At a cabinet meeting Sunday, IDF Reserve General Yossi Kuperwasser, Director of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, showed government cabinet members some of the more egregious examples of anti-Israel propaganda that the Palestinian Authority has published and distributed in its schools recently. The messages, Kuperwasser told cabinet members “are being distributed by senior Palestinian officials, on the PA’s official web sites, in the media and in the educational system.” The anti-Israel incitement has increased significantly in the past three years, he said.
Among the messages that the PA was pounding into the hearts and minds of Arabs was that Israel had no right to exist at all, and that only “Palestine” could exist on the land mass between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. “They are telling Palestinians that all of ‘historic Palestine’ will be returned to the Palestinians.” In addition, he said, the PA was drilling into the minds of young Arabs, especially students, that not only was there no right for Jews to have a Jewish state, but that the Jewish people themselves were illegitimate and did not exist.
In addition, he said, the PA told Arabs that those claiming to be Jews, and in particular residents of Judea and Samaria, were “terrible threats that must be fought with all means, including terror.” The messages are well-understood by PA Arabs, Kuperwasser said.
Kuperwasser presented a number of items that illustrated the PA’s incitement. Among the items was a Facebook page sponsored by a school in Kalkilya, which included anti-Israel and anti-Jewish pictures and photos. The page is titled “I hate Israel.” In another Facebook page sponsored by a Tulkarem school, quotes from Hitler and other Jew haters are prominently listed. The quote attributed to Hitler stated: “I could have killed all of the Jews in the world, but I left a few so that you would know why I killed them”
Other examples included school exercises where a student who identified a terrorist who killed Jews – and told the class what the terrorist had done – was rewarded with candy.
“The incitement is one of the main issues holding back the possibility of peace,” Kuperwasser said. “PA chief Mahmoud Abbas has no intention of holding back these messages, and instead has chosen to enter into a process designed to destroy the Jewish state,” he added.