16-Jun-21: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?

Image Source: Red Cross

There's unique value to Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab public opinion. 

They often come with internal contradictions and unanswered ambiguities. But at least they don't suffer from, or impose on their readers, the wishful thinking and projection that make some outside analyses, especially from far-away reporters and columnists with axes to grind, misleading and worse.

We have reported here for years about the results of periodic polling done by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), headed by a respected professional, Dr. Khalil Shikaki. We know Shikaki only by his work and reputation; there is no personal connection between us.

Before getting into the details and the data, it's worth repeating what we wrote in one of our previous posts about Palestinian Arab opinion polls ["04-Apr-18: Here's (one view of) what the Palestinian Arabs want"]:

Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion can be valuable tools for understanding what they think at any given time. And no less importantly, how accurate the assessments of what they want for the future are. And to be blunt about this, they're invariably more valuable by far than media guesses about what the Palestinian Arabs think and want. Claims are made freely and often about Palestinian Arab aspirations. Very often, though, the data tell a story that's at total variance from what's being claimed about them. That's why we have chosen from time to time to publicize here the results of opinion polls conducted by relatively respected organizations within Palestinian Arab society.

PSR Public Opinion Poll Number 80 was released yesterday. It reports on polling conducted on a sample of 1,200 adults interviewed face to face in 120 randomly selected locations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between June 9 and 12, 2021. The margin of error is plus/minus 3%.

The press release summarizing its findings starts with uncommonly strong language, speaking of "a paradigm shift in public attitudes against the PA and its leadership and in favor of Hamas and armed struggle". 

In these current fraught times, you would think this would get significant headline treatment. But the PSR polls almost never do. Here are some of the key findings.

Political leadership

• PSR found widespread public discontent with how President Mahmoud Abbas, now 85 years old, leads them. Abbas was elected on January 9, 2005 to serve as President of the Palestinian National Authority (usually called the PA) until January 15, 2009. More than sixteen years after taking charge, he gives no indication that he's ready to relinquish control. Quite the opposite.
• Abbas announced on January 15, 2021 that elections would take place for the no-longer-functional Palestinian Legislative Council on May 22, 2021. These were going to be followed by presidential elections on July 31, 2021. Based on reports we saw, there were few observers who believed they were actually going to happen.
• And on April 30, 2021 ["Palestinian leader delays parliamentary and presidential elections, blaming Israel" via Reuters] the skeptics were proven right. It was all Israel's fault, naturally - because everything bad in their world is the fault of the Jews..
• Now notice that, as the poll shows, two-thirds of Palestinian Arabs reject Abbas’ decision to postpone the elections. To us, this is a big deal. While the Western media are busy swallowing Abbas' chronic blame-all-problems-on-the Zionists, Abbas' subjects understand the games that are being played and don't like them. 
• The same proportion, two-thirds, say the reason the elections were postponed is not because of Zionist dirty doings but rather (which is obviously the case) that Abbas "was afraid of their outcome, not because Israel has prevented the holding of elections in East Jerusalem." His placing the blame on Israel is the subject of an April 27, 2021 Associated Press report ["Egyptian officials: Palestinians plan to call off elections"] in which the obvious is pointed out: that the Israeli role is nothing more than "a pretext for Abbas to cancel a parliamentary election that his Fatah movement is expected to lose badly. Fatah has split into three rival lists, paving the way for Hamas to emerge as the biggest party in parliament."
• The latest PSR data bear this out. A clear majority prefer Hamas leadership over Fatah under Abbas. More concretely, if presidential elections were held today on a head-to-head basis between two candidates, Mahmoud Abbas would get 27% and lose massively to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh who gets 59%. Three months ago, a PSR poll predicted Haniyeh at 46% and Abbas at 47%. This is not what Abbas wants to hear.
• Nor is this: In a hypothetical two-horse race between Haniyeh and convicted and imprisoned-for-life terrorist Marwan Barghouti who personally paid for the guitar bomb that murdered our daughter (among a long list of additional crimes for which he is in prison), Barghouti would win 51% to 42%. But note, which PSR does not, that in a previous poll three years ago, the malodorous Mr Barghouti did considerably better than this month. 
• Abbas does worse in the West Bank than he does in Gaza. In Gaza, Abbas would get 30% of votes (44% three months ago); Haniyeh gets 60% (56% three months ago). In the West Bank which Fatah/PA/Abbas nominally control, Abbas gets just 25% (52% three months ago) and Haniyeh gets 59% (38% three months ago).
• What's more, there is "widespread public discontent with the performance of the PA government and leadership as well as Fatah during the [recent] confrontations and the war."
• Overall, support for Hamas electorally and in general has increased dramatically at the expense of Fatah: "A majority of the Palestinians think that Hamas is more deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people" than Fatah under Abbas’ leadership.
• Asked about the ability of the current PA government headed by Prime Minister (since April 2019) Mohammad Shtayyeh, to improve economic conditions, 62% expect failure.

Palestinian Arab Gazans with no work - 2017 [Image Source]

Peace

• What are Palestinian Arab society's preferred courses for getting out of what their report calls the current status quo. 27% of them say “reaching a peace agreement with Israel” (down from 36% three months ago) - not much of an answer without some explanation of how this gets done but it's the answer the pollsters chose to offer. But then a major larger group amounting to 39% say waging “an armed struggle against the Israeli occupation” (sharply up from 26% three months ago). 11% prefer waging "non-violent resistance”. 18% say the status quo isn't actually that bad and prefer to keep it.
• Asked about the desirability of re-engaging with the United States now that Trump has gone and the Democrats under Biden are in charge, 54% don't want it to happen. 
• The US and Europe speak often and enthusiastically about a two-state solution. But support for the concept (which was not defined in the poll for reasons not explained in the PSR report) was a mere 39%., almost identical to what it was three months ago. A whopping 58% of Palestinian Arabs say they oppose it.

War

• Support for a return to armed confrontation and intifada rose sharply to 60%. Support for a resumption of negotiations with Israel and the belief that negotiation are the best way to end "occupation" fell.
• Which side "won" the May 2021 battle between Hamas forces in Gaza and the IDF? The Palestinian Arab public has a breathtakingly clear view on this: "An overwhelming majority... (77%) believes that Hamas has come out a winner in its last war with Israel while only 1% think Israel came out a winner."
• 72% think those 4,300+ Hamas rockets were launched at Israeli towns and homes "in defense of Jerusalem and al Aqsa Mosque". 
• Of the various groups "most willing to defend Jerusalem and its holy places", Hamas gets a 29%, rating and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah/PA a dismissive 3%.
• 60% of those polled believe the participation (presumably the civil disobedience, riots, armed and unarmed attacks on Israelis) of "the Palestinian citizens of Israel in the recent confrontation was driven, first and foremost, by their desire to defend the holy sites." 
• 94% "are proud of the performance of the Gaza Strip during the May confrontation with Israel while 6% say they are not."

Image Source: Times of Israel

Life

• Asked whether they have a positive view of life ("positive evaluation of conditions"), only 8% of people in the Gaza Strip say yes. In the West Bank, it's a whopping 24%.
• 26% of all Palestinian Arabs "want to emigrate due to political, security, and economic conditions". Breakdown: in the Gaza Strip it's 42% (slightly up on three months ago when it was 40%). In the West Bank, it's 15% (sharply down on 23% of three months ago). 
• Based on viewing habits of the past three months, by far the most watched TV channel for Palestinian Arabs is Aljazeera TV (Arabic of course) with 36% of respondents. Next came Al-Aqsa TV with a mere 13% and six others with far smaller audiences.

Corruption in Palestinian Arab institutions

• Is there corruption in PA institutions? 84% say yes.
• Is there corruption in Hamas institutions? 57% say yes.
• Can you criticize PA institutions without fear? 46% of West Bankers say yes. 
• Can you criticize Hamas institutions without fear? 50% of Gazans say yes.

Rewards for Terror

• This being a Palestinian Arab survey of Palestinian Arab views, no one should be surprised that the poll avoids asking whether the Palestinian Authority's notorious incentive payments program for imprisoned or dead terrorists ("Pay to Slay" or less colorfully Rewards for Terror) ought to continue. Of course (we say) they want it to continue. 
• Instead, based on the responses, the PSR poll question is apparently this: Should those payments "to the families of martyrs and prisoners [be] based on need assessment and number of family members rather than on the act committed by the martyr or the number of years in jail"? 
• Payments according to how sickening the act of terror was and how long the prison sentence, assuming the terrorists were caught, tried and convicted, is how it works today. Adjusting it to take account of the terrorist family's actual needs is the far-fetched proposal offered by the poll question. 
• The result is absolutely (and disturbingly) clear: 70% are opposed to the suggested change. They're happy with how things are today - more dead and injured Israelis means more cash from the chronically insolvent PA budget and they see nothing wrong with that.  Abbas and his cronies, unable to build or run their own education system, their own decent health-care system, their own industrial infrastructure to create employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for a society with a staggering unemployment rate of 38% among the crucial youth cohort aged between 18 and 29 (2019 data) - instead simply spend the foreign cash the PA gets from foolish government officials in Europe and elsewhere. It's an easy decision.
• A significant footnote: The 2019 unemployment rate (official Palestinian Authority figures) among that same youth cohort in Gaza stood at an unbelievable 63%. It's a piece of information to keep in mind when we see coverage of masses of Gazans being herded to protest rallies and wildly violent "protests" in the vicinity of the border with Israel.  

There's much to ponder in these findings, perhaps the most significant part of it being that Palestinian Arab leadership is neither building a credible alternative to peace with Israel nor doing anything to moderate their society's passion for war, confrontation and self-delusion.

It's a depressing picture for anyone who gives a damn.

Some of our earlier posts based on PSR's findings:

• 10-Dec-14: What else do Palestinian Arabs want, beyond the 80% who say killing of ordinary Israelis is a good thing?
• 22-Sep-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?
• 14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 16-May-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 15-Jun-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 26-Sep-17: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now
• 16-Jul-18: What do the Palestinian Arabs want? What do they believe? What do they think?
• 13-Sep-18: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 04-Jun-19: What do Palestinian Arabs think?
• 05-Feb-20: What do Palestinian Arabs think?

Click here for the full list.

[For Polish-speaking readers, a version translated into the Polish language is online at the Listy z naszego sadu site - dziękuję ci bardzo, Małgorzata.]

01-Apr-21: What, as elections approach, do Palestinian Arabs think about their society's corruption?

Screen shot from a YouTube clip called "Super Rich Palestinians"

Here's how the opening paragraph of a brief but concentrated report entitled "Corruption in the Palestinian Authority" reads:

"Corruption is endemic in the Palestinian Authority, the private sector and NGOs. It is spreading across all sections of Palestinian society."

The work of a Palestinian Arab organization - AMAN, The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity, based in Gaza and Ramallah - the report takes readers on a walk through a depressing landscape, touching on massive misappropriation of funds by senior officials, corrupt actions on the part of the highest-level judges, embezzlement in the Palestinian Arab intelligence agencies, the widespread smuggling of medications, the distribution of counterfeit drugs. 

"Stamping out corruption is an urgent need", its authors say. 

"There is no doubt that corruption is not new to the Palestinian Authority and that it has been endemic since the very beginning in Ramallah... This corruption began from the first moment that the PA began to gather the Palestinian people’s money and aid and pour it into the Fatah budget, even though this money was given to the Palestinian people, not the PA or its officials who have divided it amongst themselves."

The name of the revered Palestinian Arab leader Yasser Arafat is, not surprisingly, sprinkled among the charges. So is that of the current president, Mahmoud Abbas. And not in a kind and gentle way. 

The report was published in 2013. Has progress been made since then? Not if the events unfolding in the current chapter involving vaccines to combat the Covid-19 pandemic are anything to go by.

Jake Wallis Simons, in an exposé publish on March 9, 2021 in The Spectator ["Corruption affects everything in Palestine – even vaccines"], suggests that the situation remains grim.

Visit certain parts of the West Bank and you’ll encounter mansions owned by senior officials in the Palestinian Authority (PA). By any standards – let alone those to which ordinary citizens are accustomed – they are impressive, with arches, colonnades and tall windows. If you’d been watching them in recent weeks, you might have seen vaccines being quietly delivered to these residences in unmarked cars, having been skimmed off the supply intended for medical workers.

Those, at least, were the allegations made by a number of Palestinian human rights and civil society groups. Last week, the Palestinian health ministry was forced to come clean. In a statement, the ministry admitted that 10 per cent of the 12,000 doses it had received had been put aside for government ministers and members of the PLO’s executive committee.

The rest, it claimed, had been given to workers treating Covid patients and employees of the health ministry. Aside from the 200 doses that were sent to the Jordanian royal court, that is. And those reserved for presidential guards. And those that had been given to the Palestinian national football team... 

According to AMAN, a Palestinian anti-corruption body linked to Transparency International, almost 70 per cent of Palestinians believe that their government institutions are corrupt. An EU report found that embezzlement had led to a loss of £1.7 billion of aid money between 2008 and 2012 alone. Huge sums are spent on fake companies and projects, including – in 2017 – a non-existent airline...

The Spectator piece (that's just an extract above) is a revealing essay, an easy and short read but with some important messages for the many who take an interest in the Middle East and its conflicts. It reflects a concern about which we have written (often) since shortly after our child's murder at the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists in the service of Hamas. 

Jake's bottom line is one we share: 

It’s high time for those on the Left to stop using the conflict to burnish their own political credentials and consider the real roots of the problem.

To which we would add: And it's time foreign governments, especially of donor countries providing aid to the Abbas regime in Ramallah, realize the funds they hand over so casually are part of the solution to what ails Palestinian Arab society. 

We think there are lots of people who think the same way: ordinary Palestinian Arabs.

Getting a real and reliable sense of what they feel about important issues is harder than most people would imagine. This has to do with the massive distortions, the centralized control of Palestine's media, the fear of the multiple overlapping security forces, the relative ineffectiveness of the institutions of justice, and other similar dark realities. 

And also the way "government jobs, which are prized due to the weak private economy, are awarded on the basis of cronyism rather than merit" [source]. The latest data show [here] that unemployment in Hamas-controlled Gaza is a fraction under 50% and rising. For the West Bank, we're still checking and will update. If you were in their shoes, how ready would you be to go finding fault with public officials who perhaps hold the key to your salary-earning job and perhaps those of your spouse and/or children?

We have focused over several years on Palestinian Arab studies of Palestinian Arab views via the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (commonly called PSR). We summarized their published reports for the first time a little over eight years ago ["15-Jan-13: Update on the Palestinian Arab Terrorism Index"]. And since then about a dozen more times [click here].

In a blog post some five and a half years ago, we posed these question about opinion measurement:

Polls are fine and useful and so on but there's another way of gauging public opinion that most of the world uses regularly. When were the last elections in either of the two Palestinian Arab entities? Why are elections such a low priority for people ruled by autocratic regimes, living with significantly un-free media, and ostensibly desperate to have their voices heard? ["03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?"]

We're addressing this now because there are indications (and the matter is by no means certain) we're going to find out soon. 

Mercedes-Benz Palestine

The most recent PSR poll, published a week ago, is timed to throw light on where Palestinian Arab opinions stands as an exceedingly rare event - Palestinian Authority elections - seems to be appearing on the horizon. The full text of the PSR's Public Opinion Poll Number 79, released March 23, 2021, is online here. 

Actually, they are preparing for three separate but related upcoming elections: (1) For the Palestinian Legislative Council on May 22, 2021. (2) For President of the Palestinian National Authority on July 31, 2021; and (3) for the Palestinian National Council of the PLO on August 31, 2021,

Our interest is mainly limited to a sub-set of the analysis: what do its subjects think about corruption in the Palestinian Authority? 

Here's what the PSR data tell us about the views of Palestinian Arab adults, via a sample of 1,200 polled face-to-face in 120 randomly-selected Palestinian Arab locations by Palestinian Arab interviewers speaking in Arabic during the period between March 14 and March 19, 2021:

• The perception of corruption in PA institutions: 84% 
• The perception of corruption in the Hamas-controlled institutions of the Gaza Strip: 70%
• Asked to assume that the PA (meaning Fatah) wins the elections, 36% of those polled say PA corruption will get larger; 16% say PA corruption will decrease. And though the poll report doesn't say this, we assume the remaining 48% expressed no opinion. If we're right, that's almost half the Palestinian Arab population who would rather not say. That may be the nmost significant statistic to emerge from this study. So now note the next bullet: 
• Related to corruption as Jake Wallis Simons explains above, nearly two-thirds of Palestinian Arabs (62%) say the vaccination process in the West Bank lacks transparency and justice. The percentage who say it is transparent and just is 33%. Evidently on vaccination, almost no one lacks an opinion.
• Also COVID-19-related: those dissatisfied with the PA's measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus are fully 50%. (Further break-down: In the West Bank which is ruled by Fatah/PA officials, those dis-satisfied are 61%. In the Gaza Strip which is dominated by Hamas, the dis-satisfied are 34%.) And 47% are satisfied.  

There's much more to think about, as there always is, in the PSR poll results. But the only other part we want to highlight at this point concerns overall goals and overall problems. Somewhat surprisingly, the problems and the goals seem not to match up - a phenomenon we have seen over and again among the Palestinian Arabs, (It's worth a short essay but not today.)

Main Palestinian Arab goals, according to PSR:

1. "To end Israeli occupation in the areas occupied in 1967 and build a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital: 43% 
2. "To obtain the right of return of refugees to their 1948 towns and villages": 31%
3. "To establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights of Palestinians": 14%
4. "To build a pious or moral individual and a religious society, one that applies all Islamic teachings": 11%

And the most serious problem confronting Palestinian society today?:

1. Poverty and unemployment: 30%
2. Curbing the spread of corruption in public institutions: 25%
3. "The continuation of occupation and settlement activities" of the Israelis: 24%
4. "The continued  siege of the Gaza Strip and the closure of its crossings": 13%
5. "The lack of national unity": 6%

We'll know we're getting to a better place with our Arab neighbors when their goals align with their problems. Till then, there's not much room for optimism.

[This post, like many others before it, has been translated into the Polish language ("Co Palestyńczycy w obliczu zbliżających się wyborów myślą o korupcji w ich społeczeństwie?") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

18-Aug-20: An Arab-on-Israeli knifing in Jerusalem's Old City and a dead assailant

Screen cap from the Israel Police video report [here]

The general sense of fury being projected by a wounded and failed Palestinian Authority leadership in the wake of Israel's suddenly open 'normalized' relationship with the United Arab Emirates received its depressingly predictable expression last night.

Here in Jerusalem, near Lion's Gate (שער האריות) in the Old City at around 8:40 pm Monday night, shortly before Muslim evening prayers and close to the Bab Huta entrance (one of several) to the Temple Mount, an attacker wearing a protective face mask launched an explosive knifing attack. His victim was a 19 year old armed Israeli security officer who came out of it with moderate injuries but alive and recovering.

The attacker was almost immediately shot by security personnel and died of his injuries. Palestinian Arab news reports like this one predictably say the young Arrab was 'executed'.

The security camera video [here] makes plain the usual procedure: young Arab male, walking along one of the Old City paths, lunges without warning towards a security forces member standing guard to protect the peace, whips a knife out of his clothing. Thrusts a hand holding the weapon towards the upper body of the Israel, causing what undoubtedly would be the first of several lethal wounds if no one stops him. But he is stopped by the shots of another alert Israel Border Guard officer and falls to the ground.

Arabic-language news reports (like this one from the official Palestinian Press Agency, archived here) say (translated from the Arabic original) "the Israeli occupation forces executed a Palestinian youth", that "the martyr... is from the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem" and "he is 30 years old".

The murderous assault comes against the background of what a Times of Israel report calls "a general lull in terror activity in the capital, which had not seen a stabbing attack in nearly three months".

The teenage border guard, presumably in the midst of his compulsory national service, was taken to hospital (Yediot Aharonot says Shaarei Zedek; Times of Israel reports Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center) for emergency treatment. Initial first aid was given at the site by Magen David Adom medics. The hospital reports that he sustained stab wounds to the chest and is "stable and fully conscious”.

Haaretz quotes Israel Police announcing that the Temple Mount gates were closed immediately after the knifing. Social media reports (like this) say that in the Shuafat neighborhood of north Jerusalem there were clashes in the hours that followed between Israel Police and locals.

27-Nov-14: When things are said about terror from both sides of one mouth, it pays to listen carefully

Even in an Internet-rich age, television continues to strongly influence what we know and think. And in places where access to a range of varying ideas and opinions is greatly limited, its role is even larger. The villages, towns and cities of the Palestinian Authority are a good example.

Here's a video clip (translated to English by the invaluable Palestinian Media Watch team) from their version of Good Morning, America (and Good Morning Australia, and Good Morning Tanganyika etc), the typical sort of light-hearted fare that people watch while grabbing some breakfast and heading out to face the day and its challenges. 

Only it's light-hearted in a very specific way that prevails in places where the values of terror and its attractions have become central to the way ordinary lives are lived.



The presenter in this show is Mai Abu Asab. Her program goes to air every Friday (weekend) morning under the name Good Morning Jerusalem. If we were fed a daily diet of this sort of messaging, we might not have the views about hatred, racism and terror that we do; many other rational and emotionally healthy people might react like us.

The channel is the one owned, operated and marketed by the government that runs the Palestinian Authority. The PA is the terror-friendly regime headed by Mahmoud Abbas, currently in the tenth year of his four-year presidential term. Abbas has our attention this week because of his gymnastic approach to juggling his public views on terror: unreservedly against it in English and strongly for it in Arabic.

Quoted (in Arabic) by Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. the PA's mouthpiece newspaper, on November 3, 2014, Mahmoud Abbas said

that Martyr Mutaz [who fired four bullets straight into the chest of Rabbi Yehuda Glick on a Jerusalem street in late October] from at point rose to Heaven while defending our people’s rights and holy places. In addition, he condemned this barbaric act, which is added to the occupation’s crimes against our people since the Nakba ("catastrophe", the preferred Palestinian Arabic term for the establishment of the State of Israel), as well as the continuation of the historic injustice being committed against it wherever it is present.” [source]

Quoted (in Arabic) again by Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on November 24, 2014,

It is a moral, national and religious right to defend Al-Aqsa and the places holy to Islam and Christianity. Our people oppose the thieving attackers who are supported by the government of Israel – the same [government] that has sabotaged the efforts to attain peace and is leading the wild campaign in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, seeking to strike any chance of obtaining security and peace between the two peoples on the basis of the two-state [solution]. I congratulate our people for their steadfastness in defending Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa. We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for Al-Aqsa and for Jerusalem. [source]

Quoted in English by Haaretz on November 18, 2014, there's what appears to be a whole different approach:

Abbas' office said in a statement that "The presidency condemns the attack on Jewish worshippers in their place of prayer and condemns the killing of civilians no matter who is doing it" [but] "While we condemn this incident, we also condemn the aggression toward Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy places and torching of mosques and churches," Abbas said at the start of a meeting of the Palestinian security services in Ramallah. Such attacks, according to Abbas, "violate all religious principles and do not serve the common interest we are trying to promote – establishing a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel." [source]

It's worth noting, as Khaled Abu Toameh did the same day, the background:

Abbas was forced to condemn the Har Nof synagogue attack after facing pressure from US Secretary of State John Kerry, who had phoned the PA president twice over the past few days to demand that the Palestinians stop anti-Israel incitement. On Tuesday, Kerry issued a call to the PA leadership to condemn the Har Nof attack. Kerry’s pressure prompted Abbas to issue two condemnations of the incident. The first came in the form of a terse statement published by official PA news agency Wafa, in which the Palestinian leadership condemned the “killing of worshipers in a synagogue and all acts of violence regardless of their source.” The statement also called for an end to “incursions and provocations by settlers against the Aksa Mosque...” In both statements, the PA leader sought to establish a direct link between the recent spate of terrorist attacks and visits by Jewish groups to the Temple Mount. [source] 

The latest phase in this peekaboo now-you-see-it-now-you-don't performance by Abbas' government comes with a PA TV program on Tuesday that declares the axe men of the Har Nof synagogue killings as heroes for the cause, referring to "the death of 2 Palestinians as martyrs from occupation police fire", conveniently and despicably ignoring the knives, axes and guns in the hands of the two Abu Jamals as they launched a ferocious attack on unarmed men at prayer.

To their great credit, many ordinary people in today's Palestinian Arab society continue - against all the pressures from their religious and secular leaders - to hold somewhat-independent views and to remain rooted in values that give hope... to them and us.

Here are some of those, based on a little-noticed (outside Israel) public opinion poll carried out for Israel's Channel 10 television station by Statnet (motto: "Discovering things you never expected"), an Israel-based research center headed by Yousef Makladeh (there's a self-promoting business video here for Arabic and Hebrew speakers).

Statnet focuses its attention on Arabs in the PA and Israel and unfortunately seems to publish almost nothing in the English language which, given the insights they have, is a pity.

The Jerusalem Post and a small handful of other Israel-based sources reported in the last few days on the poll's findings. Selected highlights appear in a number of other Israel-focused publications but take the results way out of their context, in our view. The survey, conducted in Arabic by phone a week ago, polled 405 Israeli Arabs from all parts of Israel but not east Jerusalem. 39% of respondents are men; 61% are women:

• 68% of Israeli Arabs opposes the ongoing "recent wave of terrorist attacks". The language of the Jerusalem Post report on the following breakdown is not clear (and we have not seen the original findings), but we think they go on to say that 88% of Druse oppose the terror; 80% of Christian Arabs, and 64% of Muslim Arabs.
• 77% of Israeli Arabs when asked to choose between two options said they prefer to live under Israeli rule rather than Palestinian Arab. Again, the Jerusalem Port report's language is not well expressed, but it seems to be saying that support among Israeli Arabs for living in an Israeli state is at the 70% level among Druse, 57% among Christian Arabs, and 49% among Muslim Arabs. But if that's right, then we have a problem understanding how the overall percentage gets to 77%.
• (This finding meshes with another by Prof. Sammy Smooha Haifa University whose annual survey, the Index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel showed in 2013 63.5% of Arabs said Israel is a good place to live, while 20.9% were "willing to move" to "a Palestinian state".)
• As for preferring to live under the Palestinian Authority: 2% of Druse held that view; 5% of Israeli Christian Arabs, and 18% of Israeli Muslim Arabs.
• 84% of Israeli Arabs "support Knesset members who condemned the attacks in Jerusalem" and "16% opposed the condemnation of the attacks by Arab MKs"
• 81% of them believe Israel "is trying to harm the status quo on the Temple Mount".
• Again the language of the report is problematic, but it seems to say something emphatic about the sense Israeli Arabs have of living in a racist society: 42% say they suffer from "strong racism"; 44% from "moderate racism"; 14% from "light racism". Since those numbers add up to exactly 100%, it means there is not a single Arab living in Israel, including the majority who says he/she prefers living in Israel compared with the PA alternative, feels there is no racism. That might be, but it sounds suspect to us, especially when we take into account their attitude to how the State (not clear exactly what that means beyond the obvious) treats them: 9% say it "treats them equally"; 52% "semi-equally"; 39% "not equally at all". That also comes to a neat 100%. So if 9% feel they are being treated equally, are they also among the 100% who suffer from racism? Perhaps yes, but on this, the JPost report's language and formulation bothers us.
• 65% of Israeli Arabs blamed the conflict on "the Jews"
• And finally, a clear sign of the positive effect living in Israel has on its citizens: 63% of Israeli Arabs "do not trust Arab leaders in Israel". Unfortunately the survey report does not say whether the respondents were asked if they don't trust Israel's Jewish leaders. Or non-Israel-based Arab leaders.

Image: "Real Jerusalem Streets"

Readers wanting to do their own polling might consider standing in the center of Jerusalem, say at the busy intersection of King George Avenue and Jaffa Road (we know the corner only too well). 

As Jerusalemites know, since the Jerusalem Light Rail began running from Jerusalem's eastern neighbourhoods into the center and out to Mt Herzl, the number of Arab shoppers and pedestrians walking around, enjoying the cafes and the pedestrian malls, has risen substantially to levels that might surprise people from far away.

The image at right (young Arab females wandering around in the center of town) from the excellent Real Jerusalem Streets photo blog [here] illustrates the story.

1-Feb-12: Fertilizer and a video that reveals more about how the war against the terrorists is going than a shelf-full of analyses

View the PMW report on YouTube

The things done for and with their own children by Palestinian Arab society have long been the subject of extremely critical comment, and with justification. 

It's almost impossible to imagine a peace between two peoples based (as inevitably it would have to be) on some degree of painful compromise, when the Arab side consistently and continually educates its children for hatred, demonization and death. Here's a tiny example.

Palestinian Authority TV's programs are beamed into most of the homes in the territories controlled by Fatah, the terrorism-friendly political party headed in the past by Arafat and today by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. 

A week ago, on 24th January, it covered a Fatah celebration in Lebanon: the glorious 47th anniversary of Fatah's founding. (Reminder: 47 years ago, when Fatah began its chapter of the war of terrorism against us, the total number of square miles "occupied" by the hated Zionist entity was precisely zero.) 

If, like us, you are unable to tune in or to comprehend the Arabic commentary, Palestinian Media Watch has just published a report - with transcript, video and pictures.

The image above shows a poster that features prominently in the televised celebration. The text reads:

"Our children are our honor and glory. They were created to be fertilizer for the land of Palestine, and for our pure land to be saturated with their blood." 

What kind of future do youngsters raised to see themselves as fertilizer build for themselves? And who is at fault - because someone surely is.

The beauty and heroism of being killed for the sake of a Palestinian state-that-never-existed is a recurring theme in Palestinian Arab culture. Grasping this, you can go some way towards understanding how an entire society has been recruited to fight a war based on racist hatred of the other. It underlies the way its 'soldiers' - thousands of whom are school children and pre-teens - publicly express happiness at the prospect of dying if only (and this is the key) their death will bring pain, harm and destruction to the despised enemy.

PA TV covered another 47th anniversary event, this one in Ramallah, the PA's capital, on January 5, 2012 [see the Palestinian Media Watch report here]. The festive occasion included the participation of  distinguished political leaders whom the mainstream media consistently but unjustifiably calls moderate. The broadcast shows children singing these appalling words supplied to them by their leaders and teachers:

"You have brought up and educated generation after generation. You waited patiently and discovered your heroic children. Oh, my pure land, I shall saturate you with my blood. I shall live and die upon your green ground... I shall redeem you with my life, oh my land. Your embrace warms us. Your ground satiates us, your goodness satisfies us. I shall redeem you with my life."

Evidently unconcerned as to the indictment this scene constitutes for the society in whose establishment they are complicit, the applause that follows is provided by several prominent co-conspirators. 

They include PA prime minister Salam Fayyad - "a moderate politician widely respected among the international community" (source); Secretary General of the Presidential Office, Al-Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim; Secretary of the PLO Executive Council, Yasser Abd Rabbo; Laila Ghannam - District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh; Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf.

It's not possible that the leaders present at this event failed to understand the message directed at their people's children. The facts about Palestinian Arab education of their children speak for themselves.

So does the report below.

Education at a Glance 2011, a study published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) demonstrates again that some societies have far higher levels of educational attainment than others. This news report published today ranks the 10 developed countries with the most educated populations. It's worth noting that Israel, with the smallest per capita income on the list, comes in at number 2, ahead of the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Peace cannot be made by education departments any more than war is caused by doctors. 

But there's a lot that can be learned by how countries implant expectations and ambitions in the minds of the continuing generations and how this impacts on the future. By and large, our side is focused on creating capable, concerned citizens with the equipment to succeed anywhere, and the evidence is out there to see. 

Theirs wants a young generation that will grow to become fertilizer and dirt, and the evidence for this is available to anyone who wants to look.

17-Jun-11: Sponsored racist hatred: time to call in the auditors

Most Western decision makers will never
read publications like Al-Hayat Al-Jadid (above).
But millions of Palestinian Arabs do.

We recently wrote here about legal decisions taken by the Palestinian Authority to reward Palestinian Arab terrorists with salaries [see 20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?]. 

Those moves, little remarked upon and generally ignored in international forums, are consistent with steps the PA takes daily to encourage hatred of Jews and Israel and fan the flames of terror. Why the PA continues to be thought of in certain circles as 'moderate' is baffling. Perhaps it's just that people don't know.

Here's a relatively small but disturbing current example of how it works.

The PA controls its own government-funded media channels, ensuring a consistent message reaches the people living under its jurisdiction. Palestinian Media Watch, and almost no one else, does consistent and professional work in tracking those messages. It puts out warnings - to which almost no other media channel reacts - when especially odious and/or dangerous content is identified.

Yesterday PMW issued an alert. It reproduces several quotations (in their context) carried in a publication called Al Hayat Al Jadida (Arabic for "New Life"). Wikipedia says it's an official daily newspaper of the ostensibly secular Palestinian National Authority.

PMW's Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik summarize the PA-sanctioned messages as:

• The enemies of Islam are "cultivating evil" against it. 
• The state of Israel is a "malignant cancerous growth" and its conflict with the Arabs is about faith and existence, and not about land and borders.
• The Jewish religion is false, distorted and corrupted. 
• Jews are inherently evil and have been so since the time of Cain and Abel.
• Jews, through their political philosophy Zionism, have a religious plan to take over the world and rule it while forcing non-Jews to submit to their will.

If there is controversy within Palestinian Arab circles over the publication of such filth, we're not aware of it, and we certainly invite anyone who can point to open discussions among Palestinian or other Arabs of the rights and wrongs of teaching things like this to let us know.

Now why do you think so many observers and reporters keep calling the PA and its ruling clique 'moderate' as they do here and here and here and here and here and so on and on? To put it mildly, calling the PA 'moderate' is to give them an easy pass. It implies support for their ideological racism. 

We believe institutionalized hate-mongering is absolutely fundamental to the PA nurturing a society which values terrorist martyrdom and acts of murder and destruction. It's all going on in broad daylight, but too many people avert their gaze. It's late, but never too late, to call the Abbas regime what it is: one of the world's leading sponsors of anti-semitism and hate-based education.

All of this is indispensably made possible by funding blindly provided by funders in Australia, the United States, Canada, the European Union and other providers of aid. 

It's way past time to call in the auditors.