Palestinian media continues to put out anti-Israel and anti-American messages
(JNS.org) Amid the release of a controversial study on Monday dismissing well-documented claims that Palestinian textbooks teach hatred, Palestinian media outlets continue to broadcast and print anti-Israel and anti-American messages.
Palestinian Authority TV (PA TV) last week aired a music video honoring Ibrahim Hamed (serving 54 life sentences) and Abbas Al-Sayid (serving 35 life sentences), among other terrorists. The terrorists honored in this video that was “dedicated to our brave prisoners” have killed a total of more than 100 Israeli civilians, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported. Al-Sayid was behind the 2002 Passover seder bombing in Netanya that killed 30 Israelis.
The study examined 74 Israeli and 94 Palestinian textbooks from grades 1-12 from Israeli state and ultra-Orthodox religious schools as well as schools run by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
“On both sides, the chief problem is the crime of omission. It’s the absence of a clear, outright recognition of existence and the other side’s right to exist,” said Gershon Baskin, an Israeli member of the study’s scientific advisory panel, the Associated Press reported.
Controversially, the report found little evidence for the claims made by the Israeli government and others that Palestinians glorify violence and teach hatred in their textbooks, according to the Associated Press.
The Israeli Ministry of Education dismissed the study’s findings as “biased, unprofessional and significantly lacking in objectivity” in a press statement. Meanwhile, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad welcomed the findings.
Previous reports on Palestinian textbooks contradict the study’s results. The watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch has found that Palestinian textbooks “deny Israel’s right to exist” and promote the conflict as an “eternal religious battle for Islam.”
The report did conclude that Israeli state textbooks are generally more balanced than Palestinian textbooks.
“Israeli state textbooks provided more information and less negative characterizations of the other side and more self-criticism regarding certain historical episodes than the ultra-Orthodox or Palestinian books,” the report said.
The report was commissioned by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land and was financed through a grant from the U.S. State Department.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority’s official daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, published an opinion piece that said America, in order to justify its war on terror, is behind Islamic atrocities in Arab countries.
“Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe, the United States has been striving to create a new straw man whose existence would justify all its wars, all its conspiracies and its policy of supporting oppression,” columnist Fuad Abu Hajla wrote, according to PMW.
“At that stage the Americans decided to activate their strategic allies,” according to the columnist. “They urged Islamist movements to commit atrocities that tarnished the image of Islam and Muslims in the world, and allowed Washington to replace the Soviet threat, as it were, with an imaginary Islamic threat. [Thus] began the ‘war against terrorism’ that overthrew progressive pan-Arab regimes and culminated with the conquest of Arab states.”
Ahmadinejad: Iran-Egypt relations hinge on ‘liberation of all of Palestine’
(JNS.org) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while in Egypt as the first head of state from the Islamic Republic to visit the country in more than three decades, said relations between the two nations—which have been frayed for more than three decades since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution—are “entirely possible.”
“The Egyptian leadership, however, must accept our position regarding the liberation of all of Palestine,” Ahmadenijad told the Lebanese television channel Al Mayadeen on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
The Iranian president’s comments come at a time when Egypt is led by a new president, Mohamed Morsi, who is from the Muslim Brotherhood party—the parent organization of the Iran-funded terrorist group Hamas.
In addition to his historic Egypt visit, Ahmadenijad said he would also “go ahead and visit Gaza” if he were allowed to do so.
“The land of Gaza is sacred because it is on the road to Al-Quds [Jerusalem],” Ahmadenijad said. “I hope the day of Al-Quds’ liberation comes soon, and I can go to the holy city and pray at Al-Aqsa.”
Regarding the reported Israeli airstrike on Syria last week, Ahmadinejad made his usual anti-Israel remarks.
“The Zionists attacked Syria out of weakness,” he said.
Bar Refaeli, SodaStream garner headlines for Israel with Super Bowl ads
(JNS.org) The Super Bowl commercial by the website domain company GoDaddy featuring Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli was one of the most talked-about ads following the game.
The commercial, which showed Bar Refaeli intimately kissing a portly computer nerd, promoted GoDaddy as the perfect combination between “sexy and smart.” A racier version of the ad, which reportedly took as many as 64 takes to be filmed, also appeared online.
It seems, however, that audiences were turned off by the racy ad. According to USA Today’s Ad Meter rankings of Super Bowl commercials, the Refaeli commercial came in last.
While Bar Refaeli’s ad took center stage, SodaStream made history by becoming the first Israeli company to buy a Super Bowl ad, according to the Jerusalem Post. A frequent target of the BDS (boycott, sanctions and divestment) movement, SodaStream aired a commercial featuring warehouses full of soda exploding and emphasized the environmental value of making soda at home.
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