Prime-time hate from Arafat TV: Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is producing slick music videos and other agitprop that encourages Arab children and teens to become martyrs and kill Jews

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 24, 2002 | by Kenneth R. Timmerman

The five-minute video clip could have been produced by Jennifer Lopez to the music of Pink Floyd. It is professional, dreamy and haunting. It begins with a handsome young schoolboy writing a farewell letter to his parents. In this pop saga the boy goes off on a "mission" in which he dies, and his farewell letter is handed to his father, who tears his hair at the news. Scenes of the boy's last day scroll across the screen as an enchanting male voice puts the words of his letter to a haunting melody. "Do not be sad, my dear, and do not cry over my parting. Oh, my dear father; how sweet is Shahada [martyrdom]. How sweet is Shahada when I embrace you, oh my land."

In the video the boy embraces the ground with his arms stretched out as upon a cross. His death is gentle, innocent, heroic--not at all the brutal dismemberment that awaits suicide bombers. "Mother, my most dear, be joyous over my blood," he sings. "And do not cry for me."

That same line, "Mother, do not cry for me," has appeared in at least three farewell letters from 14- to 17-year-old Palestinians who have carried out suicide bombings since the film clip first aired on Palestinian television in May 2001, says Itamar Marcus, an Israeli researcher who unearthed the music videos. Yasser Arafat's official TV station broadcast the dreamy clip virtually every day for more than a year in a clear effort to incite children to murder/suicide. It aired between cartoons, after school and in the early evening between regularly scheduled programs. Marcus plans to play these clips to a congressional committee later this month and is urging the United States to pressure the Palestinian leader to stop the deadly propaganda.

"For the six years we'd been following PA [Palestinian Authority] TV, we'd seen on average 15 minutes of violent, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic video clips, interspersed between regular programming throughout the day," Marcus tells INSIGHT in Jerusalem. "Suddenly, in the summer of 2000, it went up to two hours per day, just as [former Israeli prime minister Ehud] Barak was getting ready to give away 98 percent of the territory the PA wanted at Camp David."

In the beginning, the violent trailers mostly were composed of old news footage edited to glamorize suicide bombings and to call people to the streets. But soon, professional filmmakers were called in to take advantage of their special skills.

Twelve-year-old Mohammad al-Dura is the most famous Palestinian "martyr." Images captured live by a Palestinian film crew and broadcast by French state-owned television on Oct. 2, 2000, show the boy shot to death in his father's arms, presumably by Israeli soldiers. Now he has become the posthumous star of a five-minute film clip produced and edited by Arafat's official state-owned TV. The opening screen is a handwritten message "signed" by the young Mohammad: "I am waving to you not to say goodbye, but to say, follow me." A child actor depicts the death of the young Mohammad, said to have been "massacred" by Israeli soldiers, then portrays him in paradise, riding on a Ferris wheel, flying a kite and playing on the beach. A haunting lyric accompanies these pictures, With lines including the following: "How sweet is .the fragrance of the Shahids. How sweet is the scent of the earth, its thirst quenched by the gush of blood flowing from the youthful body." Then the vocalist does repeats with a choir:

Vocalist: "Oh father; till we meet. Oh father; till we meet. I shall-go with no fear, no tears. How sweet is the fragrance of the Shahids."

Choir: "How sweet is the fragrance of the Shahids."

The controversy over whose bullets actually killed Mohammad al-Dura remains. The Western media, led by the French News Agency and French A2 television, still insist that he was killed by Israelis. But an investigation by the Israeli army raised serious doubts, since Israeli soldiers would have had to shoot around a corner to hit him.

"These are the most evil films we ever saw," Marcus tells INSIGHT as he plays a selection of these video clips, with English subtitles provided by his Palestinian Media Watch.

One of the many myths spread by leftwing academics and apologists for terrorism is that suicide bombers come from poor families where "hopelessness" drives them to despair and suicide. But, ever since Israel and the Clinton administration brought Arafat to Gaza in July 1994, he has been fostering hatred of Jews and promoting the cult of martyrdom through the schools, the mosques and the state-owned media. In eight years, the virus has infected all sectors of Palestinian society.

"The new role model for young Palestinian women is Wafa Idriss, the first female suicide bomber," Marcus says. Idriss blew herself up in Jerusalem on Jan. 27, 2002, killing an 81-year-old Israeli man and wounding 150 others, four seriously. "We're beginning to see her name pop up everywhere," Marcus says. "There's the Wafa Idriss course in human rights and democracy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. There are Wafa Idriss schools run by the United Nations. It's incredible."