You Can Believe That PA Television has Banned Anti-Israel Incitement...As Long as You Never Watch It

By Barry Rubin

The genuinely (relatively) moderate Palestinian Daoud Kuttab wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that beautifully shows the kind of thing Israel and Israelis and those friendly to Israel have to deal with daily.

He wrote:

"Palestine television, which falls under the president’s [Mahmoud Abbas's] powers, was totally revamped and cleaned of anti-Israeli incitement."

Now, I will give Kuttab the credit for wishing that this was true but he knows it isn't true. Consequently, I have not the slightest reservation to saying that he is lying and that he knows that he is lying.

And I also know that hundreds of thousands of people will read and believe him, saying that it must be true or the Times wouldn't print it. Or if it weren't true they'd be reading about such anti-Israel incitement in the Times and other newspapers.

At any rate, no one raised the interesting question in any mass media environment: Why would it have taken until November 2010 to do this when it was supposed to have been done  about 16 years earlier according to the 1993 Israel-PLO agreement?
And of course it hasn't happened even as of today. On the contrary.

One expert on Palestinian media and incitement therein remarked, "It so absurd a statement that to prove it wrong would be easy." Yet no Western journalist seems interested in tapping his remote control, turning the television on, and checking it out.

That's a funny thing about today's world. We have instantaneous reporting: You are IN Tahrir Square with the demonstrators; Yet this situation requires a higher level of understanding on the part of the journalists and their pontificating guests. And instead the opposite is true.
So here is one example of how simple it is to get the true story. In this case, of course, incitement on PA television has not declined. Here, a blogger provides three videos of songs on PA television inciting to violence against Israel and Israelis. The third one honors one of the most vicious terrorists in the history of the conflict.

But keep in mind that it is possible to provide dozens of examples, as Palestinian Media Watch has done.

Now multiply this little case study by one thousand, ten thousand or more in terms of the propaganda campaign and the Western media's collaboration in it.