Click here to view full report (PDF)
The following is the executive summary presented to MPs.
Palestinian Media Watch
Special Report - March 25, 2009
Canada and the Palestinian Authority
Canada's Foreign Policy Misled by PA:
Canadian funding conditions consistently violated
More than a year after the Annapolis conference, the Palestinian Authority continues to mislead donor countries. In English, it talks peace, but in Arabic, it:
- denies Israel's existence
- incites hatred
- promotes terror and glorifies terrorists
By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
Executive Summary
The Annapolis Conference in November 2007 created hope for the renewal of a peace process after years of Palestinian Authority (PA)-supported terror. PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas assured Israel and the world in English that there had been a sincere change.
However, in Arabic the Palestinian Authority, Fatah leaders and the Abbas-controlled official PA media are no more peaceful towards Israel than they were during the Arafat era. In fact, during the 12 years of PMW's existence, there has never been a period of such intense demonization of Israel, continuous hate promotion, terror glorification, and open denial of Israel's existence by the PA (Fatah) and the Abbas-controlled media than what we have witnessed in 2008 - 2009.
Canadian Funding of the Palestinian Authority
Canada halted funding for the Palestinian Authority after the January 2006 Palestinian Authority general elections led to the formation of a Hamas government:
"Canada became the first donor to suspend aid to the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday, saying the new Hamas-led government had failed to give assurances that it would recognize Israel's right to exist." [Reuters, March 29, 2006]
Canada reinstituted funding for the PA in July 2007 after the split between Fatah and Hamas. On Dec. 17, 2007, at the Conference of Donors for the Palestinian Territories, Canadian Foreign Minister Bernier announced:
"Canada is increasing support to the peace process through additional assistance to Palestinian reform and development... Canada will commit $300 million over the next five years to build security, governance and prosperity."
This commitment included a clear stipulation of specific expectations:
"Our funding is not unconditional," said Minister Bernier... "This contribution will be conditional on progress in negotiations and Palestinian reforms. In every facet of our work, we will devote special attention to the issues of hatred and incitement of violence."
(News Release, Dec. 17, 2007 Website of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
International.gc.ca)
To this day, Canada continues to fund the Palestinian Authority based on the English- language assurances by PA leader Abbas that he accepts Israel's right to exist, rejects terror, and does not incite to hatred and violence.
This report shows that in its own Arabic media, aimed at a Palestinian audience, the Palestinian Authority violates all these conditions.
1. Denial of Israel's existence, calls for Israel's destruction:
Examples:
a. Muhammad Dahlan, a senior PA official, stated plainly on official PA TV: "
I want to say for the thousandth time, in my own name and in the name of all of my fellow members of the Fatah movement: We do not demand that the Hamas movement recognize Israel. On the contrary, we demand of the Hamas movement not to recognize Israel, because the Fatah movement does not recognize Israel, even today." [PA TV March 17, 2009]
b. A PA TV educational geography program has been broadcast regularly since August 2007, and most recently in January 2009, teaching there is no Israel and all of Israel is "Palestine:"
"... another section in Palestine ...Ashkelon in the south, until Haifa, in the Carmel Mountains. Haifa is a well-known Palestinian port... To its north, we find Acre. East of Acre, we reach a city with history and importance, the city of Tiberius, near a famous lake, the lake of Tiberius [Kinneret- Sea of Galilee]. Jaffa, an ancient coastal city, is the bride of the sea, and Palestine's gateway to the world."
Note that all of these are Israeli cities, spread over the entire country.
c. Official PA schoolbooks describe a Middle East without Israel:
"Coastal states differ in terms of their access to water sources, such as...: states located on sea coasts with accesses to two seas, for example: Palestine and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea."
[Physical Geography and Human Geography, Grade 12, p. 105]
"Palestine has a long coast facing the Mediterranean sea and a short coast on the Gulf of Aqaba."
[Health and Environment Studies, Grade 8 (2003), p. 130]
Note that the Israeli city of Eilat is on the Gulf of Eilat (Aqaba).
"... The Tiberias Lake [Sea of Galilee], in Palestine"
[Physical Geography, Grade 5, p. 25]
Israel is painted over in the colors of the PLO flag in PA government Census Bureau announcements. These announcements were aired on PA TV (Fatah) - often several times a day - during and after the Annapolis conference at the end of 2007. Maps similar to this one continue to appear on official web sites in 2009 [see below].
2. Hatred is actively promoted as policy for children and adults. Hate videos, libels and lies remain a backbone of PA TV.
Examples:
a. The official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, has propogated a long-standing blood libel against Israel, falsely accusing Israel of conducting horrific Nazi-like medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners:
"Many of the male and female inmates received injections from needles they had not seen before, and which caused their hair and facial hair to fall out permanently ... others lost their sanity, or their mental condition is constantly deteriorating... and some are suffering from infertility." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 4, 2008]
b. Another wild accusation concerns the deployment of "supernatural rats" against Arab residents of Jerusalem's Old City:
"... [Israeli] settlers have been bringing chests filled with rats and releasing them in the Old City's [Arab] neighborhoods... the [Arab] residents' efforts to counter this infestation have failed, especially since cats run away from these rats because of their size and ferocity... All of the conventional efforts to kill them have not succeeded... which compels Jerusalem's [Arabs] today to face the dangers of settlement and the infestation of rats..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 18, 2008]
c. PA TV has been broadcasting a music video from 2007 to February 2009, with the repeated refrain, "
My enemy, my enemy." Israel is called a
"snake, coiled around the land."The hate video denies Israel's right to exist and anticipates Israel's destruction:
"You have no choice, O enemy, but to leave my country."
The PA openly glorifies not only past but current terrorists, venerating terrorist murderers - even those who have murdered since Annapolis.
Examples:
a. The suicide terrorist in the Israeli city of Dimona, the killer of the eight Jerusalem yeshiva students, arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh and other terrorists were all glorified as Palestinian heroes in official PA newspapers and television in 2008.
b. In February 2009 the PA glorified the terrorist who murdered three civilians and seven Israeli soldiers in a 2002 ambush. The terrorist and his action were praised as
"the hero of the Intifada... [doing] what tens of brigades and platoons, and hundreds of missiles and heroic stories, failed to do."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 17, 2009]
c. On March 11, 2009, PA TV broadcast a special program commemorating and celebrating the 30th anniversary of the most deadly terror attack ever carried out in Israel - a bus hijacking that left 37 civilians dead. The program opened with the narrator glorifying this attack as
"one of the most important and most prominent special operations, executed by the Palestinian revolution by sea, on the coast between Haifa and Tel Aviv. This operation, carried out by a team of heroes and led by the heroic fighter Dalal Mughrabi... ."
4. Far from distancing itself from earlier Arafat ideologies, the PA leadership continues to advocate Israel's destruction.
Example:
PA Fatah MP:
"It doesn't mean that we don't want the 1948 borders [i.e. destroy Israel], but in our current political program, we [Fatah] say we want a state on the 1967 borders..."
[PA TV Aug. 25, 2008]
Contrary to the perception that Hamas alone preaches terror, violence and denial of Israel's right to exist, this
PMW Special Report documents that the PA-Fatah leadership and media promote the same message. In contrast to the moderate message that it conveys to the English-speaking world, the Palestinian Authority's Arabic-language world continues to be imbued with hate promotion and promises of Israel's expected destruction.
Canada is directly funding the responsible government frameworks.
The report
1. Denying Israel's right to exist, rejecting Israel's existence and advocating its destruction
2. Hate promotion and demonization for children and adults - PA Hate Media
2.1 Libels and lies
2.2 Hate through videos and demonization
3. Honoring and glorifying terror
3.1 Murderers since Annapolis deemed heroic
3.2 Other past terrorists - likewise deemed heroic
3.3 PA lauds terrorist-mass murderers as heroes
4. PA Political and Religious Leaders - hatred in Arabic
4.1 PM Mahmoud Abbas - in Arabic
4.2 Other PA political and religious officials (MPs, party leaders, etc.)
5. Conclusions
Click here to view full report (PDF) 
