haaretz.com

At certain moments, while watching a scene from a program broadcast by Palestinian television on October 25 of last year, it is difficult to believe that this is the official television channel of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, and not that of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad.

And yet, the program in question features a “field report” by Palestinian television from Tulkarem, in order to relate the wonders of the master terrorist Abbas a-Said, who is jailed in Israel and was sentenced to 35 life sentences.

Policeman standing next to a Jerusalem bus, after a suicide bombing, June 2002.

This is a man who was considered at the beginning of the previous decade the head of the military wing of Hamas in the town, and responsible for two of the harshest suicide bombings Israel has ever known, including the attack on the Park Hotel in Netanya and on the night of the Passover Seder in 2002.

The reporter, who works at a program dedicated to the families of prisoners, did not spare the superlatives: “We are outside the home of the warrior hero, the commander, the lion of the prison, Abbas a-Said.”

And the play continues. The reporter turns to two freed women prisoners sitting in the house of a-Said and asks them: “How do you feel now that you are sitting in the house of the leader, the hero, the defeater of the enemy, the vanquisher of the prison and the lion of the investigation?”

One of them, Dia al-Jiosi, responds that a-Said was a role model “for us.” Later the reporter goes out to interview the neighbors of the “hero.” One of them explains that a-Said is “the crown on our head that brought the redemption to the nation, without a doubt he made us proud,” said the neighbor.

Apparently, this example is not atypical on official Palestinian TV, even in the age of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ rule. Nan Jacques Zilberdik, an analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, explains that on Palestinian TV “there is no message of peace with Israel.”

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