Teaching Terror to Tots
Palestinian Media Watch recently published a report on Fatah’s Waed children’s magazine, covering every issue published over the last eight years.
Palestinian youths clash with Israeli security forces in Shuafat, Oct. 12, 2022. Photo by Jamal Awad/Flash90
The messages conveyed to Palestinian children via this publication confirm that the goal of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah was always, and remains, not two states, but rather Israel’s destruction and replacement by “Palestine.”
The following is an executive summary of the report, titled “Teaching Terror to Tots,” which will be released in full at the GPO’s Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem this week.
Fatah, the ruling political movement of the Palestinian Authority, runs a youth movement for Palestinian children ages 6-15, which publishes a children’s magazine called Waed (Arabic for “Promise”). The magazine is published on the youth movement’s website and distributed at Fatah and P.A. activities and in P.A. schools. Waed is the antithesis of peace education. Whereas not all the material in the magazine promotes hatred of Israelis and Israel, all references in it to Israelis and Israel are hateful.
Waed’s fundamental messages are that Israelis are foreign colonialist invaders, and therefore Israel has no right to exist. Palestinians, led by Fatah, will continue the heroic “armed struggle” until the invaders are defeated and leave. There is no hint of Israel’s legitimacy, nor of the possibility that Israel will coexist alongside a liberated Palestine.
A fictitious past creates a violent future
Fatah’s rewriting of the past generates its vision for the future. A fictitious 5,000-year-old “Canaanite Palestinian Arab” people is invented as the pretext for all Palestinian rights. The erasure of authentic Jewish history in the land is the pretext for denying Jews any rights there today. Israelis are branded as “foreigners who came from all ends of the earth, foreigners who did not know Palestine and did not live in it – neither them nor their fathers and forefathers” (Waed, Issue 36, p. 2). Every city in Israel and every centimeter of Israel are said to be parts of the “stolen” Palestinian “homeland.”
Accordingly, Israel is delegitimised as the “thieving entity” and Israelis are demonised as the “Jewish invaders” and “Zionist invaders.” Fatah proclaims it will destroy Israel by “liberating Palestine from the thieving Zionist entity” (Waed, Issue 32, p. 3). Israel’s destruction is packaged in various euphemisms, such as: “the period of Zionism will eventually pass” and “there is no invader who… did not leave it [Palestine] defeated.” (Waed, Issue 27, p. 23).
This inevitable “liberation” of Palestine will be nothing less than Palestinian “victims” achieving justice since the Palestinians have the “absolute right” to “take back [their] rights in full” (Waed, Issue 26,p. 12).
Waed is emphatic that Fatah’s goal is to end Israel’s existence and not merely Israel’s control over the West Bank. The references to “Palestine,” “stolen homeland” and “occupation” always include all of Israel. So do all the maps of “Palestine.”
Demonisation
In addition to delegitimising Israel the state, the P.A./Fatah demonises Israelis as individuals, calling them evil, racist, bloodthirsty killers through expressions like the “giant Israeli murder machine,” “Zionist gangs” and “the blood of Gaza’s children did not quench the thirst of the Israeli monster.” The magazine accuses Israel of Nazi-like horrors among the many libels it disseminates.
For the P.A./Fatah, this fabricated history is the foundation of Palestinian destiny. The Waed message: Israel was created by theft, its continued existence is a crime, and its termination via “armed struggle” is justified and inevitable.
This hate education will be the driving force for the next generation of Palestinian terrorism.
Itamar Marcus is the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, which originally published this article.
