NEW YORK – The Simon Wiesenthal Center asked UNESCO’s director-general Wednesday
to suspend its sponsorship of a Palestinian children’s magazine, saying the
magazine applauded Hitler for murdering Jews.
According to Palestinian
Media Watch, the educational children’s magazine,
Zayafuna, “includes terms
glorifying jihad.”
The PMW report references an essay in the magazine by
a teenage Palestinian girl. The girl wrote about meeting Adolf Hitler in a
dream, who tells her that he killed the Jews “so you would all know that they
are a nation who spreads destruction all over the world.” In the essay, Hitler
tells the child to be patient regarding the suffering of the Palestinians at the
hands of the Jews.
In a letter to UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova,
Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations,
wrote that the editors of
Zayafuna “endorse Adolf Hitler as a role model for
Palestinian children,” noting that a quarter of the children’s submission
selected for publication by the magazine “express hatred for Jews and reflect
messages transmitted through PA official media.”
“Apparently, the
magazine’s positive messages on coexistence and peace apply to all but Jews and
Israelis,” Samuels wrote. “Through a young girl, the Holocaust is presented as
an act for the benefit of humanity.”
The Palestinian Authority’s deputy
minister of education and its former minister of education are both on the
magazine’s advisory board, Samuels noted.
UNESCO, Samuels said, has
sponsored
Zayafuna since August. The Hitler essay ran in the magazine’s February
2011 issue.
While Samuels noted the October edition states that “opinions
expressed in this magazine do not necessarily express UNESCO’s views,” Samuels
wrote that this disclaimer was “hardly a fitting response to the discovery of
the repugnant Holocaust celebration in the February issue.”
Samuels
recalled the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s suggestion last month “when ‘Palestine’
was welcomed into UNESCO, that the new member be tested by being held to the
declared values of UNESCO.”
“Until
Zayafuna publicly apologizes for its
anti-Semitism, Palestine will have already failed that test,” Samuels wrote, and
urged UNESCO to demand that PA President Mahmoud Abbas rescind funding for the
magazine.
PMW head Itamar Marcus said his organization welcomes the
Wiesenthal Center’s call to UNESCO to stop funding the magazine
Zayafuna.
“UNESCO’s continued funding of a hate magazine makes them a
participant in the hate promotion it disseminates,” Marcus said. “It would be a
violation of basic moral principles to fund a Palestinian magazine that
glorifies violence and jihad, and presents Hitler as a role model for
children.
“The only way, it seems, the Palestinian Authority will ever
stop its repeated hate promotion is if there are financial consequences to their
hate promotion,” Marcus said. “Let us hope that UNESCO takes the morally decent
route and stops the funding, and not the politically expedient route of turning
away in the face of Palestinian hatred.”