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| (Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto) --- Image by © Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Corbis |
Commentary Magazine..
18 November '15..
In recent weeks, the publication of Daniel Polisar's study of Palestinian public opinion published by Mosaic magazine has been a subject of intense debate. His thesis demonstrating the overwhelming support among Palestinians for violence against Jews and the belief that Israel should be destroyed ought to be a game changer in discussions about peace in the Middle East. Yet predictably left-wingers who prefer fantasy to reality have sought to discredit his work by claiming he was wrongly painting Palestinians as “irrational animals.” Polisar eviscerated that specious and utterly false argument published in the Forward, so there’s no need for further comment about his critics here. But those with lingering doubts about the subject would do well to read the feature published in the Sunday New York Times that provides a useful addendum to the discussion. In it, the Times paints a not entirely unsympathetic portrait of Al Aqsa TV, the broadcast outlet of the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. While the article has a bizarre, upbeat tone, it also makes it clear that one of the leading outlets of Palestinian popular culture reflects exactly the same spirit of support for violence and delegitimization of Israel that Polisar’s study revealed.
The article, written by the paper’s stringers in Gaza rather than anyone associated with its Jerusalem bureau, portrays life at the station where on-air personalities encourage Palestinians to go out stab, shoot, or blow up as many Jews as they can find. Of course, this advice is couched in the language of “resistance” in which such activities are depicted as “fighting the ‘occupation’” rather than bloodthirsty murder of random Jews. Indeed, the article never actually comes clean about Hamas ideology which views all of Israel — the parts inside the 1967 lines as well as Jerusalem and the West Bank — as occupied territory and that any Jews, man, women or child, soldier or civilian, is a fair game for murder. But it does give a sense of the purpose of the station’s programming, albeit from an insider’s view.
In perhaps the most telling line, it says that one of the station’s presenters was so moved by a “foot-stomping” song encouraging mayhem against Jews that he joked about being “worried about stabbings in the studios.” The humor of the situation in which station personnel say their content is so inflammatory that Palestinians present might not wait to see a Jew to start the violence may be lost on some but we get the point.
While, as the article notes, Aqsa TV is not as popular as the official Palestinian Authority station operating in the West Bank, like its Hamas sponsors, its influence is growing. Moreover, as much as the Times discusses the station’s content it does pull its punches a bit by claiming that Aqsa TV has toned down some of its content through its social media and the weekly Friday sermons it broadcasts were actually far more hateful than the regular shows.
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