Palestinian Authority Antisemitism Since the Hebron Accord

A Compendium of Hate, Fact sheet, Israel Government Press Office, December 16, 1997

Under the terms of the Oslo Accords and the Hebron Protocol, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is obligated to refrain from incitement against Israel and to take measures to prevent others from engaging in it.

In his exchange of letters with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on September 9, 1993, Chairman Yasser Arafat wrote, "the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators."

The Interim Agreement (Oslo 2) of September 28, 1995 (Article XXII) states that Israel and the PA "shall seek to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and shall accordingly abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda, against each other and, without derogating from the principle of freedom of expression, shall take legal measures to prevent such incitement by any organizations, groups or individuals within their jurisdiction."

In the Note for the Record which accompanied the Hebron Protocol of January 15, 1997, the Palestinians reaffirmed their commitment regarding, "Preventing incitement and hostile propaganda, as specified in Article XXII of the Interim Agreement."

THE VIOLATIONS

Antisemitism is an integral part of the rhetoric of Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, and they encourage its use in the Palestinian media in violation of the accords. Six recurrent themes are discernible:

1. Classic anti-Semitic stereotypes
2. Comparisons of Israel with Nazis and Fascists
3. Denial of the Holocaust
4. Libelous Accusations
5. Delegitimizing Israel and the Jewish people
6. Equating Zionism with racism

Repeated reference is made by Palestinians to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Palestinian Authority newspapers publish stories about Jewish "plots" and Jewish "fangs". Jews are often depicted as power-hungry and lusting after money, with occasional references to Shakespeare’s Shylock and the Merchant of Venice as examples of Jewish greed.

In the tradition of the medieval blood libel, Palestinian officials have accused Israel of injecting Palestinians with the AIDS virus, conducting medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners and selling spoiled food to Palestinians.

The Palestinian media and Palestinian officials have engaged in Holocaust denial and accused Jews of inflating the number of victims in order to profit from it. Ironically, even as they deny the Holocaust, the Palestinians regularly equate Israel with the Nazis and Zionism with Nazism.

ANTI-SEMITIC STEREOTYPES

• "There is a need to formulate a clear information plan... In order for us to oppose the Zionist media, which dominates more than half of the media in the world - newspapers, radio and television."
        --- from a program on the official PA television station about the media, December 3, 1997

• "... 'Netanyahu's Plan' completely matches the foundations of the greater Zionist plan which is organized according to specific stages that were determined when the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were composed and when Herzl along with Weizmann traveled around the world in order to determine the appropriate location for the implementation of this conspiracy."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, November 30, 1997

• "Egypt declared its absolute refusal to grant a prize to Israel--the convening of the Doha summit--and displayed its indifference to American pressure-tactics employed by the Judaized Congress."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda by its editor Hafez al-Barghouti, November 18, 1997

• "...The rumor about the ‘superior Jew’ versus the ‘stupid’ others which are not worthy of anything but of serving as subjects, is spread around the world. The Jews put their best efforts into creating it. Every genius has to be of Jewish descent; if he is not of Jewish descent he is forced to make one up for himself. Additionally, any talented military commander, either his mother is Jewish if his name is reminiscent of anything Jewish, or, if his mother is not Jewish- then he ends up being a Jewish agent. The Jews succeeded, during their history, to turn the massacres they were subjected to into a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ against their adversaries and used the weapon of anti-Semitism in an impressive way... In order to establish their "superiority" they provided proof and claimed that the founder of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, is a Jew in origin and blood; that the father of the Theory of Relativity, who changed the face of science, Albert Einstein, is a Jew inside and out, and that Isaac Newton, who discovered Gravity, is wholeheartedly a Jew. The best proof of the Jewish political ability is the Communist Karl Marx, who is also a Jew from birth. Regarding the millionaires… from Rothschild through Montefiore to Moskowitz: aren't they sufficient proof of Jewish ‘superiority’?"
        --- from an article entitled "The Legend of Jewish Superiority?!" in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, November 11, 1997

• "Whoever comes in contact with the banks discovers that they act in Shylock's way.… We do not want Shylock-style banks that empty our pockets, but national banks; we have had enough of the Shylock of the lands and settlements."
        --- from an article entitled "The Banks and Shylock" in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda by the paper’s editor Hafez al-Barghouti, November 5, 1997

• "Israeli society started feeling ashamed of Netanyahu's rise to the highest position of power...when all of his qualities amount to his outdated Talmudic arrogance and his absolute belief that he is the spoiled child of Brooklyn's nymphs."
        --- from a communique issued by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction of the PLO, quoted in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, November 4, 1997

• "We did not take into account the way of thinking of the other side which is a Jewish mentality based on the love of controlling everything, and which does not easily grants others their rights..."
        --- from an article in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds (November 1, 1997)

• US Ambassador-Designate to Israel Edward Walker "underwent extensive hearings in the Congress or, that is, in the ‘Council of the Elders of Zion’, in order to win his post."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda by its editor Hafez al-Barghouti, October 30, 1997

• "This is a pitiful show that expresses nothing other than the Talmudic quarrel-mongering mentality that rules Netanyahu and the members of his group who govern Tel Aviv......But we know that Netanyahu did not change and will not change because [not even] lipstick could make his blood-sucking lips beautiful...
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, October 29, 1997

• "…The Jews always set a trap for the community of Muslims… The Koran repeatedly warns against the traps and plots of the "people of the book". They relentlessly scheme in all times and places and this is what they do today and tomorrow against the Muslim camp…"
        --- excerpt from the weekly Friday prayer sermon at Al-Aqsa mosque broadcast on the official PA radio station the Voice of Palestine, October 24, 1997

• "…It is impossible to rely on international or Arab national circles as long as Netanuyahu’s claws of hatred dive into our Palestinian blood in search of oxygen-rich blood cells…our movement found in Netanyahu something it could not ignore which is the dismemberment of the agreement by the fangs of hatred and the chewing of the peace by the teeth of the Talmud… We must recognize that this stubborn enemy, locks itself in the Talmud’s cocoon…"
        --- excerpts from a position paper issued by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction of the PLO and published in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, October 18, 1997

• "The White House is a hostage of ‘the two prisons’ or the two Houses—the Senate and the House of Representatives, which are more extreme than the ‘elders of Zion.’"
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda by the paper’s editor Hafez al-Barghouti, October 14, 1997

• "It is important to conduct the conflict according to the foundations which both are leaning on...particularly the Jews...such as the Torah, the Talmud and the Protocols [of the elders of Zion]... All signs unequivocally prove that the conflict between the Jews and the Muslims is an eternal and on-going conflict, even if it stops for short intervals... This conflict resembles the conflict between man and Satan... This is the fate of the Muslim nation, and beyond that the fate of all of the nations of the world, to be tormented by this nation [the Jews]. The fate of the Palestinian people is to struggle against the Jews on behalf of the Arab peoples, the Islamic peoples and the peoples of the entire world."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda summarizing the work of a Palestinian researcher, September 1, 1997

• "What ‘Israel’ is trying to do...by way of its control over a number of institutions in the US, such as the Congress and its allies...reveals the nakedness of those people and their blind submission to world Zionism...The peace equation was somewhat violated, since the Zionists were able to demonstrate their power in the US...that is the power which was clearly revealed in the Zionist American Congress which led to the terrorizing of the American president and the administration, through threats of sex and morals scandals which are disseminated by the obedient media in the US..."
        --- Brig. Gen. Khaled Al-Musmar, Deputy Head of the PA’s Indoctrination Directorate, Falastin Al-Yaum, August 21, 1997

• "The portrait of the usurious Jew painted by Shakespeare in his well-known masterpiece, "The Merchant of Venice" did not ignite a Jewish attack accusing him of anti-Semitism, since it fit the general view held by Europeans at that time, when the European continent...vomited the Jews to the periphery... The Israelis wish to contain Christian pilgrims in the year 2000...put them next to the settlers who have their sights set on large financial compensation and immediate profit out of land ownership which has been confiscated by a mayor backed by fanatical religious and nationalistic trends and by a millionaire usurer who comes from across the ocean...At this moment the portrait of the Shakespearean hero reappears...and all signs point to the fact that this merchant of Venice will become a new Dracula."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, August 16, 1997

• "...We exude the scent of jasmine...throughout the world, and they release the darkness and hatred of the mobs with the long beards over the land. We declare life...while they have shut themselves up behind death and have been entrenching themselves in its excavations for the last fifty years, which is also their age, the age of evil..."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, August 11, 1997

• "The [Palestinian] Authority cannot do a thing, except protect its people and itself from an enemy which bares its Jewish fangs from the four corners of the earth...
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, August 6, 1997

• "...A doctor currently dealing with the national dialogue says: "...in my experience Israeli blood is AB minus - which takes from everyone and doesn’t give to anyone except those of his own [blood] type - while Palestinian blood is O minus - which gives to everyone and takes only from his own type..." Generosity is an Arab custom and stinginess is a Jewish custom. Therefore, it is only natural that we give and they take. We are killed and they incarcerate! We build and they destroy! We agree and they refuse! We make commitments and they close us off!"
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, August 5, 1997

• "The existing State of Israel is not worthy of ruling since they know no religion and no God."
        --- Sheikh Hamid Al-Bitawi, chairman of the Palestine Religious Scholars Association and head of the PA’s Sharia Court of Appeals in Nablus, in an interview with the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, July 27, 1997

• "We believe that the Israelis are not adventuresome because the Jewish brain is cowardly and does not tend toward adventure, but rather exchanges it for plotting... These things have to be said as a description of the situation, and as a description of the baseness of this reactionary and cruel American Jewish world."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, July 27, 1997

• "Oh, Allah, destroy America for it is controlled by Zionist Jews...Allah will avenge, in the name of his Prophet, the colonialist settlers who are the descendants of monkeys and pigs...forgive us, oh Muhammad, for the acts of these monkeys and pigs who wished to profane your holiness".
        --- from the weekly Friday prayer sermon by PA Mufti Ikrima Sabri broadcast on the official PA radio station the Voice of Palestine, July 11, 1997.

• "The soldiers of the Talmudic offensive do not hesitate to call openly for revenge against Christianity for having persecuted European Jewry… we know that Jesus was a victim of the roots of Talmudic extremism, which is currently waving a national flag, wearing a helmet of a national army and employing state-run terrorism by means of armed settlers and an army."
        --- Hasan Al-Kashef, Director-General of the PA Information Ministry, quoted in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, July 7, 1997

• "Announcer: The occupation is shooting at children, women and infants… The latest reports reaching us from Hebron prove that the occupation forces have opened fire on children, women and infants…"
  Voice of a Hebron resident: "…our enemies have no mercy and no heart… this shows that they have no conscience. Their hearts are like stone. They are not human beings. One can not compare them to people. They are like animals, they are like animals."
        --- Report from the daily news program on the official PA radio station the Voice of Palestine, June 24, 1997

• "O our beautiful land imprisoned in a cage and surrounded by wolves,
  My shaded garden, the tormentors have destroyed you,
  and the dogs have settled in you, O Jerusalem, O my city,
  With my notebook and pencil and the fire of my rifle I will shatter the cage,
  I will kill the wolves and plant the flag,
  The dogs will not bark in the heroic cities."
        --- poem read on the Voice of Palestine, the official PA radio station, on May 22, 1997 during the morning news program "A New Day" as part of a series of "Songs of the Homeland". The poem was read on the Voice of Palestine during the September 1996 riots.

• "Five Zionist Jews are running the policy of the United States in the Middle East: Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, Dennis Ross, Miller and Martin Indyk. It is not possible that the American nation, which consists of 250 million people, can not find anyone other than five Zionist Jews to conduct the peace process with the Palestinians."
        --- PA Justice Minister Freih Abu Middein (Yediot Aharonot, April 13, 1997)

• "We are fighting and struggling with an enemy who is Shylock. We must know that he is Shylock."
  

COMPARISONS OF ISRAEL WITH NAZIS AND FASCISTS

• "Jerusalemites and any other Muslim who is able to reach the gates of the Al-Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers must report to the Israeli police at the gates to hand in his ID to be checked and on many occasions is prevented from entry or even arrested. This of course should remind the Europeans of Nazi occupation by Nazi soldiers surrounding churches and places of worship during the Second World War. Israeli practices in many aspects are equal with, if not more brutal than, those practiced by occupying Nazi soldiers dealing with French-Dutch citizens during the Second World War."
        --- PA Information Ministry press release, December 10, 1997

• "We must not lay aside the blade of the Palestinian struggle which we grasp with Arab and international support, a blade with which we must struggle to shatter the two elements in the Likud’s ideology: the racist-Torah part and the nationalist-fascist part. This is our fate."
       --- PA Minister for Refugee Affairs Assad Abdel Rahman in an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, December 6, 1997

• "The occupation forces have imposed a siege on the camp of Al-Aroub… whose children set new records in their opposition to the acts of the occupation with the little stones they throw from behind the wire fences dozens of meters in height which… show the world the Nazism of the occupation at the end of the 20th century, in an era known as ‘the era of peace’… Al-Aroub residents tell the story of one of the crimes of ‘Nazism in a period of peace’…."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, December 8, 1997

• "…the Arab sees with his own eyes an Israeli occupation in Palestine, the Golan and Lebanon, which can not be compared to any occupation in this century except the Nazi occupation..."
        --- from an article in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, November 17, 1997

• "We must act on the international level in the framework of a detailed information plan which will expose the Zionist-Colonialist plot and its goals, which destroy not only our people but the entire world."
       --- PA Agriculture Minister Abdel Jawad Saleh in an interview with the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, November 6, 1997

• "Just as Hitler’s Mein Kampf was a warning sign for his future political path which brought disaster on Germany and the world, so Netanyahu’s A Place Among the Nations explains all of the author’s initiatives since he took power in Israel… The racist curses against the enemy and the legendary praises of himself make a noticeable point of similarity between Hitler’s and Netanyahu’s books… Netanyahu tries to calm Jewish fears about the demographic superiority and the natural Arab birth rates in Palestine… He does not refer to the means he will employ to achieve the goal of a reduction of the Arab birth rate… In this point we are reminded of Hitler’s statements about the sterilization of undesired segments of the population."
       --- from an article by Nahid Munir Al-Rayyis, a member of the PA’s Legislative Council (Al-Quds, October 15, 1997)

• "This reminds me of Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda minister) who said ‘tell lies and lies, and in the end they will believe you.’ The same is true of the Jews. It is a disgrace that they are issuing an arrest warrant against me. Apparently they have learned Goebbels’ methods."
       --- PA Police Chief Ghazi Jabali, in reaction to the arrest warrant issued against him by Israel for his involvement in terrorist attacks (Maariv, September 12, 1997)

• "The appearance of the Zionist movement prompted the emergence of terrorist, racist ideologies, such as, the Nazi ideology. There is great similarity between the two ideologies: the Zionists believe that they are "God’s Chosen People," and that other nations were created to be used and ridiculed... the Zionist Jews claim that they hate the nations since they persecute them out of jealousy of their wisdom, their success and their being God’s chosen. Similarly, the Nazis claim that the Aryans are the chosen and the pure and that anti-Semitism is the punishment of the Jewish Germans who betrayed their country... Of course the similarity between the two racist ideologies - the Zionist and the Nazi - is obvious and the despicable racial content of each of them is clear. The Zionist movement, as well as Nazism, believes that it represents the absolute truth that must be maintained, otherwise it will lose its value. .. The Nazi ideology pushed the world into the hell of the Second World War...and during the war applied all forms of terrorism, exactly as the Zionists are doing now. After the passing of one hundred years since the establishment of Zionism, here comes Benyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of the Zionist enemy, and presents a Nazi formula when he says that "peace between Israel and the Arabs must be based on the principle of Israeli strength." Since its establishment, the racist Zionist entity has been implementing various forms of terrorism on a daily basis which are a repetition of the Nazi terror. This proves the shared roots of Nazi and Zionist thought. This also explains the cooperation between the Jews and the Nazis during World War II, through which were revealed the forged claims of the Zionists regarding alleged acts of slaughter perpetrated against the Jews during the same period… There is no difference between Hitler and Ben-Gurion, and if there was a difference at all, it was one of quantity and not one of substance. Anyone who investigates the crimes of the Zionists… discovers explicitly the complementary traits between Zionism, which is a racist terrorist movement, and the Nazi movement."
       --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeedah, September 3, 1997

• "Netanyahu was blinded by the tyranny of power and is interested in total Palestinian and Arab surrender to his unlimited desires... perhaps in the European style of the German armies so that he will be able to impose greater Israel and establish the superiority of the Hebrew race..."
       --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeedah, August 17, 1997

• "While the Israeli government is speaking about the atrocities committed against the Jews at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Dachau concentration camps... it is directly involved these days in weaving plots and causing two major catastrophes to their neighbors... Our homeland was transformed into a big concentration camp..."
        --- from a PA Information Ministry press release, April 22, 1997

HOLOCAUST DENIAL

• "Since its establishment, the racist Zionist entity has been implementing various forms of terrorism on a daily basis which are a repetition of the Nazi terror… This also explains the cooperation between the Jews and the Nazis during World War II, through which were revealed the forged claims of the Zionists regarding alleged acts of slaughter perpetrated against the Jews during the same period…"
       --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeedah, September 3, 1997

• "Moderator: It is well-known that every year the Jews exaggerate what the Nazis did to them. They claim there were 6 million killed, but precise scientific research demonstrates that there were no more than 400,000. Has the complex which the Jews have as a result of the Nazis’ actions created within them psychological burdens which they are now releasing against the Palestinians?

  Palestinian author Hassan Al-Agha: The truth is I do not think so. Psychological baggage after 40 or 50 years… I am skeptical… But I do think that we are talking about an investment. They have profited materially, spiritually, politically and economically from the talk about the Nazi killings. This investment is favorable to them and they view it as a profitable activity so they inflate the number of victims all the time. In another ten years, I do not know what number they will reach, Last year, for the first time, a statistic appeared according to which 1 ½ million children were killed by the Nazis. This number was not previously known… If this number was indeed correct, then someone would certainly have remembered it… In my opinion, it is an investment, and as you know, when it comes to economics and investments, the Jews have been very experienced ever since the days of the Merchant of Venice."
       --- from a cultural affairs program broadcast on the official PA television station on August 25, 1997.

• "At the end of our period of imprisonment the time passed very slowly. We felt as if we were being burned. Imagine...the Jews are saying: "The Nazis burned us in gas chambers." That is a false tale, but at times I felt that we were those who were being burned up within the walls..."
  

LIBELOUS ACCUSATIONS

• "Maher al-Dasuki, head of the Palestinian Consumer Protection Council, said that spoiled corn oil is being distributed in the West Bank. According to al-Dasuki, the oil is marketed after having been smuggled in from Israel, where the plastic bottle is refilled a second time inside the settlements and then distributed with the help of collaborators…Al-Dasuki emphasized that residents must be on guard regarding chocolate produced in England, and especially that of Cadbury, which is widely available on Palestinian markets, since they make use of milk tainted with the ‘Mad Cow’ disease. Al-Dasuki said that the sale of such chocolate is forbidden in Britain, but Israeli merchants have smuggled it into the Palestinian areas and they entice people to buy it via the teacups distributed for free along with the purchase of each pack."
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, December 8, 1997

• "Abd Al-Fatah Hamid, the Head of the Control and Inspection Department in the PA Ministry of Supplies, said that a committee will work ...against spoiled goods and food supplies, which are one of Israel's means in its war against Palestinian society. Hamid said that the source of most of the spoiled food was the settlements, and pointed to the fact that the Ministry puts much effort in tracking the settlements and those smuggling spoiled food."
        --- from an article in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, October 29, 1997

• "In order to establish the Temple in place of the Al-Aqsa mosque, Israel employed different methods starting with arson attempts, destruction, and the digging of tunnels… and ending with the creation of artificial earthquakes that can be triggered from afar which will undermine its foundations and will destroy it—and then Israel will not permit its renovation… but will use the opportunity to complete its destruction and to establish the [Jewish] Temple in its place…"
       --- from an article entitled "Al-Aqsa Surrounded by Conspiracies" in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, October 26, 1997

• "The failed attempt to assassinate Khaled Mish’al in Aman raises many questions… In light of the use of a chemical agent in the attempted assassination and in light of repeated reports in the Israeli press itself about medical experiments conducted on Palestinian prisoners, the human rights organizations are being called upon today… to re-examine the cases of unexplained deaths in Israeli jails and the cases of prisoners who died of unknown diseases."
        --- from an article in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, October 15, 1997

• "There is an Israeli mafia which is distributing spoiled food products under the aegis of Israeli generals in the territories of the Palestinian Authority… they are distributors of death."
       --- PA Deputy Minister of Supplies Abdel Hamid al-Qudsi in a speech before businessmen at the Chamber of Commerce in Tulkarem (Itim news agency, July 9, 1997)

• "Israel is distributing food containing material that causes cancer and hormones that harm male virility and other spoiled food products in the Palestinian Authority’s territories in order to poison and harm the Palestinian population. We absolutely feel that it is an organized plan and conspiracy which is under the auspices of the Israel Defense Forces… this is a planned and initiated war against the Palestinian people."
       --- PA Deputy Minister of Supplies Abdel Hamid al-Qudsi in a newspaper interview, Yediot Aharonot, June 25, 1997

• "Laboratory tests made on seven brands of Israeli gum smuggled into the West Bank and Gaza showed they contain a sexually-stimulating adrenaline substance."
       --- Saleh Abdulal, Director of the Inspection Department of the PA Ministry of Supplies, quoted by the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, May 26, 1997

• "They brought Russian Jewish girls with AIDS to spread the disease among Palestinian youth."
       --- Abdel-Razek Al-Majeeda, Commander of the Palestinian General Security Service in Gaza, quoted by the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, May 15, 1997

• "Since the very beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli governments were anxious to apply the most dangerous ethnic cleansing theory against the Palestinian people. According to their racist ideology, the Israeli policy makers were dedicated to capturing a land without a people for a people without a land."
        --- PA Information Ministry press release, March 29, 1997

• "Israeli authorities… infected by injection 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus during the years of the intifada."
        --- Palestinian representative Nabil Ramlawi at a session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva (Jerusalem Post, March 17, 1997)

DELEGITIMIZING ISRAEL AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE

• "The archeology of Jerusalem is diverse - excavations in the Old City and the areas surrounding it revealed Umayyad Islamic palaces, Roman ruins, Armenian ruins and others, but nothing Jewish. Outside of what is mentioned/ written in the Old and New Testaments, there is no tangible evidence of any Jewish traces/ remains in the old city of Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity."
        --- PA Information Ministry Press Release, December 10, 1997

• "Why do the Jews from all over the world gather together to establish their false state on the Land of Palestine when the true owners of the land are prevented from establishing their state on it?"
        --- from an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, December 9, 1997

• "The 'Al-Buraq' Wall [the Western Wall] is a part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Jews have no relation to it, whether or not a decision to expropriate it was made."
        --- PA Mufti Ikrama Sabri in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, November 22, 1997

• "There is no people or land named Israel. Israel is our patriarch Yaaqoub, peace be upon him, and the children of Israel are the sons of Yaaqoub… We are the children of Israel…. These people are the children of the Zionist entity, they are the children of the colonialist entity, they are nothing more than thieves. They came and took land which does not belong to them. Therefore, the normalization of relations with them is impossible…. even if Palestine remains occupied for hundreds of years… These Zionists are not fit to establish a nation or to have their own language or even their own religion. They are nothing more than a hodgepodge."
       --- from an interview with Islamic author Safi Naz Kassam published in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, September 1, 1997

• "The words ‘State of Israel’ should be replaced with ‘Zionist entity’ in the Palestinian lexicon."
       --- Suleiman Roumi, member of the PA Legislative Council (Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, August 10, 1997)

• "Jerusalem is a symbol for every Muslim in the world. The claim of the Jews to the right over it is false, and we recognize nothing but an entirely Islamic Jerusalem under Islamic supervision..."
       --- PA Mufti Ikrama Sabri, Al-Bilad, July 31, 1997

• "High-ranking officials in Israel’s Religious Affairs Ministry and Antiquities Office recently stole a stone from the Umayyad Palaces located in the vicinity of Al-Haram Al-Kudsi [The Al-Aksa and Dome of the Rock Mosques in Jerusalem]...This stone was sent to Germany for special laboratory tests...in order to prove the claim that the stone belonged to their alleged temple... Hamad Yusef, head of The Institution for the Rejuvenation of the Palestinian Heritage, said that the aim in analyzing the stone was to prove the false historical claim of the Jews in the holy city, a claim which they were unable to prove in all of the excavations conducted by foreign groups for the past hundred years, as well as in the Israeli excavations being carried out under the foundations of Al-Haram Al-Kudsi for the past thirty years. Hamad accused the Israelis of unprecedented historical forgeries, emphasizing the Palestinian, the Arab and the Islamic nature of the holy city for the past 6000 years. Israel fails in her attempt to find a historical connection to Jerusalem."
       --- from an article in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, July 18, 1997

• "The Zionist entity exists on seized land. The Jews remain enemies because they expropriate lands, build settlements and pay high sums to buy properties. They are the greatest enemies of us Muslims."
       --- PA Mufti Ikrama Sabri in a newspaper interview (The New York Times, May 18, 1997)

EQUATING ZIONISM WITH RACISM

• "There are many indications that the American initiative, in case it is proposed, will reflect a strong bias toward the Zionist-racist solution to the Palestine problem... It will adopt the idea of giving the name ‘Palestinian State’ to lands crowded with Palestinian population and construction in the West Bank and Gaza… Hard conditions will be forced on this state which will be demilitarized and limited [in authority] enabling the Zionist entity to control its affairs in such a way that will make this state to look like a series of "enclaves" within the Zionist-racist entity called ‘Israel.’"
       --- from an interview with Palestinian National Council member Ahmad Sidqi al-Dajani which appeared in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda on October 20, 1997

• "Zionist thought gave birth to political Zionism ... this blind military power and extreme racism. For one hundred years the Zionist movement has been spreading the poison of Zionist ideology... What is happening these days, expresses this ideology which their children suckle with their mother’s milk...When the UN General Assembly defined Zionism as a form of racism, it expressed this as a fact, a fact which is backed up by Israeli operations which the human conscience cannot bear. Zionism remains ... another face of racism, despite all the pressure the US has put in order to change the UN decision or to cancel it... Accordingly, we are facing a Zionist ideology which belongs to a dynasty of dinosaurs. And if human history has swallowed all the dynasties of dinosauran ideologies from Hulagu [the Mongolian conqueror] to Hitler, in addition to the racist ideology in South Africa, the survival of Zionist ideology on this piece of our planet, is a deviant phenomenon and a historical lie..."
        --- PA Under-Secretary for Culture Yihya Yakhlaf, Al-Ayyam, August 7, 1997

• "The Israeli colonialist occupation of Palestine is turning into aggression against all Islam and Christian holy sites. Zionist racism reaches its peak with this Talmudic offensive, which tears the pages of the Koran, and which offends the Master of Prophets, Muhammad, Allah’s blessing be with him, and the Blessed Virgin, mother of Christ, may they rest in peace."
       --- Hasan Al-Kashef, Director-General of the PA Information Ministry, quoted in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, July 7, 1997