NYT: Hamas¹s Insults to Jews Complicate Peace Effort
- From: Papadillos <papadillos@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:45:41 GMT
The New York Times
April 1, 2008
By STEVEN ERLANGER
GAZA -- In the Katib Wilayat mosque one recent Friday, the imam was
discussing the wiliness of the Jew.
"Jews are a people who cannot be trusted," Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas
told the faithful. "They have been traitors to all agreements ? go back to
history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us."
At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the "Crusaders," or
Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
He referred to Jews as "the brothers of apes and pigs," while the Hamas
television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war until
Palestine is free of Jewish control.
Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult
the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the
United States; its children's programs praise "martyrdom," teach what it
calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over
Palestinian land, meaning any part of the state of Israel.
Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the
1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 "road map" peace plan. While the Palestinian
Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end
incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.
Since Hamas took over Gaza last June, routing Fatah, Hamas sermons and media
reports preaching violence and hatred have become more pervasive, extreme
and sophisticated, on the model of Hezbollah and its television station Al
Manar, in Lebanon.
Intended to indoctrinate the young to its brand of radical Islam, which
combines politics, social work and military resistance, including acts of
terrorism, the programs of Al Aksa television and radio, including crucial
Friday sermons, are an indication of how far from reconciliation Israelis
and many Palestinians are.
Hamas's grip on Gaza matters, but what may matter more in the long run is
its control over propaganda and education there, breeding longer-term
problems for Israel, and for peace. No matter what Israeli and Palestinian
negotiators agree upon, there is concern here that the attitudes being
instilled will make a sustainable peace extremely difficult.
"If you take a sample on Friday, you're bound to hear incitement against the
Jews in the prayers and the imam's sermon," said Mkhaimer Abusada, a
political scientist at Al Azhar University here. "He uses verses from the
Koran to say how the Jews were the enemies of the prophet and didn't keep
their promises to the prophet 1,400 years ago."
Mr. Abusada is a Muslim and political independent. "You have young people,
and everyone has to listen to the imam whether you believe him or not," he
said. "By saying the same thing over and over, you find a lot of people
believing it, especially when he cites the Koran or hadith," the sayings of
the prophet.
Radwan Abu Ayyash, deputy minister of culture in Ramallah, ran the
Palestinian Broadcasting Company until 2005. Hamas "uses religious language
to motivate simple people for political as well as religious goals," he
said. "People don't distinguish between the two." He said he found a lot of
what Al Aksa broadcast "disgusting and unprofessional."
Every Palestinian thinks the situation in Gaza is ugly, he said. "But what
is not fine is to build up children with a culture of hatred, of closed
minds, a culture of sickness. I don't think they always know what they are
creating. People use one weapon, language, without realizing that they also
use it against themselves."
Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli group, said Hamas took
its view of Jews from what it considered the roots of Islam, then tried to
make the present match the past.
For example, in a column in the weekly Al Risalah, Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a
Hamas legislator and imam, discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that
"suffering by fire is the Jews' destiny in this world and the next."
"The reason for the punishment of burning is that it is fitting retribution
for what they have done," Mr. Astal wrote on March 13. "But the urgent
question is, is it possible that they will have the punishment of burning in
this world, before the great punishment" of hell? Many religious leaders
believe so, he said, adding, "Therefore we are sure that the holocaust is
still to come upon the Jews."
At the end, Mr. Marcus points out, Mr. Astal switches from "harik," the
ordinary word for burning, to "mahraka," normally used to connote the
Holocaust.
Some Hamas videos, like one in March 2007, promote the participation of
children in "resistance," showing them training in uniform, holding rifles.
Recent shows displayed Mr. Abbas kissing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, under the slogan "Palestine
doesn't return with kisses, it returns with martyrs."
Programs for Children
Another children's program, "Tomorrow's Pioneers," has become infamous for
its puppet characters ? a kind of Mickey Mouse, a bee and a rabbit ? who
speak, like Assud the rabbit, of conquering the Jews to the young hostess,
Saraa Barhoum, 11. "We will liberate Al Aksa mosque from the Zionists'
filth," Assud said recently. "We will liberate Jaffa and Acre," cities now
in Israel proper. "We will liberate the whole homeland."
The mouse, Farfour, was murdered by an Israeli interrogator and replaced by
Nahoul, the bee, who died "a martyr's death" from lack of health care
because of Gaza's closed borders. He has been supplanted by Assud, the
rabbit, who vows "to get rid of the Jews, God willing, and I will eat them
up, God willing."
When Assud first made his appearance, he said to Saraa: "We are all
martyrdom-seekers, are we not, Saraa?" She responded: "Of course we are. We
are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our homeland. We will
sacrifice our souls and everything we own for the homeland."
Along with Mr. Marcus's group, the Middle East Media Research Institute, or
Memri, also monitors the Arabic media. But no one disputes their
translations, and there are numerous Palestinians in Gaza ? in the hothouse
atmosphere of an overcrowded, isolated territory where martyr posters and
anger at Israel are widespread among Fatah, too ? who are deeply upset about
the hold Hamas has on their mosques and on what their children watch.
While the Palestinian Authority of Fatah also causes some concern ? its
textbooks, for example, rarely recognize the state of Israel ? Yigal Carmon,
who runs Memri, said Hamas and its media used "the kind of anti-Israeli and
anti-Jewish language you don't really hear any more from the Palestinian
Authority, which hasn't talked like that in a long time."
Abu Saleh, who asked that his full name not be used because of his critical
views, is worried about his children. His eldest son, 13, likes to watch Al
Aksa, especially the nationalist songs and military videos. "I talk to them
about Hamas, but to be honest, it's scary and you have to watch it over
time," he said. "When kids are 17 or 18, you don't know what happens. They
get enraged and can attach themselves to radical groups."
Excluding Reconciliation
The Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna, or truce, with the Jews about
1,400 years ago, so Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would
make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of British
Mandate Palestine.
"They talk of hudna, not of peace or reconciliation with Israel," said Mr.
Abusada, the political scientist. "They believe over time they will be
strong enough to liberate all historic Palestine."
Saraa, the host of "Tomorrow's Pioneers," is the niece of Fawzi Barhoum, a
Hamas spokesman. Some of the language used against other Arabs upsets him,
Mr. Barhoum said, but he insisted that Israel was illegitimate. "No one can
deny that all this was Palestinian land and Jews occupied the land," he said
firmly. "Therefore the Hamas charter is based on what Israel has committed
against our people and our understanding of Israel and its practices."
The charter is a deeply anti-Semitic document and cites a famous forgery,
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as truth. But "our battle is not with
Jews as Jews," he said, "but those who came and occupied us and killed us."
After all, Mr. Barhoum said, "the Jews who recognized the evil of the
occupation stayed outside and refused to come to Palestine as occupiers."
"The Jews who came, came to occupy and to kill," he said.
Marwan M. Abu Ras, 50, an imam who taught at Hamas's Islamic University for
25 years, has an advice show on Al Aksa. He is proud that his show uses sign
language for the deaf.
The chairman of the Palestinian Scholars League, and a Hamas legislator, Mr.
Abu Ras is popularly called "Hamas's mufti," because he is ready to give
religious sanction to Hamas political structures.
Last month, he criticized Egypt for closing the Gaza border at Israel's
request. He complained, "We are besieged by the sons of Arabism and Islam,
as well as by the brothers of apes and pigs."
He tried to distinguish between religious and political language, and then
said: "The Israelis can't accept criticism. They overreact, like any guilty
person." Israel for him is an enemy. "This is an open war with Israel, with
each side trying to press the other," he said. A war? "If it's not a war,
what is it?" he asked.
Then he spoke of his son, who tried to volunteer to fight the Israelis at
17. "I convinced him to wait, he had no weapon, until 20," Mr. Abu Ras said.
"Now he's a member of Qassam," the Hamas military wing, "and an example for
young people."
Promoting an Ethos
Mark Regev, spokesman for Mr. Olmert, called on "Arab leaders who are
moderate and believe in peace to speak out more strongly against extremist
elements." He called the "incitement to hatred and violence standard Hamas
operating procedure," adding, "In Hamas education and broadcasting they turn
the suicide bomber who murders the innocent into a positive role model, and
they portray Jews in the most negative terms, that too often reminds us of
language used in Europe in the first half of the 20th century."
The "serious question," he said, "is what ethos are they promoting?"
Hazim el-Sharawi, 30, the original host of the Farfour character on Hamas
television, and known as "Uncle Hazim," has no doubts. It was his idea to
have Farfour killed by an Israeli interrogator, he said. "We wanted to send
a message through this character that would fit the reality of Palestinian
life."
Israel is the source, he insisted. "A child sees his neighbors killed, or
blown up on the beach, and how do I explain this to a child that already
knows? The occupation is the reason; it creates the reality. I just organize
the information for him."
The point is simple, he said: "We want to connect the child to Palestine, to
his country, so you know that your original city is Jaffa, your capital is
Jerusalem and that the Jews took your land and closed your borders and are
killing your friends and family."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/world/middleeast/01hamas.html
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