'Incitement against Israel in PA is getting worse'

PM tells cabinet findings of "incitement index" is proof conflict is not a disagreement over territory but over Israel's existence.

By HERB KEINON
BRIG.-GEN (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser 370 (photo credit: YouTube)
BRIG.-GEN (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser 370
(photo credit: YouTube)
Incitement and inflammatory language against Israel in the Palestinian Authority is at the worst level since Jerusalem began systematically measuring it in 2009, Strategic Affairs Ministry director-general Yossi Kuperwasser told the cabinet Sunday.
Kuperwasser was asked to give a briefing on the “incitement index” following PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu termed that speech, where Abbas painted Israel in demonic colors, as “dripping with poison.”
Commenting after Kuperwasser presented his quarterly findings, Netanyahu said, “This is additional proof that we are not talking about a disagreement over territory, rather about the rejection of Israel’s existence.”
Netanyahu said the failure of the Palestinians to accept Israel’s existence within any border is the “root of the conflict.”
He noted that Palestinian maps consistently showing “Palestine” as the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean illustrate a lack of acceptance of Israel’s right to exist.
“The Palestinians are not prepared to enter a process that will come to grips with the existence of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “It is poisoning the Palestinian public. As long as the Palestinian Authority educates the younger generation to hatred, how is it possible to even speak about peace?” The prime minister said the Palestinians want to “use the diplomatic process to bring about the end of the State of Israel.”
“Going to the UN [on Thursday] is part of this,” he said, adding that the Palestinians were raising a generation of children on hatred of Israel and terrorism.
“There is no discussion that paves the way to coexistence,” he said. “The discussion is about hatred and the destruction of the State of Israel.”
Kuperwasser presented the cabinet with a PowerPoint presentation, called “Culture of Peace and Incitement index in the PA.” The presentation provided examples – including those culled from Abbas’s speech on Thursday to the UN, as well as the one he gave to the same body on September 27 – showing that the PA, through its institutions and spokesmen, is sending out three messages: the area between the river and sea would eventually be restored to the Palestinians; the demonization of Jews and Zionists in general, and Israelis and settlers in particular; and that all forms of struggle, including the use of terrorism, are legitimate.
Kuperwasser told the ministers that monitoring the Facebook pages of PA schools shows the degree to which the narrative that all of Israel will be restored to Palestinians has traction. He brought a number of examples of maps in textbooks and on the Fatah Facebook page that do not show a State of Israel in any borders.
As evidence of the demonization and dehumanization of Israelis, the presentation included a quote from the Abbas speech in which he said that the creation of Israel represented “one of the most dreadful campaigns of ethnic cleansing and dispossession in modern history.”
This section also included a Facebook page of an elementary school in Kalkilya where the sentence “I hate Israel” was written in 16 different languages, and another Facebook page from a high school in Tulkarm that included a picture of Adolf Hitler over the words, “I could have killed all the Jews in the world, but I left some of them so you will know why I killed them.”