Life Imitates 'Art' as Deaths of Arab Boys in Combat Zone Depicted as
Extension of Palestinian Propaganda Film
By Michael Widlanski Sunday, 10 April, 2005

When three Arab teenagers were killed, according to the Israeli army,
smuggling weapons from Egypt into Gaza Saturday, the Palestinian Authority
(PA) said, it was, essentially, a case of life imitating
"art"-specifically a well-known PA propaganda film showing children
murdered when their football game angered Israeli soldiers.

"Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed Saturday three children as they
were playing in [a] playground in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah,"
declared WAFA, the official PA-PLO news agency, at midnight Saturday-Sunday.

The idea of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian children playing
football is the subject of several Palestinian propaganda films shown
regularly over the last three years in the afternoon hours (generally
between two and four pm) of PBC television.

PBC television has not apparently shown the film in recent weeks, but it
opened its Sunday programming with gory footage of the faces and bodies of
the three boys lying on metal trays in the morgue in Gaza.

The Palestinian broadcast media has also not told its viewers and
listeners about Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks on the Israeli town of
Sderot on Thursday as well as several attacks that day and over the weekend
on Israeli communities inside Gaza that are slated for withdrawal.

The Islamic terror groups HAMAS and Islamic Jihad renewed large-scale
rocket and mortar attacks Saturday night, with at least 50 reported hits on
Israeli houses.

In a statement, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of "war
crimes" and "a deliberate attempt to torpedo" what Palestinians call the
"cooling-off period" in armed hostilities, an agreement concluded between
Abbas, HAMAS and Jihad.

Abbas's remarks, reported on the Palestinian media, made no mention of
the HAMAS and Jihad mortar and rocket attacks on Israel, although
Palestinian newspapers included a tiny mention Friday of the Qassam rocket
on Sderot.

Instead, the Palestinian media have emphasized Israeli cruelty and
attempts to "Judaize Jerusalem."

"Witnesses said a group of children were playing football (i.e.
soccer--Arabic: korat al-qadam) in a nearby playground when Israeli soldiers
unjustifiably opened fire, killing three of them," asserted the WAFA report
that was aired on Palestinian television and radio.

The Palestinian media identified the infiltrating youths as Ashraf
Mousa, Khaled Ghannam, and Ahmad Abu-Jazar, but they did not identify the
two other boys crawling with them and apparently carrying weapons and
equipment, who were turned over to PA forces near the no-man's land along
the Philadelphi Corridor which has been the site of intense combat for
months.

"Witnesses revealed a group of children were playing football in a nearby
playground when Israeli soldiers unjustifiably opened fire, killing three of
them," declared the official Palestinian report.

Meanwhile, the PA-controlled media have done everything possible to
increase the general level of tension. PA television ran an old propaganda
film Sunday morning on the alleged Israeli massacre of Arabs at Dir Yassin
in Jerusalem in 1948, featuring pictures of mangled bodies and their names
symbolically "written in blood" in red.

The battle to "prevent the Judaization of Jerusalem" has become a major
focus of Palestinian politics in the last four weeks.

"The Muslims inside this house and outside this house will not allow anyone,
no matter who he is, to soil their faith nor to pollute mosque," declared
Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the regular preacher-lecturer at the Al-Aqsa
Mosque.

His remarks appeared as the lead item on the front page Sunday of the
PA-controlled newspaper Al-Ayyam, which gets funding from the Palestinian
Authority.

© 2005 Michael Widlanski

Permission to re-use IMRA

Dr. Michael Widlanski is a specialist in Arab politics and communication
whose doctorate dealt with the Palestinian broadcast media. He is a former
reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times
,The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post.