PA hate speech and Mideast peace

Extract from The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - May 23, 2005:

When President Bush meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, Mr. Bush will need to emphasize to the Palestinian leader that his continued failure to act decisively against anti-Semitic incitement could have catastrophic consequences. Mr. Abbas needs to put an end ...(to) the obscenity which continues to be broadcast on PA Television, such as a May 13 sermon likening Jews to AIDS and calling for 'the extermination of every single Jew.' "

...in Germany, advocates of Nazism and wearers of Nazi regalia in public have been subject to legal sanction,...In the Palestinian Authority, by contrast, it appears that people who advocate the modern-day equivalent of the Final Solution get a check from their elected government and are given the opportunity to appear on Palestinian public television.

Today, no Palestinian talks seriously...about banning the kind of raw anti-Semitic hate speech that is routinely heard from the likes of Hamas — which is right now, the second most powerful political party in the West Bank and Gaza, right behind Mr. Abbas' Fatah.

But Mr. Abbas needs to understand ...the longer he delays attacking this political cancer, the longer it will continue to spread.

Ibrahim Mudeiris, the preacher who delivered the May 13 speech ... is a paid employee of the Palestinian Authority.

For a video of parts of the sermon follow this link to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) web site.

For a summary of the speech see Hitler would be proud of him

This speech is hardly a lone exception. The organizations MEMRI (www.memri.org) and Palestine Media Watch (www.pmw.org) document on their Web sites that this has been going one for years; the PMW site, in particular, shows that this problem has continued to fester since early February, when Mr. Abbas agreed to a cease-fire with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

After receiving a firestorm of criticism in recent days, PA officials denounced the incitement and announced some firings and staff shakeups in the PA media bureaucracy. That's not enough. This kind of hatred is the antithesis of what President Bush is attempting to achieve....to create peace; but the kind of incendiary propaganda being broadcast by the PA media is creating a new generation of suicide bombers and jihadists. (See the Teach Kids Peace website)

Mr. Bush needs to let Mr. Abbas know in no uncertain terms that he won't be getting a free pass on hate speech.