On the White House lawn, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told US President Donald Trump: “Mr. President, I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children, and our grandchildren on a culture of peace.” Unfortunately, the reality cannot be further from the truth. To the contrary, Mahmoud Abbas is educating Palestinian children to hate the Jewish people, to support terrorism against Israel and not to pursue peace with the Jewish state.
In fact, there is not much of a difference between Fatah and Hamas Arabic language propaganda related to the State of Israel. Both Fatah and Hamas Arabic language propaganda call for wiping Israel off the map, establishing a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and both of them utilize anti-Semitic hate speech, claiming that Jews are evil, the devil incarnate and the sons of apes and pigs. They both accuse Jews of being criminals and medieval blood libel-like accusations even surface in their propaganda. In other words, when it comes to teaching young Palestinian children propaganda against the State of Israel, there is not much of a difference between Fatah and Hamas; their only differences surround internal Palestinian politics. Hamas is a religious terror group while Fatah is a secular terror group, who has some atheist members.
A look at how Fatah has been conducting themselves recently in the Palestinian Authority highlights this point. Just this week, Palestinian Media Watch reported that the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Football Association named its annual football tournament after the late Fatah terror chief Abu Jihad, otherwise known as Khalil al-Wizar, a terrorist who is responsible for murdering 125 Israelis. He was the mastermind of the infamous Coastal Road massacre, a 1978 attack on an Israeli bus near Tel Aviv that killed 38 Israelis and wounded another 70, and numerous other terror attacks on Israeli targets in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, even though all youth across the globe are heavily influenced by anything that occurs in the athletic world, the Palestinian Football Association together with the PLO Supreme Court for Sports and Youth utilized it as an opportunity to educate Palestinian youth to glorify Fatah terrorists.
Israeli author Barry Shaw once wrote the following about Jibril Rajoub, a Fatah Central Committee member: “Jibril Rajoub, as the highest responsible official in Palestinian football and a FIFA delegate, has been a deliberate delinquent in abusing FIFA’s Code of Ethics and conduct. By his words and actions, he has promoted violence, terrorism and insults that have harmed and killed hundreds of people including women and children. Rajoub has used football to indoctrinate and educate Palestinian children to praise and glorify murdering terrorists.”
For example, according to Shaw, on October 17, 2015, during a period of intensive Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis, Rajoub praised Palestinian terrorism on PA TV in a public statement that very much encourages Palestinian youth to murder Israelis: “I am proud of them. I congratulate them. I congratulate everyone who carried them out and I say to you, we are proud of you.” He claimed that these murderers are “assets to the Palestinian people.” Shaw proclaimed, “All this begs the question, what is the difference between Rajoub glorifying his killers to that of Bin Laden praising his Al-Qaida terrorists or Al-Baghdadi promoting his ISIS murderers? Why are these arch-terrorists globally condemned while terror-promoting Rajoub continues to be welcomed as a FIFA official?”
According to Shaw, the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, Palestinian Media Watch, UK Lawyers for Israel, One Family and the New York-based Lawfare Project have lodged joint and separate detailed complaints with FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee outlining serious breaches of FIFA’s Code of Ethics by Rajoub and the Palestinian Football Association. However, Fatah’s glorification of terrorism in Palestinian football is not the only example of Palestinian youth getting indoctrinated into supporting terrorism by Mahmoud Abbas’ terror group.
Earlier this year, Palestinian Media Watch reported that in a drawing competition for the Salfit High School for Girls titled “What are women fighting for,” 17-year-old Ru’a Amjad won first place for a drawing showing all of Israel as part of the State of Palestine alongside a woman and child holding an AK-47. Palestinian Media Watch also noted that earlier this year, the 14-year-old daughter of Abdallah Barghouti, a Palestinian terrorist who murdered 67 people, spoke at the Qassem Al-Rimawi High School for Girls as part of an opportunity for the daughters of Palestinian terrorists to convey messages to their fathers in Israeli prisons. In her message, she glorified what her father did.
And Palestinian Media Watch is not the only organization to report on Fatah educating Palestinian children to support terrorism against the State of Israel. According to MEMRI, on the 51st anniversary of the establishment of the Fatah Movement, there was a parade in the Dehaishe Refugee Camp that featured senior level Fatah officials alongside children with mock RPG rockets and suicide belts. Last year, Fatah held a ceremony in honor of Palestinian female terrorist Dalal Al Mughrabi, who murdered 35 Israeli civilians among them 13 children. During the ceremony, a little girl recited a poem and the local Girl Scout troop sang songs glorifying her horrific act of terrorism. These examples do not even include the numerous incidents during this present wave of terror where young Palestinian terrorists have been glorified in PA official media outlets, by PA officials and on social media, which is the new battleground for incitement in our generation.
In other words, no, Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah terror organization are not educating Palestinian children for peace. If they were educating Palestinian children to support peace, we would not be witnessing so many young Palestinians waging knife attacks against Israeli citizens and soldiers. If they were educating for peace, then a resolution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is actually possible. But as things stand presently with the constant Fatah-inspired incitement in the Palestinian Authority, peace is nothing but a distant dream, which won’t become a reality in the near future.