Palestinians Laughing at American Dead in Iraq, Media Watch Group Says

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Palestinians are mocking and laughing at American casualties in Iraq in their press and elsewhere, an independent Israeli media watchdog group said on Tuesday.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) Director Itamar Marcus said that while the Palestinians have been criticizing America in their media for years, the hatred has recently been ratcheted up. Established in 1996, PMW monitors and analyzes Palestinian Arabic language media.

"[The Palestinians] have been condemning America since 1997," said Marcus in a telephone interview. "Anti-American cartoons mocking American dead [have] reached a new level of hatred."

In a cartoon printed in the Palestinian Authority's official daily Al Hayat Al Jadida on Tuesday, the cartoon ridicules the memorial for 15 American soldiers who were killed when a U.S. helicopter was downed recently in Iraq.

The cartoon depicts the memorial showing a row of rifles with helmets atop them. Hanging on a line in between each rifle is a note with sayings such as "We will imprison Saddam soon," "Casualties are relatively low," "The uprising is weak and desperate," and "International forces are needed."

Another cartoon in the same paper two days ago depicted three American helicopters. The first was a regular helicopter, but the second and third were shaped like a coffin painted with an American flag with propellers on the top.

In several recent articles translated by PMW, the PA press and PA officials are quoted as urging attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, condemning U.S. administration officials and even blasting U.S. financial aid.

On October 27, the PA daily Al-Ayyam used a play on words in Arabic to criticize the Shiite Muslim leadership in Iraq for not supporting terror attacks against U.S. forces there. It accused the religious leaders of being shaa'hid (witness[es]) instead of encouraging their people to be shahid (martyr[s]).

Palestinian National Council representative Basam Abu Sharif blasted the U.S. in a speech in the Brazilian parliament, according to an article in Al-Hayat Al Jedida on October 30.

Referring to President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the "triangle of terror and evil," Sharif called on the United Nations and other countries to confront them, charging that the "sources of organized terror are the occupation and war crimes that these three states are committing."

The same paper published an article on November 3 written by PA Legislative Council member Nahidh Muneer Al-Ris accusing Bush of having rained missiles on Iraq equivalent to three nuclear bombs.

He charged Bush, Sharon, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz of being "human beings whose ambitions have turned them into bloodthirsty beasts."

PA columnist and political commentator Jawad Al-Bashiti, who lives in Jordan, wrote in Al-Ayyam on November 1 that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had granted an award of $1,350,000 to train 50 Egyptian journalists in an American University so that they would be able to "speak about the United States with 'professional expressions' that humiliate the Egyptian people and nation." He said most Americans refer to Bush as "The Great Liar."

"Anti-American sentiment is very strong," Marcus said. "The Palestinians see the world as dominated by the U.S... The whole thing of depicting America has nothing to do with hatred of Israel."

Marcus recently testified before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which was examining whether U.S. funds were being used directly or indirectly to support PA indoctrination.

Marcus said that while on the one hand, the U.S. is pouring millions of dollars in aid into the PA, Palestinians are at the same time attacking the U.S. through the media. In two cases, he said, a verbal attack of the U.S. appeared on the same page of announcements of USAID funding.

From 1993 to 2002, USAID provided approximately $1 billion to the Palestinians through projects and non-government organizations. All U.S. aid given to the Palestinians was provided through USAID until recently, when restrictions were removed, allowing for direct aid to the PA.

Israel Warned West Years Ago of Arafat Pocketing Funds
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
November 10, 2003

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Israel warned Western leaders years ago that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was using international aid to the Palestinians to make himself rich, but those leaders wouldn't listen, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Monday.

Arafat secretly squirreled away some $1 billion in public Palestinian funds, a CBS 60 Minutes broadcast alleged on Sunday. He gathered another billion from Israeli tax revenues, the report said, and it quoted unnamed U.S. officials who estimated Arafat's personal wealth at between $1 billion and $3 billion.

Much of the first billion came from international aid to the Palestinian Authority. The U.S., which for years had given money to the PA only through nongovernmental organizations via the U.S. Agency for International Development, recently removed those restrictions, allowing for direct aid to the PA.

Over the last year, the European Union has been trying to trace the funds it transferred to the PA, some of which Israel said has gone to fund terror attacks against Israelis.

Senior Sharon advisor Dr. Dore Gold said that he was not at all surprised by the disclosures in Sunday's report because Israel warned the international community for years about Arafat but the West would not listen.

"Israel has followed the way Palestinian Authority officials have lined their pockets with international aid dollars," Gold said in a telephone interview.

"For that reason, Israel has called for greater transparency in Palestinian finances and is now insisting that Arafat and his supporters return these stolen funds to the Palestinian people," Gold said. But he added that "no one is holding [his] breath" waiting for it to happen."

Israel had frozen payments of more than 2.5 billion shekels (some $550 million) in tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority since the beginning of the intifadah three years ago, charging that the funds were being used to carry out terror attacks.

But under heavy U.S. pressure, Israel began transferring the money in monthly installments to the PA late last year after USAID agreed to monitor the destination of the monies following the appointment of PA Finance Minister Salaam Fayyad.

"This issue of Arafat's corruption, similar to his support for terrorism, we knew about it in the 1990's [but] nobody listened," Gold said.

Fayyad, a former World Bank official who was appointed as finance minister last year, has been working to uncover corruption in the PA accounts and to set things right.

Fayyad acknowledged in the 60 Minutes program that there is "corruption," "abuse" and "impropriety" in the PA that has to be "fixed."

The program alleged that among Arafat's monthly expenditures is the $100,000 a month he gives his wife Suha, who lives in Paris with their daughter. He reportedly pays about $20 million a month in cash to his security forces.

Arafat managed to maintain control over those security forces over the weekend, when PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia relinquished an earlier demand that General Nasser Youssef be appointed as interior minister, with control over security.

The U.S. and other members of the Quartet - the U.S., European Union, Russia and United Nations - have tried for more than a year to pressure the Palestinian prime minister to wrest control of the security forces from Arafat and put them under the control of a prime minister who it was hoped would crackdown on terrorism.

But Qureia agreed over the weekend to put the security forces under the control of the National Security Council, headed by Arafat.

Both Israel and the U.S. criticized the move but Israel said it was still willing to give Qureia a chance to prove himself.

"Israel is willing to engage with any Palestinian leader; obviously the depth and intensity of contacts is a function of combating terrorism," Gold said. "The focus of Israel is on Palestinian performance."

But Gold said it was unlikely that there would be the crackdown on terror that Israel is expecting as long as Arafat remains in control.

"As long as Arafat is involved in security, it seems unlikely to go very far," he said. It is not logical that "Arafat who financed terror [for years should be] involved in counter-terrorism. It has proven over a decade to be unworkable."

State Department spokeswoman Amanda Batt said the U.S. also was unhappy with the move.

"The [PA] prime minister must have control of all of the security forces, and Washington insists that terrorists and military organizations not under the control of the Palestinian Authority be disarmed and dismantled," Batt said on Sunday.

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