State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence
by IPT News Jun 19, 2015 at 1:48 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4886/state-department-report-minimizes-palestinian

The U.S. State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism 2014 issued Friday
minimizes official Palestinian incitement to violence against Israel and
completely overlooks Palestinian glorification of terrorists.

The annual report lists major terrorist incidents worldwide and outlines
each country's counterterrorism efforts and legislation. Terrorism attacks
and their resulting deaths spiked last year, the report found, an increase
largely driven by attacks by the Islamic State and Nigeria's Boko Haram
terrorist groups.

With respect to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the report praises the PA
for taking "significant steps to ensure that official institutions in the
West Bank that fall under its control do not create content that leads to
incitement to violence." The report acknowledges that "some instances of
inciting taking place via official media" still occur, listing only three
examples. However, the report diminishes the fact that incitement to
violence is a systematic and institutionalized PA phenomenon.

Click here for an Investigative Project on Terrorism comprehensive outline
of Palestinian violent incitement focused only on incidents last fall.

The State Department assessment also ignores the direct participation of
senior PA officials in praising terrorists and inciting violence against
Israelis and Jews.

For example, the report does not mention PA President Mahmoud Abbas' call
last October for Palestinians to prevent Jews from going to the Temple Mount
compound "in any way." The video clip of Abbas' Oct. 17 speech was shown 19
on PA television times in three days, implicitly calling for Palestinians to
use violence against Israelis.

Instead, the report described PA efforts "to ensure" Friday sermons in more
than 1,800 mosques controlled by the PA "do not endorse incitement to
violence ... the guidance is that no sermon can discuss political or lead to
incitement to violence."

In February, however, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs and other
prominent religious officials resorted to an age-old blood libel accusing
Jews of attacking Muslims sites and that Israel is trying to destroy the
al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports. Such accusations are
baseless and encourage Palestinians to conduct terrorist attacks against
Israel.

The State Department report also omits any reference to official Palestinian
glorification of terrorists.

For example, after the October shooting of Rabbi Yehuda Glick, Abbas sent a
condolence letter to the family of terrorist Mutaz Hijazi who was killed by
Israeli authorities in a firefight during a raid for his capture. In the
letter, Abbas called the terrorist a "Shahid," a martyr, who "rose to Heaven
while defending our people's rights and holy places," PMW reported.

Moreover, a senior Fatah official claimed that Hijazi was a Fatah operative
and expressed pride in his actions, a PMW translation shows.

These blatant omissions from the report leave create a sense that examples
of Palestinian incitement to violence and glorification of terrorists are
sporadic occurrences. In reality, the Palestinian Authority
institutionalizes a systematic campaign of violent incitement and continues
to praise terrorists for killing Jews and Israelis, while encouraging other
Palestinians to follow in their footsteps.