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'Palestinians See Themselves In Islamic War Against The West' Jerusalem (CNSNews.com)
Based on reports in their own media and in school textbooks, the Palestinian Authority sees the Palestinians as part of the larger Islamic community, which is waging a war against the West, said Itamar Marcus, director of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Media Watch. PA Chairman Yasser Arafat has declared himself to be on the side of the U.S. in its war against terror, but Marcus, whose organization has been monitoring the PA press and media on the topic for the last four years, says it is not true. "[The Palestinians are] trying to create this perception that they're supporters of America. It is not true," Marcus said in an interview. "They have been viciously hating for years and they've taught people to hate America ... That's why everyone went out in the street and celebrated [when the World Trade Towers and Pentagon were attacked] because they had been getting so much anti-American [material]," he said. A cartoon in the largest circulation daily in the PA, Al-Quds, on September 22, showed a blind-folded President Bush, holding up a bloodied dagger in one hand and a broken scale of justice in the other, captioned "Infinite Justice." But according to PMW translations of the PA press and media, as far back as 1997, PA officials and official PA newspapers were recorded as displaying anti-American sentiments. In a compendium of hatred against America, compiled after the September 11 attacks from their previous records, PMW lists 41 cases of strong Anti-American sentiments in 1997 alone ranging from the burning of American flags at a PA-sponsored rally to calls for the destruction of the U.S. by PA officials. The PA-appointed Mufti (Islamic religious leader) of the PA Ikrima Sabri called on Allah to "destroy America as it is controlled by Zionist Jews." "Allah will avenge, in the name of his Prophet, the colonialist settlers who are the descendents of monkeys and pigs," he said on the Voice of Palestine radio in July 1997. Sabri was questioned by the Israeli police shortly after September 11 this year for having called for the destruction of America in a sermon in the weeks leading up to the attacks. Hafez Al-Barghuti, the editor of the PA's official newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote that history "does not remember the United States, but it remembers Iraq, the cradle of civilization, and Palestine, the cradle of religions. "History remembers every piece of Arab land, because it is the bosom of human civilization. On the other hand, the murderers of humanity, the creators of the barbaric culture and the bloodsuckers of nations, are doomed to death and destined to shrink to a microscopic size, like Micronesia," he concluded. Later, in November of 2000, a survey conducted by the Program for Educational Development of Beir Zeit University, in Ramallah showed that 73 percent of Palestinians supported military action against American targets in the region, including suicide missions against American interests in the Middle East. Al Hayat Al Jadida, which published the poll noted that, "it is interesting that the support for the attacks against American targets among academics reached 77 percent compared to 70 percent among illiterates." "The message that we're trying to get out is that Americans should understand the Palestinians see themselves in a global war of Islam against the West," Marcus said, citing two passages from PA published textbooks, which say that Islam will conquer the West. "We do not claim that the collapse of Western civilization, and the transfer of the center of civilization to us [Islam] will happen in the next decade or two or even in fifty years, for the rise and fall of civilizations follow natural processes," says an eleventh grade textbook, Some Outstanding Examples of Our Civilization. "Even when the foundations of a fortress become cracked it still appears ... to be at the peak of its strength. Nevertheless [Western civilization] has begun to collapse and to become a pile of rubble," it continued. "Since the beginning of our reawakening ...We awoke to a painful reality and oppressive imperialism and we drove it out of some of our lands and we are about to drive it from the rest," the text concludes. A seventh grade Islamic education book says that "Islam, the true religion ... will defeat all other religions and it will be disseminated, by Allah's will, through the Muslim Jihad fighters." Marcus stresses that although America does not see its current battle as a war against Islam, the Islamic people themselves have "defined it as Islam's war against the West." "This is a war against the Judeo-Christian tradition and Allah has guaranteed that they will defeat the West. This is what they're telling their people," he added. Marcus said two years ago his organization had already published a report on Islam's war against the West based on PA textbooks, but people tend not to take note until after the fact. "Everything was written. People just haven't been listening to what's been said," he said. "People see the world through their own glasses," Marcus said. "We don't want to destroy other people, [so] why would other people want to destroy us? ... We cannot imagine why somebody would want to destroy America or destroy Israel
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