Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin
April 21, 2005
PALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH
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PA Accusation: US forcing Christianity on Muslims
By Itamar Marcus & Barbara Crook

Introduction

Palestinian Authority leaders and the official PA media have long presented
America as an enemy of Islam and the US war on terror as a war against
Islam. This promotion continues unabated today, in spite of the American
political and financial support of new PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

This week, a religious leader whose salary is paid by the PA added a new
accusation to the standard attacks on American policy by preaching that the
US war effort in Iraq and elsewhere, including "Palestine," attempts to
force Muslims to convert to Christianity. He said US actions today were
crueler than those of a Christian Caesar who, according to Islamic
tradition, dipped a Muslim into boiling oil in order to force his
conversion to Christianity.

In addition, an old accusation was repeated in an article in the official
PA daily this week. The writer states that the true enemy of the Arabs is
not Israel but the US, and that Israel is merely an arm of the US in its
imperialist wars. In this article the US is accused of "grinding the bones"
of Palestinian children, "devouring their eyes."

It is important to note that the inflammatory sermon comes only a few weeks
after the PA leadership announced it would review the Friday sermons to
remove incitement and hateful content.

The following are the two items from this week's PA media:

Friday sermon on PA TV

"Our prisoners are subjected to most criminal kinds of physical torture.
They are tied with chains and trussed up with iron chains, and hung by
their feet from the ceiling, like animals are hung after slaughter for
days. Many of them lose consciousness. Our prisoners are exposed to
beating, electricity and fire tortures.
"The prisoners are exposed to conversion to Christianity, to abandoning
religion, [as it was] in the distant past and recently. Yes, our prisoners
are forced to curse Muhammad; our prisoners are forced to curse the
religion of Allah, our prisoners are forced to curse the essence of
divinity.

"Haven't you heard of our prisoners [of war] in Palestine, have you not
heard of our prisoners in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and all over the world, who
are exploited and imprisoned, and are offered conversion to Christianity?

"This is an old - new infidel policy. Allah's servant, Ibn Al-Hudhafa
Al-Sahmi, totally refused this. The [Christian] Caesar told him: 'We shall
dip you in boiling oil'. He answered: 'Do as you wish'. He arrived with two
Muslims and was dipped in boiling oil until his flesh separated from his
bone. But what the Caesar did was not as bad as what his followers do, the
missionaries of freedom and democracy of today. In the name of Allah, what
Caesar did, dipping Muslims in boiling oil, was one hundred thousand times
lighter than what their soldiers are doing today to our wives and daughters
in Iraq, in Palestine, in Guantanamo and in Abu Gharib.

"What Caesar did is not as bad as five American soldiers who meet to rape
one of our daughters, a girl who has the honor of a Muslim woman, in order
to desecrate her honor at the Abu-Gharib prison."
[Sheikh Ibrahim Mudayris, PA TV, April 15, 2005]

Article from official PA daily newspaper

"Seventeen years (since the assassination of the fighter Abu Jihad) that
the murderous millstones of America have been turning, grinding the bones
of our children and devouring their eyes. Not Israel! There is no such
thing called Israel! It is America repeating upon us, the Arabs, the
tragedy of the Indians [sic] from the dawn of her [American] history that
began with this first crime of genocide."

[Article by Said "Abu Ajima," Al Hayat Al Jadida, April 16, 2005 ]

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