ‘I want to be a shahid [a martyr].’ … I really went nuts. I couldn’t believe it.”
\nPalestinian Media Watch, an Israeli group that scans the Arab media for examples of incitement, is releasing a report accusing the Palestinian Authority of using ancient religious concepts of human sacrifice for political purposes. Among the examples was the talk show “Letters From Our People,” which aired last month on the authority’s Palestinian Broadcasting Corp. The show featured Palestinian youths, ranging in age from 11 to 19, who were discussing suicide bombing.
\nAccording to a transcript released by the group, 11-year-old Wala is asked by a moderator, “What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people or martyrdom?”
\n“Martyrdom,” the girl replies.
\n“Of course martyrdom is better,” Yussra, 11, adds. “We don’t want this world, we want the afterlife… Every Palestinian child … says, ‘O Lord, I would like to become a shahid.’
\nPalestinian television also aired a provocative Islamic sermon in March, shortly before a deadly wave of bombings. “We must yearn for martyrdom and request it from God,” declared cleric Ahmed Abdul Razek. “God planted within our youth the love of jihad [holy struggle], the love of martyrdom. Our youth have turned into bombs. They blow themselves up day and night.”
\nItamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, said the broadcasts go a long way toward explaining how it is that so many youths have volunteered to become suicide bombers. “There is no doubt that the people who carry out suicide bombings believe they are doing what is expected of them by their society and their God. It is what they are taught by Palestinian television. They are brainwashed. They need deprogramming of the most urgent nature,” Marcus said…
\nIsraelis have frequently complained about the Palestinian media. In October 2000, a few weeks into the wave of violence that has engulfed the region for nearly 22 months, one of the first targets of Israeli bombing was the main broadcasting tower for the West Bank. The Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., which was briefly off the air, has since moved its operations to the Gaza Strip.
\n…Mutasem abu Ajamiyya, 9, spoke with a seriousness that made it seem entirely plausible that he would carry out his ambition. “I want to become a suicide bomber. I want to kill as many of them as possible. I will go to the bus station and explode myself in front of them,” Mutasem said, adding that he has not told his parents of his plans. “This is my wish. I will keep it to myself until I grow up.”
\nAmong Palestinian adults, the debate over suicide bombings focuses not on ethics but on the effectiveness of this type of “military operation.” They rarely use the term “suicide bombing.”
\n“These operations do not help our national plan for freedom and independence. On the contrary, they strengthen the enemies of peace and give pretexts to the aggressive government of [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon to pursue his furious war against our people,” read an open letter that was published last month in the Jerusalem newspaper Al Quds with the signatures of 55 prominent Palestinians.
\n…Over the last two years, Israel has counted 91 Palestinian suicide bombers and says it has captured 42 would-be bombers. The youngest one taken was 14. Israeli military intelligence believes that there is a virtually unlimited pool of Palestinians ready to sacrifice their lives.
\nIn April, the Israeli army seized a videotape in Nablus that contains a nearly three-hour lesson on making a suicide bomb. In the highly technical tape, a masked instructor demonstrates how to construct a belt of explosives and lectures on the best place to stand on a bus to cause the maximum casualties…”","thumbnail":""},{"content":"JERUSALEM - The television set is turned on 24 hours a day, the videocassette recorder quietly blinking beside it. Inside a nondescript office building topped with a high-powered antenna, every word uttered by Palestinian television is captured and parsed by a team of former Israeli army intelligence translators.
\nThose who monitor Palestinian television claim they can predict whether there will be bloodshed on the street simply by the rhetoric of the official Palestinian media.
\n“What is important is what they say in Arabic to their own people,” said Itamar Marcus, who started the service known as Palestinian Media Watch five years ago.
\nIn mid-September, two weeks before violence convulsed the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Marcus saw trouble ahead, based on the appearance of MTV-style clips on Palestinian television showing youths throwing rocks of Israelis and crowds marching to martial music.
\nWords are key in the Middle conflict.
\nThere are fighting words; and there are conciliatory words; and sometimes the difference between them is literally a matter of life and death. The battle over words is an indication of just how deep and ingrained is the divide between Israelis and Palestinians.
\nWords are so important that they sometimes seem to ring louder than actions. Two out of the three conditions that Ariel Sharon, the new Israeli prime minister, has set for the resumption of peace negotiations have to do purely with language. Sharon wants an end to what he calls anti-Israeli incitement in the Palestinian media and he wants Palestinian’ leader Yasir Arafat to make a statement - in Arabic- telling his people to shun violence.
\nThe Israelis were furious that Arafat, in a speech March 10 to Palestinian legislators that was the equivalent of an annual state of the nation address, did not denounce violence. They were even more enraged by an interview Arafat gave to a Saudi newspaper the same weekend calling for the struggle to continue.
\nMore outrageous, they say, is the insidious message of hatred spread by the official Palestinian media: “There is a constant barrage of brainwashing. If you do a content analysis of their media, it is worse than the Nazi propaganda,” said Ra’anan Gissin, Sharon’s spokesman. He blames the atmosphere of hatred for such violence as an attack Feb. 14, when a Palestinian bus driver mowed down a crowd of Israeli soldiers waiting at a bus stop, killing eight.
\n“You have a regular person who was not a member of any [terrorist] organization. He listened to radio and television and he went out to kill,” Gissin said.
\nA recent example cited by Israeli monitors is a movie that has aired several times in the past month on Palestinian television called Garden of Death, which depicts Israeli soldiers murdering a Palestinian family.
\nEven crossword puzzles foment hatred, according to recent report by Palestinian Media Watch. The report cited a puzzle in the newspaper Al Quds that called for the answer “treachery” to the clue, “the Jewish trait.”
\nIsraelis have fixated on Palestinian rhetoric ever since the peace accord with the Palestinians was signed on the White House lawn in 1993. Along with the other trappings of self-rule, the peace pact allowed Palestinians to set up the Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., an official television and radio network. Soon, Israeli skeptics noticed a disconnect between the Palestinian pledges of accepting Israel as a neighbor and the venom of the Palestinian media.
\nToday; at least three nonprofit organizations monitor the Palestinian media, not including that which is army.
\nIn 1998, a joint Israeli-Palestinian committee on incitement was set up under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. Uri Dan, an Israeli writer who is a close friend of Sharon’s, was named to chair the committee. Dan says that the committee held half-a-dozen meetings before if disbanded under Ehud Barak, Sharon’s predecessor as Prime Minister.
\n“Barak thought there would be an end to the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict and incitement would die naturally. Now we are dying; and incitement is alive and well,” Dan said. He expects Sharon to place more emphasis than his predecessor on the issue of incitement, and says that the topic came up last week during Sharon’s meetings in Washington.
\nMartin Indyk, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, has complained vociferously about the viciousness of the anti Israeli rhetoric by Palestinians, and, to a lesser extent, the anti-Palestinian statements by Israelis:
\n“The hate that spews forth from official Palestinian organs and stirs up the Palestinian street must be curbed,” Indyk said in a speech this month in Tel Aviv. As for Israelis, he cited calls by some right-wing settler leaders for Arafat’s assassination and references to Palestinians as “vermin”.
\nThe Palestinians were also furious when Rehavam Zeevi, the Israeli tourism minister; recently said of Arafat, “A scorpion remains a scorpion.”
\nMarwan Kanafani, an Arafat spokesman who was the Palestinian representative on the anti-incitement committee, said that Palestinians had made several complaints about Sharon in 1998 and 1999 when he was foreign minister.
\n“Mr. Sharon was the subject of most of our complaints. Every time that man opened his mouth there was a problem,” Kanafani said. Kanafani cited in particular statements Sharon made in 1998 urging Israeli settlers to “grab more hills, expand the territory.”
\nLike the Israelis, the Palestinians are obsessed with press coverage, particularly in the Israeli media. Out of an office in East Jerusalem known as the Institute for Middle East Communications, 26 interpreters - most of them Arabs with Israeli citizenship - translate the Israeli press every morning for Arafat and other Palestinian officials.
\nWhen Israelis and Palestinians quarrel about language, it is often not about name-calling or incitement, but rather about subtleties that might elude the casual observer. Statements that might seem innocent on the surface can trigger nasty disputes between Palestinians and Israelis.
\nFor example, the word settlement is the subject of much contention. While the word usually refers to Jewish developments in the West Bank and Gaza, militant Palestinians use the word for all Jewish communities - the implication being that all of Israel is an illegitimate development on Palestinian land.
\nIsraelis get extremely upset when Palestinians refer to Haifa or Jaffa as “Palestinian cities,” although they once were predominately Arab and still today have large Arab populations.
\n“In the internal Palestinian world, Israel was created in sin in 1948 and all of it belongs to Palestine,” explained Marcus, the head of Palestinian Media Watch.
\nFor their part, the Palestinians are enraged by the use of the word terrorism in the Israeli media. One side’s terrorist is the other’s freedom fighter and hero.
\nGhassan Khatib, who runs a Palestinian media translation service in Jerusalem, says that for Israelis, “no matter how many Palestinians are killed, it is self-defense, but whatever it is that harms Israelis is portrayed as terrorism.”
\nAt least in the immediate future, Khatib does not expect the Palestinians to agree to Sharon’s demands for a public renunciation of violence or for gentler media coverage.
\n“The media,” he says, “has to reflect the pulse of the street and right now the street is very angry.”","lang":"en","date":{"type":"firestore/timestamp/1.0","seconds":985564800,"nanoseconds":0},"authorId":[7],"tagIds":["190","193","1035","1036","1037","1045","1551"],"author":[{"name":{"he":"","en":"barbara demick"},"citeName":{"en":"Demick, B.","he":""},"id":7,"about":""}],"contentType":"Article","published":true,"tags":[],"indexId":"index0","imageUrl":"","title":"Volatile vocabulary of Mideast violence","description":"\"Those who monitor Palestinian television claim they can predict whether there will be bloodshed on the street simply by the rhetoric of the official Palestinian media. 'What is important is what they say in Arabic to their own people,' said Itamar Marcus, who started the service known as...\"","id":117,"news":false,"thumbnail":""}]