In an apparent attempt to turn the tables on critics, a Saudi-owned weekly published a story claiming a study shows Israeli society is teaching its children to hate Palestinian children, making a peace agreement impossible.
However, in a statement sent to WorldNetDaily, the author of the study says Arabic-language al-Majalla magazine completely misrepresented his work.
 Al-Majalla magazine |
The story – published also in English by the Saudi state-approved daily Arab News – claimed research presented to the London School of Economics showed this generation of Israeli parents knows “how to plant hate and anger toward Arabs in children’s minds to such an extent that children are happy to hear of the death of Palestinian child or to hear news of a Palestinian official’s being assassinated.”
The article says “the hate Israeli children harbor toward Palestinians has reached a high point.”
“Children under the age of 8 have pictures in their minds of Palestinian children as blind and with no teeth,” the al-Majalla story says. “They wish that those children would suffer from AIDS and burn in hell. Israeli children admitted to these feelings. What is even stranger is that they used very strong language, which cannot be published here.”
But researcher Asi Sharabi says the writer of the story, Tarsier Jabber, never spoke with him. The Israeli student, studying in London, says Jabber fabricated quotes and selectively used material from his research published in a 2001 story in an Israeli newspaper.
“I have never said, nor have been quoted as saying, that ‘all Israeli children believe that Arabs are bad and Israelis are good, that Jews want peace and Arabs want war and that Jews are human and Arabs are not’ nor that ‘such feelings are increasing in these children,'” Sharabi said.
The researcher continued: “Neither did I ask an Arab child to write a letter to an Israeli child or say – as was quoted in al-Majalla – ‘The letter came as a shock to me.'”
 Palestinian Authority television (photo: Palestinian Media Watch) |
The al-Majalla story appears to be a response to monitors of Middle East society who show how Palestinian culture, through its schools, media and political propaganda, is teaching children to hate Jews and strive for martyrdom.
Sharabi also said he never presented his work to a teaching committee at the London School of Economics and never had the work translated into Arabic as the article asserts.
The al-Majalla article, published June 8, was titled “Israeli Children Manifest Shocking Hatred of Arabs.” Arab News titled its version “Psychological Study of the Mentality of Jewish Children” and included an uncaptioned photo of children who appear to be laughing over the abuse of a bird.
The story claimed Sharabi conducted the study “because of a contradiction in Israeli policy.”
“In August 2000,” the article says, according to Arab News, “Ehud Barak promised to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in August 2001, Sharon was talking about the assassination policy. ”
Sharabi said Jabber made that up.
The actual reason he did the study, he said, is “because I wanted to try to explore how Jewish-Israeli children construct the meaning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in order to modify those attitudes, which are presently created and foment the hostile environment.”
Sharabi said Jabber also fabricated this quote, which purports to show the “difference of vision” between Israeli and Palestinian children: “The Arab girl wrote: ‘To the Israeli child that I saw at the Pyramids in Egypt. My father refused to allow me to talk to you. I told him I wanted you to be my friend so I could ask you why Israelis are killing Palestinians.’
“The above words are fiction, not journalism,” Sharabi said, directly challenging Jabber. “Show me your evidence of these quotes, or of this conversation.”
But al-Majalla followed that quote with its conclusion, after hinting a study of Palestinian children would reveal attitudes that contrast with Jewish children:
The most important question is who – or what – is responsible for forming these beliefs in young [Jewish] children. Israel has achieved a huge success in molding the minds of children younger than 10. Thus does Zionist thought develop day by day. Hate and anger are being planted in children and this will make it impossible to reach a peace agreement between the two peoples.
Sharabi said he “deeply regrets that peace-oriented research, conducted with the ultimate goal of exploring and exposing the consequences of violence, hatred and fear … is being used as a flaying tool.”
Glorifying child ‘martyrs’
As WorldNetDaily reported, Palestinian authorities meanwhile are rewarding children for embracing violence and hate by honoring letters extolling those themes in a recent youth writing contest.
Other WND stories have shown how in Palestinian nurseries, preschools, entertainment venues, classrooms and summer camps, children are taught to hate Jews, to glorify “jihad” (holy war), violence, death and child martyrdom almost from birth, as an essential part of their culture and destiny.
One example is a monthly children’s magazine published by the Hamas terrorist organization that urges Palestinian and Iraqi children to pray for Allah to “destroy the cruel, rapist Jews” and bring victory to the Palestinian and Iraqi causes.
According to Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, examination of Palestinian Authority television reveals “incessant broadcasting” of programming that “extols and glorifies the dead and especially their willingness to be killed, and portrays their afterlife as idyllic.”
One particular film, he says, “openly and explicitly tells the children to seek death by portraying the most famous child ‘martyr,’ Muhammad al-Dura, calling to other children to join him, in his idyllic afterlife.”
In 2000, the Mufti of Jerusalem, the city’s highest Muslim religious authority, calling for the complete “liberation” by Palestinians not only of Jerusalem, but of all of Israel, said “sacrifice” and “martyrdom” of Palestinian children prove that “the new generation will carry on the mission with determination.”
Related stories:
Poison pens: Kids spew toxic venom
Hamas launches webzine for kids
Jerusalem cleric praises child ‘sacrifices’
Palestinian kids raised for war
Palestinian TV urging children to kill
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