Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Junior]

Ask for death" is the message that the Palestinian Authority [PA] has been conveying to its children since the start of violence in October 2000. In this video, two articulate 11-year-old girls were interviewed in the studio of official Palestinian Authority TV. Among other topics, they spoke of their personal yearning to achieve death through Shahada � Death for Allah � and of a similar desire they said exists in "every Palestinian child".


Video:

http://www.pmw.org.il/

[Big_Bird]

[thepeel]

You didn't watch the video bb. Don't comment unless you are willing to participate in the thread honestly.

[Big_Bird]

[Junior]

[Big_Bird]

I'll have to view it later, as I can not use sound here.

I think it's awful that children are taught about killing jews and that kind of stuff. But can you imagine if your nation had been under occupation for 40 years by a foreign power that regularly killed civillians including children? The children in your part of the world might grow up dreaming of killing their occupiers.

In Britain, during the Falklands war, it was common for school kids to talk about killing 'Argies.' And that was just a short and distant war which did not directly affect them.

[Adventurer]

One, Big Bird, the way Allah was used in the total shows an emphasis on the idea that Muslims worship a pagan God or also that weird idea found among some Evangelicals that Muslims worship a moon diety. Of course, millions of Christians in Middle Eastern churches called God Allah. In the Maronite Church, in Syriac, their former language, they called God - Alloho, but since they now speak Arabic they say Allah. The Chaldeans and Assyrian Christians of Iraq called God - Allaha in their Syriac dialect.

The website that Junior quoted belongs to Itmar Marcus, a right wing Israeli. He lives on land that was illegaly confiscated. So how is he in a position to speak about extremism? That is beyond me. He used to work for Benjamin Netanyahu's PR group. I saw the link. The children voiced their desire for martyrdom. The interviewer did not encourage that thinking or say he agrees with that. You can also tell that in the tone of his voice. In a society under occupation, that has as part of its religion martyrdom when faced with an enemy, that part of the enemy will be emphasized.

Certain allegations Itamar have made about the Palestinian Authority and its text books have been discredited by other Jews and Israelis. The following link shows serious historical ommissions in Palestinian text books that should be rectified for the sake of building peace, but the PA is not asking children to commit martyrdom and the text books do not call for hatred of Jews. One can find hateful quotations among members of both populations including a Sephardic Rabbi. Hatred is a problem on both sides and including among some posters.

http://www.btvshalom.org/factsheet/PalestinianTextbooks.shtml

[Adventurer]

Big bird, here is another comment about Itamar who is promoting Arab-Jewish hatred, and he is seeking, obviously, to inflame anti-Palestinian passions, so he is not interested in objective reporting like Jeff Cohen's FAIR who actually looks for fairness in reporting in the U.S., for example.
This person reports based on his agenda to demonize the PA and thus shield Israel of criticism when it comes to human rights by portraying the Palestinians to be as evil and as vile as possible. That does not serve the interests of Israelis or Arabs who need to live together.


However, among those in the U.S. and left-leaning Israeli press who've taken the time to test his claims -- in particular that Palestinian schools teach children to be martyrs -- the appraisal has been less flattering.

http://www.mideastjournal.com/israelitextbooks3.html

The New York Times sent Susan Sontag to visit a Palestinian classroom in Ramallah in September 2000, after a study published by Marcus on the subject for the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace.

Sontag found no evidence to substantiate his claims.

Akiva Eldar wrote in the left-leaning Jerusalem daily Haaretz last January that "the Palestinians are being rebuked where they should in fact be praised" for their textbooks and schooling, including their treatment of questions on Israel.

The article goes on to cite research conducted by the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace that books used in Palestinian schools are "freer of negative stereotypes of Jews and Israelis, compared to Jordanian and Egyptian books."

[Big_Bird]

Thank you Adventurer for offering us another perspective and a better insight into the matter. I found your posts very informative - and the relevation that Junior's sources are somewhat dubious was not very surprising either!

[happeningthang]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1962692.ece

[Big_Bird]