War on Words
By Herb Keinon

(April 16) -- Monitoring incitement in the Palestinian
Authority areas gives insight into what has not changed
since the peace process began. -- 

As a special feature for its readers, the Ramallah-based
Palestinian paper Al-Hayat al-Jadida ran a daily quiz
during the month of Ramadan that could appropriately
have been titled "Name the 'Shaheed' (Martyr)." 

Try your hand at the question that appeared on
December 28, 1999: 

"He received a BA in chemistry and was very creative
and distinguished in that field. Afterwards, he joined the
military wing of the Hamas. He supervised a number of
explosions on Dizengoff and Mahaneh Yehuda that
shocked the Israeli entity in Tel Aviv. This shaheed turned
into a wanted man by the occupied Zionist authorities and
was known as 'The Engineer.'" 

If you need more clues, the paper obliges: 

"With the arrival of the Palestinian National Authority, he
found refuge in Gaza, where there is security and stability.
The occupying authorities paid $1 million to whoever
would kill this heroic martyr. This they accomplished
through an exploding cellular phone that was given him by
one of his friends in Gaza in 1996." 

The answer to this conundrum is none other than Yihye
Ayyash, the master bomber responsible for killing over
50 Israelis. 

Not had enough entertainment? Now try your expertise at
a crossword puzzle that appeared in the paper on
February 18, 1999. The clue: "Jewish center for
eternalizing the Holocaust and the lies." 

The correct answer: "Yad Vashem." 

If that crossword puzzle seems too old and no longer
indicative of Palestinian feelings that may have changed in
the intervening year, then take a look at a more recent
one, from February 2, 2000, that appeared in another
Palestinian paper, Al-Ayyam. The clue: "The state that
borders Palestine in the north." 

The answer: "Lebanon." 

Adulation of Ayyash, Holocaust denial, negation of Israel
on the map: If that's what is in the "fun" sections of the
mainstream Palestinian press, you can only imagine what
lurks on its editorial pages, or in the hard-news stories. 

Itamar Marcus, the 46-year-old director of Palestinian
Media Watch, doesn't just want to imagine what's in the
papers. He wants to know what's there. And he wants
everybody else to know as well, because Marcus
staunchly believes that what's written in the press,
broadcast on television and radio, and published in
Palestinian schoolbooks, is a truer gauge of Palestinian
intentions than any promise Yasser Arafat gives Ehud
Barak, or any guarantee given to Bill Clinton. 

As a result, a few years ago Marcus set up Palestinian
Media Watch, devoted to ferreting out anti-Israel and
anti-Jewish references in the Palestinian mainstream
media - newspapers, television, and radio - as well as in
Palestinian schoolbooks. And if the stack of clips sitting
on Marcus's desk in a converted apartment in the center
of Jerusalem is any indication, ferreting out this
information is not a particularly difficult task. 

"The real question in peace is what they [the Palestinian
Authority] are teaching their people," Marcus says,
patting a pile of material on his large desk that could be
called: "Exhibit A." 

"Are they saying throw out the old hatred, and start living
in peace with Israel, or are they saying that Israel is here
only temporarily, and ultimately will be destroyed?
Unfortunately, the latter is the message seen regularly on
TV, in newspapers, and in textbooks." 

Looking for hate in the Palestinian press does not seem
the most natural job in the world for Marcus. First of all,
the affable Marcus, who immigrated to Israel from New
York 25 years ago, doesn't speak Arabic. 

Secondly, before going in this direction, Marcus - who
has a BA in political science and an MA in Jewish
philosophy - wrote a number of successful children's
books, including the Hebrew Ish Sheleg ("Snowman"),
about a boy's recognition of the fragility of relationships,
and the English-language Moshe's Adventures in
Brachaland, about the various blessings over food, and
why and how they are recited. 

"I would rather be educating toward positive things, not
creating an awareness of evil in the world," Marcus says.
Then, pointing to the pile of quotes from the Palestinian
media on his desk, he adds, "But this is what is happening
here." 

Marcus, a father of five who lives in Efrat, gets around the
Arabic hurdle by hiring translators. He has five translators
who every day go through three major Palestinian papers:
Al-Hayat al-Jadida, which he says is the official
Palestinian Authority paper whose staff members are on
the PA payroll; the "semi-official" Al-Ayyam; and the
independent Al-Kuds. In addition, the team translates the
Palestinian Authority's main television and radio
newsreels. All the translators are veterans of military
intelligence, where they performed similar translating
tasks. 

"I like former army-intelligence people because they are
very disciplined," Marcus says. "I send the material to
ministers and Knesset members, and it is quoted in
international forums. There can be no mistakes." 

The translators scour the papers for unseemly material.
They look everywhere, from the crossword puzzles, to
the editorials, to the sports, and the culture pages. And
often they turn things up in the damnedest of places. 

For instance, a recent item on the sports page of
Al-Hayat al-Jadida read, "The Hebrew entity is taking
part in the world championships in Malaysia... [The Arab
opposition to their participation] is a clear sign to those
who want to create contact with the cursed entity... The
Arabs came for the sake of Palestine, and never intended
to meet representatives from groups with nauseating
names, like Maccabi and Betar." 

These items are collected, often put into reports, and sent
out to policy makers and media people. Marcus says that
although the previous government was more responsive
to the material he sent out, there are ministers in this
government as well - such as Yisrael Ba'aliya leader and
Interior Minister Natan Sharansky and Communications
Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer - who ask for this material,
and bring it up with their Palestinian counterparts. 

"I constantly give the material to cabinet ministers and
MKs," Marcus says. "In the previous government, it was
affecting policy to a greater extent, but even this
government is completely aware that we are not talking
about the dream of a new Middle East that Shimon Peres
spoke about. When someone like Barak says that the
goal is not a new Middle East, but rather separation, I
think he is, in part, being influenced by the type of
material we are finding." 

After providing Education Minister Yossi Sarid with a
package of material recently, Marcus received a reply
that read, "I am sorry to see that things that shouldn't be
said are being said in the media and the textbooks. At a
later stage we will have to deal with that as well." 

"That is his mistake," the soft-but-swift-spoken Marcus
says emphatically. "If you can allow an entire generation
to go by and allow the continued teaching of this type of
material, you are talking about the continuation of terror,
of hatred. If we are continuously portrayed as people
who stole their land, that will breed terror, not peace." 

Although the previous government was more attuned to
this argument, Marcus says it also did not fully understand
the significance of what was being written and taught in
the Palestinian Authority areas. 

"The big mistake of the previous government was that
they used this material for popularity points, trying to
show the world the terrible things the Palestinian
Authority was saying," Marcus says. "They did not - at
least not at the highest levels - understand that this was
reflective of a problem with the Palestinians' worldview.
The government was bringing this up to score points with
the Americans, but I was saying this is not just an issue
with which to win points; the Palestinians have to change
the way they talk." 

When Hanan Ashrawi, a longtime Palestinian
spokesperson and currently a member of the Palestinian
Legislative Council, hears of Israeli demands for
Palestinians to change the way they talk, she can't stifle a
chuckle. 

"I think that the whole issue of a media watch - as if we
have one central authority that has to impose one unified
form of discourse on everyone - is incredible," Ashrawi
maintains. "There are people who write editorials, who
write on the op-ed pages, who express their own opinion,
and so on. These people [Palestinian Media Watch] seem
to want the Palestinian Authority to brainwash everybody
to say the same thing everywhere, all at once. That is
ridiculous." 

"I don't like incitement or violence; I don't like it from any
side," Ashrawi continues. "But at the same time you can't
behave as if there is one mouthpiece. There are people
who will express themselves in a certain way, and I don't
see why people should muzzle themselves, and be
censored to say things that will appeal to the Israelis, or
even to the PA." 

Ashrawi did not address frequently heard reports that the
Palestinian Authority arrests critics who write unfavorably
of Arafat or the PA, or that Amnesty International is
currently working on a report on freedom of the press in
the Palestinian Authority. 

Instead, she articulated the Palestinian argument generally
made when Israelis bring up cases of incitement, saying
that the crux of the problem is not how the Palestinians
talk, but how the Israelis act. 

"My problem is that Israel behaves like an occupier, and
wants the Palestinians to sit back, rewrite their history,
and brainwash people to think we have peace," Ashrawi
says. "It is behavior that counts. 

"Palestinians assess the situation on the basis of what is
happening on the ground. They lose their land, can't go to
Jerusalem, are humiliated daily, and you expect them to
love Israel. This isn't going to happen." 

According to one Palestinian journalist, who did not want
to be identified, many Palestinians feel that nothing has
changed since the peace process began in 1993. "Many
feel that there is no real, genuine peace: that Israel has
retained most of the land, that the Palestinians have
jurisdiction over people, but not over the land, and that
there are still problems of settlements, water, and other
endless matters. They feel that their economic conditions
have deteriorated since the process started, so the spirit
of the peace, the essence, has not been met. As a result,
they use the same old language of the conflict." 

According to Ashrawi, "Language emerges from reality,
not from a vacuum. You cannot convince any Palestinian
whose land is being stolen that the Israelis are now our
friends. Palestinians do not get their impressions of
Israelis from the Palestinian media, they get it from the
way the Israelis behave." 

The mere fact that there is a peace process, Ashrawi
argues, will not change the tone of discourse unless the
process itself changes reality. 

And this, she argues, has not yet taken place. 

"Now there is a large gap between the process and the
verbal level on one hand, and behavior and reality on the
other," Ashrawi says. "Israel builds settlements,
confiscates land, humiliates Palestinians daily, and then
cries foul, saying, 'They don't love us.' No amount of
dictate from the PA can make the Palestinians love the
Israelis, as long as the Israelis continue to behave like an
occupier." 

Marcus is constantly shuffling papers looking for that one
relevant quote among the stack of material on his desk
that will bring home his point. He became involved with
this project in 1996 when he was working as an adviser
to religious affairs minister Shimon Shetreet. "Someone
came to me with material at the time, because I was
working with a Labor minister, and had ties with Labor
MKs. They thought that it would be more valuable if this
information did not come from the Right." 

Initially a press conference was held, at which material on
what was being said in the Palestinian press was made
public. Marcus then continued to bring the material to the
attention of Shetreet, who was one of the more hawkish
ministers in the Rabin government. 

"After the 1996 elections, I realized that there were two
perceptions of the peace process: our perception and the
Palestinian perception," Marcus says. "I realized that the
only way to get the real picture was to follow the media
on a regular basis. At that point, I set up Palestinian
Media Watch, with the goal being to monitor how they
were educating their people." 

Marcus says the organization is primarily funded by
private donations, from here and abroad. 

This was not Marcus's first foray into political lobbying.
Soon after the signing of the Oslo Accords, he set up the
Movement for the Preservation of Israel's Water, a lobby
to try to persuade the country's legislators to hold on to
the valuable mountain aquifer under the West Bank.
Marcus set aside this project some 18 months later, when
he went to work for Shetreet. 

Following the Wye Memorandum in 1998, Marcus
became a member of the anti-incitement committee, a
panel made up of Israeli, Palestinian, and American
representatives. 

Originally the anti-incitement committee met once every
two weeks, but it has met only once since the May
elections. "There is no interest now from the Palestinian
side; they just don't want to deal with it. And we are
apparently not pushing the issue," Marcus says. 

The problem with the committee, Marcus maintains, is
that it was not given any real authority. "This committee
could have been effective if it had been given some kind
of teeth, if implementation of the accords would have
been tied to what was being printed and broadcast, if all
the calls for violence, and the praise for Ayyash, would
have been seen as a clear violation of the peace accords.
But the government's attitude today is like Sarid's: This
stuff is serious, but we will deal with it at a later stage." 

Although not much progressed in the anti-incitement
committee, Marcus's Palestinian Media Watch did
manage to make a splash last summer when it published a
damning report on Palestinian Authority textbooks:
textbooks found to be replete with characterizations of
Jews and Israelis as cunning, deceitful, and treacherous,
and which referred to Israel as the Zionist enemy,
oppressors, and a provocation to the Arab world. 

"What we have succeeded in doing is raise the awareness
about this thing called incitement. Everyone is aware of it.
There was even a meeting not too long ago between
Arafat and Peace Now, and part of the meeting dealt
with the schoolbooks." 

Last month, the group came out with another report, this
one on Palestinian Authority teachers' guides, published
by the PA's Ministry of Education to accompany school
textbooks. The teachers' guides are not, the report
concludes, much better than the schoolbooks. 

For example, in a teachers' guide for a 12th-grade history
book, The Contemporary History of the Arabs and the
World, the following objectives are set: "[The student]
should learn the following generalizations: (A) Zionism is a
racist and aggressive movement; (B) Racist superiority is
the essence of Zionism and Fascism-Nazism." 

In a guide for a sixth-grade language book called Our
Arabic Language, the following appears: "Implant [in the
student] values and direction brought in the text as
follows: Wrath toward the alien thief who stole the
homeland and dispersed its people." 

The examples, Marcus maintains, are numerous. "In the
long term, this type of material is going to have a greater
impact on peace than what is or is not going to be signed
by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. 

"We signed an agreement in Oslo a number of years ago,
but if you read the papers you will have no idea that these
agreements were supposed to lead to peace. Israel has
yet to appear on a PA map. Every time we see a clip
from the classrooms, we notice that they have a map, but
Israel is always referred to as Palestine. Israel also
doesn't appear on the map on Palestinian television. We
don't exist. The map says Palestine, only Palestine. You
never see the name Israel. What we see in the
schoolbooks is "West Bank," and "Gaza." The other part
is called "occupied Palestine." 

Some may view this as a minor irritant, inconsequential in
the larger scheme of things. Indeed, Ashrawi says that
Israel doesn't appear on Palestinian maps because the
country's final borders have not been set. 

"This only means that we don't know Israel's borders yet,
not that we don't recognize Israel's right to exist,"
Ashrawi says. "People recognize Israel through PNC
[Palestinian National Council] resolutions, through
negotiations, which are official and public. I think that
what we are seeing here is too much Israeli paranoia and
suspicion." 

Ashrawi maintains that the fine-combed scouring of the
Palestinian press, and the emphasizing of talk about jihad
and shaheed, "is highly exaggerated, much ado about
nothing." 

In fact, Ashrawi counters that what is taught in Israeli
schools about Arabs is much more "sinister, because it
has within it a very negative, racist, stereotypical portrayal
of Palestinians. 

"Just because we don't have media clout to send these
talking points all over the world doesn't mean that this
type of material does not exist in Israeli papers or books,"
Ashrawi says. "Look at how Israeli public-opinion polls
reflect attitudes about Palestinians. It is racist." 

According to Ashrawi, "A language of peace will emerge
when peace begins to work, and when the other side
does not behave like an occupier. This has to happen
through a concerted effort, not through Palestinian
bashing, PA bashing, or demands to force people to love
Israel. They are not going to do that." 

But Marcus says that arguments like Ashrawi's - with
which he is well versed from his meetings in the
anti-incitement committee - belie something much deeper.
"There has been technical recognition of Israel, but in
terms of de-facto recognition, what they are teaching the
people is that Israel is a technical aberration, another
conqueror that eventually they will be rid of, like the
Crusaders. The danger in this attitude is that it will ensure
that the conflict will continue. 

"They regularly use the word 'colony' to refer to Israel,"
Marcus points out. "Everything beyond the Green Line
are settlements, but everything inside the Green Line are
colonies. When you tell your people over and over again
that the Jews are colonialists, that they have no right [to
be] here, that they are evil people who have stolen your
land, and that you should be hating them because of it,
you are breeding terror, breeding terrorists. Teach a kid
that everything was wonderful until the Zionists came and
stole their land, and any normal child is going to say, 'I'm
going to grow up, defend my land and get it back.'" 

Omissions of Israel on the map, or hateful references to
Israel and the Jews, should not be neatly placed on a
shelf to be dealt with at a later time, he says. "When you
call it incitement, you get a perception that we are
involved in a peace process, but that there is this small
problem of incitement on the side. But this is not
something just on the surface, something at skin level, and
once you erase the incitement, everything will be okay." 

Marcus says he is not calling to stop the peace process,
but rather to start it. "The process is not just about having
negotiations and giving away more land. The process
means telling our children that the whole land may be
Eretz Yisrael, but that the PA exists, they are here, and
we are going to have to give them land because we want
to live with them in peace. But I want to hear that from
the other side as well. I want to hear the other side say:
'The Jews are here, and have a right to be here.' But that
is not their message, and until that message comes across,
we will suffer from terror for ever." 

Unless there is a fundamental switch, Marcus says,
"unless they start teaching their people to live in peace,
unless they teach that Yihye Ayyash is not a hero but the
murderer of dozens of people who were just riding in
buses or walking in the street, then there will be no
chance for peace."