Major Australian Zionist lobbyist Albert Dadon likes to move in the halls of power, romancing the political and media elite. It’s not hard to impress when junkets are arranged to enjoy the wonders of occupying Israel.
The Palestinians are saying one thing in English while contradicting themselves in Arabic, according to Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus.
Speaking to a small gathering hosted by Albert Dadon, founder of the Australia-Israel Leadership Forum on Tuesday, the Israel-based activist broadcast numerous media clips, which he said showed the Palestinian people are not ready for peace.
While the US Government and the Middle East Quartet (the UN, US, EU and Russia) have made recognition of the Jewish State a prerequisite for peace talks, state-sanctioned Palestinian television stations continue to ignore the Jewish State.
Marcus showed footage from a recent documentary, which speaks of the Palestinian state spreading along the Mediterranean from Gaza and Ashkelon to Haifa. He also displayed pages from schoolbooks with the Palestinian flag covering all the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“There is a constant message to see a world in which Israel does not exist,” Marcus explained. “This is a basic problem of recognition. There is no message to perceive a world where Israel is a reality.”
Just last month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the world he believes an Israeli state and a Palestinian state can live side-by-side. However, the message from Fatah-run TV is very different.
“There is no comparison to what is being said in English, it is a whole other category,” Marcus explained, saying he had addressed the issue with the US and Israeli Administrations, which are both taking it very seriously.
A second major concern, according to the Palestinian Media Watch founder, is that glorification of… violence continues in the territories.
Unfortunately for Dadon, there is something called the internet. Itamar Marcus is connected with the most radical and violent of West Bank settlers. Here’s Hanan Ashrawi writing about him recently:
At a press conference [in the US] last week, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon appeared alongside Itamar Marcus, a right-wing settler and director of an Israeli NGO called Palestinian Media Watch, to receive a report produced by PMW. Later in the week, Marcus appeared on Capitol Hill to present his report to Congress. In the U.S., PMW has been running ads on major television networks of late echoing the accusations of incitement against President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad.
What Ayalon and Marcus failed to mention is that PMW is closely connected to the New York-based Central Fund of Israel, which gives money to some of the most extreme elements in Israel’s settler movement, including a yeshiva in a West Bank settlement that is home to Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, who published a book last year justifying the killing of gentile babies on the grounds they might grow up to pose a threat to the state.
Ironically, if PMW’s television ads were produced by Palestinians and aimed at Israelis, they would no doubt constitute incitement according Israel’s definition. Indeed, that definition seems to include any action or statement critical of Israeli policy. Thus, the encouragement of non-violent protest against Israel’s 43-year-old military occupation, the banning of goods produced in settlements by the PA, and attempts to make Israel respect Palestinian rights at international forums like the United Nations all qualify.
Nice friends Dadon is making here and somebody that people should now about. He is introducing Zionist purveyors of hate to talk about Palestinian violence?