Newsmax.com article on PMW after interview with PMW director Itamar Marcus

Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch tells Newsmax that American tax dollars are paying the salary of a terrorist who “just called for the killing of Jews in the name of Islam.”

Marcus, the media watchdog’s founder and director, was referring to a video in which Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, the Palestinian Authority’s grand mufti of Jerusalem, “quoted a hadith that said ‘the resurrection won’t happen until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.’ And this, of course, is hate speech.”

Those who promote such hatred often say one thing in Western languages when speaking to the West but say things entirely different in their own language when speaking to their followers, Marcus said. Translations reveal the true vitriol.

Asked how the United States should respond, Marcus replied, “The United States is funding the Palestinian Authority,” so it should insist that it “‘take that man off your payroll and come out with a statement rejecting that.’ If he can make a statement calling for Muslims to kill Jews in the name of Islam and there will be no response from the international community, it’s giving a message to all Palestinians that the world is accepting that as a valid ideology.”

During an exclusive interview with Newsmax, Marcus warned that U.S. and European leaders are “making a very big mistake in treating the Palestinian Authority as an authentic peace partner when it glorifies violence and demonizes Jews and Israel.”

However, Palestinian hostility is not limited to Jews, Marcus notes. The authority “makes a presentation as if they’re defending Christians, which they’re not. Hamas openly has called for the killing of Christians . . . There was a video that ran on Hamas official television last year which said, ‘Allah, fight the Jews and their allies and kill them. Fight the Christians and their allies and kill them. Fight them until the last one, don’t leave even one.’ Essentially, this is a call for genocide of all Jews and Christians on official Hamas television.”

As far as the seemingly more moderate, U.S.-favored Palestinian Authority of the West Bank, “When Israel ruled Bethlehem [in the West Bank], from 1967 through 1994-1995, the Christian population was 60-70 percent of the population of Bethlehem. When the area was transferred to the Palestinian Authority . . . [the Christian] population has dropped from 60 percent to less than 10 percent. So here you have a very holy Christian city — one of the holiest Christian cities in the world — and yet Christians have been forced out by the Palestinian Authority’s way of governing there.”

Marcus and the Palestinian Media Watch recently published the book “Deception: Betraying the Peace Process,” which he said documents “Palestinian Authority non-recognition of Israel, hate incitement, and promotion of violence during the 2010 peace talks and through 2011.”

“It’s important that people know wherever hatred is being promoted,” Marcus said. “If people are going to be brainwashing their children to hatred, and no one knows about it, the situation is going to get much worse . . . Palestinian Media Watch exposes the hate speech so that people can know what the Palestinians are saying.

“You cannot trust what people are telling you in the language that isn’t their actual language. You must listen to what they’re saying amongst their own people in their own language,” Marcus told Newsmax. “When the Palestinians speak to the Americans, when Mahmoud Abbas, the [Palestinian Authority] chairman, speaks to President Obama, he’s telling him what he wants him to hear. And what we have shown in the book, and that’s why we named it ‘Deception,’ is that you have a completely different message in the Arabic.”

Among the myriad instances in the book, Marcus offers an example of Palestinian doublespeak: “Salam Fayyad, the [Palestinian] prime minister, is known as one of the most moderate people in the Palestinian Authority, and I think correctly so. However, even this moderate, on the very same day that he condemned a terror attack that happened in Jerusalem . . . That very morning, he got on Palestinian radio and he talked about honor and admiration for four female terrorists, two of whom drove suicide bombers to their bombings, in which five people were killed.

“So here you have Salam Fayyad, just about three or four hours apart, condemning terror to the international media, and to his own people, in Arabic, glorifying four terrorists. And that is the message people have to get from the book: Don’t believe what they’re telling you in English. You must listen to what they are saying amongst themselves in Arabic.”

When asked how President Obama’s handling of Israeli-Palestinian affairs compares with that of his predecessors, Marcus responds, “When he came into office, [Obama] talked about a Palestinian state within a year or within two years, and he had no real sense of what the Palestinian Authority was about. He really believed that they would be willing to compromise. He really believed that they were interested in peace. And I think he has stepped back a bit.

“I think he’s gone through some kind of an education process where he has become aware . . . that the Palestinian Authority really does speak with two faces, and I think because of that he has sort of given up his dream and


his optimism that you can just take your magic wand and create peace.
“I think he has a better understanding now of the Palestinian Authority, and I think that’s why he has been taking the pressure off of Israel that he was putting on them a few years ago.”

Asked whether he believes that a true peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is a realistic expectation, Marcus said, “The overwhelming majority of Palestinians . . . see a two-state solution . . . as the first stage toward the destruction of Israel. Israel would be incredibly vulnerable with the West Bank under a Palestinian state. Israel would be about 12 miles wide in some places, and . . . our airport would be a few miles away from the Palestinian areas. Tel Aviv would be a few miles away. Jerusalem would have Palestinian state on three sides.

“Now when you have an ideology that’s promoted in the Palestinian Authority that Israel has no right to exist, and people grow up with that message, and the children are being educated in their schoolbooks that Israel has no right to exist . . . What are those children going to do when they become voting age a few years down the line and they see that Tel Aviv is within shooting distance and Jerusalem is surrounded? What impetus is there going to be to hold on and to keep the peace treaty? The answer is, there won’t be any.

“Because they’re being brought up to hate Israelis, to hate Jews, both on the nationalistic level as well as on the Islamic level, there is no chance right now of a peace treaty being something that will be fulfilled and kept if it’s signed today. What we need today is a massive peace education process in the Palestinian Authority . . . We are nowhere near that today and that’s why the peace process today is a false peace process.

“We want an authentic peace process, we need peace education first and then once we have two sides who really want to live in peace, then let’s start tackling the very difficult issue of borders. But until we have people interested in peace, the border issue is really irrelevant.”