JERUSALEM – A “joke” posted on the official Facebook page of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party portrays Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a baby killer.
The English-language text accompanying the cartoon asks the Israeli premier: “How many Palestinian kids did it take you to kill to win the Israeli votes? #Asknetanyahu.”
The cartoon, first exposed by Israeli watchdog Palestinian Media Watch, portrays Netanyahu’s rise in popularity by showing him on a steep incline comprised of dead Palestinian babies.
The “#Asknetanyahu” hashtag was first coined by Netanyahu’s media team for a Twitter session on May 12 in which the prime minister answered questions over the social media site.
Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are often guilty of repeating the libel that Israel deliberately targets and kills Palestinians for no reason.
Despite the PA’s pledge to curb anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian schools and official textbooks, researchers revealed this week that almost every study conducted over the past few decades on Palestinian Authority schools and textbooks shows inciting material, including the glorification of terror attacks and terrorists.
In the vast majority of textbooks, maps of the world omit Israel entirely and Israeli cities, including Haifa, Acre, and Jaffa, are depicted as Palestinian cities.
IMPACT-SE, a policy group that specializes in textbook analysis, examined the Palestinian Ministry of Education’s school curriculum. Its chairman, Marcus Sheff, noted that “the word ‘peace’ isn’t mentioned at all in the education system.”
Sheff noted that over the past two years, more textbooks from the Waqf religious authority have found their way into Palestinian schools and these have a “tendency to be more extreme.”
According to Sheff, Palestinian textbooks in general are replete with “narrative[s] of constant struggle, constant war, Jihad, of sacrificing one’s life.”
“This is very dangerous. What we’re seeing is that Palestinian children are being educated and told that political violence is completely legitimate on the one hand, and that Israel doesn’t exist on the other. Israel only exists as an enemy, but doesn’t exist in reality,” he said.