Israel's government ignores the importance of Palestinian Authority anti-Israel incitement, which takes place in its institutions, electronic media, schools and mosques, claims Professor Eliyahu Richter, head of the Genocide Prevention Program at the Hebrew University's School for Public Health.
Richter is an expert on the subjects of hate language and incitement and their role in predicting and triggering genocide and
Dehumanization Demonization Delegitimation Double standards and Disinformation are tools of incitement
genocidal terror. Recently, Richter and his colleagues published several papers showing the role of incitement as predictor of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, genocide in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and the Muslim world, especially Iran. He has written that incitement to jihad-inspired genocide is at the core of the Arab-Jewish conflict.
U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned incitement after his talk with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, but in the press releases that followed the meetings, the subject was not aired.
What worries Richter is the fact that the Israeli government and media, by ignoring incitement in the Arab and entire Muslim world and the PA, are becoming observers and even worse, accomplices in preserving silence on the issue. He feels strongly that keeping quiet about government supported hate language and incitement turns those who are silent into criminals.
In his works, Richter notes the four D's, four types of hate language and incitement:
Dehumanization
Demonization
Delegitimation
Double standards
and in addition, the fifth D,Disinformation.
The PA omits the Jewish state and its history from all textbooks, which is deligitimation.
Hamas is known for all four kinds of hate language, especially on its TV and radio where Hamas spreads its message using the radio channels that Israel gave the PA to use to advance peace. Richter calls on Israel to cut off the channels or take them back from the PA.
There is a precedent for this, as NATO bombed Serbia's radio stations during their war against Kosovo. Richter reminds us that had the free world bombed the radio stations in Rwanda, according to experts in the field of genocide prevention, the murder of 800,000 people within three months might never have occurred. The broadcasters,newsmen, and station owners were indicted after the war for inciting to genocide.
Richter adds that he finds it surprising that the Israeli media seem powerless to headline and promote the concerted efforts to bring Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government to court for incitement to genocide, trampling human rights in Iran, support for global terror and engaging in a nuclear arms race.
Examples of Iranian incitement against Israel include a recent article in the daily paper Kayhan, which said, ""Several decades ago, the Imam discussed... a logical, humane, revolutionary, possible, and completely practical plan, the 'eradication of Israel from the political geography in the region.' [He] stressed that the excision of this cancerous tumor from the Islamic Middle East was easily attainable, [but said that any] delay in the execution of this plan would cause serious, tragic, and horrific damage..."
In a recent speech, Ahmadinejad termed Israeli Jews "the filthiest and greatest of criminals, who only appear to be human."
(Article translated by Rachel Sylvetsky from GPP Report, spech translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)).