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Posted on 04/10/2005 6:47:43 AM PDT by SJackson
Life Imitates 'Art' as Deaths of Arab Boys in Combat Zone Depicted as Extension of Palestinian Propaganda Film
By Michael Widlanski Sunday, 10 April, 2005
When three Arab teenagers were killed, according to the Israeli army, smuggling weapons from Egypt into Gaza Saturday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said, it was, essentially, a case of life imitating "art"-specifically a well-known PA propaganda film showing children murdered when their football game angered Israeli soldiers.
"Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed Saturday three children as they were playing in [a] playground in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah," declared WAFA, the official PA-PLO news agency, at midnight Saturday-Sunday.
The idea of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian children playing football is the subject of several Palestinian propaganda films shown regularly over the last three years in the afternoon hours (generally between two and four pm) of PBC television.
PBC television has not apparently shown the film in recent weeks, but it opened its Sunday programming with gory footage of the faces and bodies of the three boys lying on metal trays in the morgue in Gaza.
The Palestinian broadcast media has also not told its viewers and listeners about Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot on Thursday as well as several attacks that day and over the weekend on Israeli communities inside Gaza that are slated for withdrawal.
The Islamic terror groups HAMAS and Islamic Jihad renewed large-scale rocket and mortar attacks Saturday night, with at least 50 reported hits on Israeli houses.
In a statement, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of "war crimes" and "a deliberate attempt to torpedo" what Palestinians call the "cooling-off period" in armed hostilities, an agreement concluded between Abbas, HAMAS and Jihad.
Abbas's remarks, reported on the Palestinian media, made no mention of the HAMAS and Jihad mortar and rocket attacks on Israel, although Palestinian newspapers included a tiny mention Friday of the Qassam rocket on Sderot.
Instead, the Palestinian media have emphasized Israeli cruelty and attempts to "Judaize Jerusalem."
"Witnesses said a group of children were playing football (i.e. soccer--Arabic: korat al-qadam) in a nearby playground when Israeli soldiers unjustifiably opened fire, killing three of them," asserted the WAFA report that was aired on Palestinian television and radio.
The Palestinian media identified the infiltrating youths as Ashraf Mousa, Khaled Ghannam, and Ahmad Abu-Jazar, but they did not identify the two other boys crawling with them and apparently carrying weapons and equipment, who were turned over to PA forces near the no-man's land along the Philadelphi Corridor which has been the site of intense combat for months.
"Witnesses revealed a group of children were playing football in a nearby playground when Israeli soldiers unjustifiably opened fire, killing three of them," declared the official Palestinian report.
Meanwhile, the PA-controlled media have done everything possible to increase the general level of tension. PA television ran an old propaganda film Sunday morning on the alleged Israeli massacre of Arabs at Dir Yassin in Jerusalem in 1948, featuring pictures of mangled bodies and their names symbolically "written in blood" in red.
The battle to "prevent the Judaization of Jerusalem" has become a major focus of Palestinian politics in the last four weeks.
"The Muslims inside this house and outside this house will not allow anyone, no matter who he is, to soil their faith nor to pollute mosque," declared Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the regular preacher-lecturer at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
His remarks appeared as the lead item on the front page Sunday of the PA-controlled newspaper Al-Ayyam, which gets funding from the Palestinian Authority.
© 2005 Michael Widlanski
Permission to re-use IMRA
Dr. Michael Widlanski is a specialist in Arab politics and communication whose doctorate dealt with the Palestinian broadcast media. He is a former reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times ,The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post.
"The Muslims inside this house and outside this house will not allow anyone, no matter who he is, to soil their faith
They are doing a fine job of it themselves...
I'm glad that the new Palestinian arab leadership under Mahmoud Abbas avoids the provocations and violence that were so common during the Arafat days.
If I were Israel, I would reward them by forcibly evicting all Jews from the Gaza Strip and turning the whole place over to the Palestinian arabs.
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I think that every Israeli position should be equiped with a camera. The Israeli soldiers should be able to take pictures to show their perspective and release evidence to the press.
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