'Cartoons in the official Al Hayat Al Jadeeda newspaper continue to offer readers images of ghoulish Israeli soldiers and, on April 10, a spider-like Star of David menacing the Muslim Dome of the Rock. This is the same publication that ran on its front page a color photo of the terrorist who took the lives of five Israelis in Tel Aviv on February 25 - and called him a martyr.
'None of the monitoring groups report change in the key areas of religious and educational indoctrination. Mosques, which have been one of the worst channels of venom against Jews and Israel, continue to incite, most recently stoking fears that Jewish radicals would attack Islamic holy sites on the Temple Mount. The incendiary sermons were in turn aired on PA television. The extensive official Israeli measures taken to protect Muslim shrines and Muslim lives were entirely unmentioned.
'Likewise Palestinian schoolbooks remain a vehicle for teaching that Israel is illegitimate and will rightly to be replaced by Palestine. No map in any book identifies the state of Israel within any boundary. Only Palestine appears, encompassing all of Israel, while Israel's cities, geographic sites and water resources are said to be features of Palestine....
'On April 16, WAFA, the PLO News Agency, issued a story claiming Israel had installed what it termed a "radial spy machine at Rafah border point." According to WAFA, the screening device would cause "horrible side affects on their health (sic)." Doctor Joma'a al-Saqa from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza warned that the device "may cause a very dangerous diseases Thrombocytopenic, Sterility, Congenital anomalies, Cancer, Leukemia and Mental retardation (sic)." A day later, having been challenged about its ludicrous claims regarding a device that is not, in fact, a dangerous X-ray apparatus, WAFA modified its story to denounce Israel instead for employing "the controversial naked spy machine" that supposedly violates the modesty of individuals passing through Rafah.
'Israel has regularly been subjected to bizarre allegations of damaging Palestinian health, including charges of distributing poisoned candy, poisoning water, using poison gas and depleted uranium, and so on. Such absurd charges are in keeping with the dark anti-Israel mythologies of the schools, mosques, media and political class — and all explain in major part the failure of the Palestinian body politic to reconcile itself to Israel's existence.'
The mainstream media are silent on all this because it doesn't fit with the only story line in their minds -- that Abbas is a dove-like man of peace while Israel is not a victim but an aggressive conqueror whose grip on the Palestinians has to be prised away. The big lie thus repels the truth, and the media continue to play their lethal role in the ongoing Middle East tragedy.
