Broadcasts of anti-Jewish incitement and constant praise for suicide bombers have become regular occurrences on Palestinian Authority controlled television and radio stations. Some have suggested that the IDF destroy the broadcasting antennas and arrest those responsible for inculcating hatred of Jews through the airwaves. Shurat HaDin – The Israel Law Center points to a groundbreaking precedent in international criminal law which could result in PA broadcasters being tried for genocide.
In December 2003, the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda (ICTR) found three African media executives guilty of genocide, incitement to commit genocide, and crimes against humanity for the hate-filled reports and editorials they had published and broadcast for the past nine years. It was ruled that these broadcasts had helped set the stage for the genocidal murders that took place in Rwanda in 1994.
”With its ruling,” wrote Shurat HaDin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, “the ICTR
handed down long prison sentences for the trio, establishing that their racist diatribes against a Rwandan minority - mere words - were enough to make them criminally liable for the subsequent murderous attacks of the actual militants.”
Similar to the PA media, the newspapers and electronic media of the Hutu majority incited hatred and urged violence against members of the Tutsi minority. The editorials and broadcasts urged the private militias to kill Tutsi civilians and even targeted specific leaders for death. In 1994, during a 100-day period, Hutu militias unleashed deadly assaults on the Tutsis resulting in mass murder. Most estimates put the number of murdered between 800,000 and one million Tutsi during those three months. UN officials, U.S. forces, and other international forces arrived in Rwanda too late to have prevented the murders, despite the fact that it has been widely documented that both top officials in the UN and the U.S.A. were aware of the mass murders taking place.
In addition to the actual warlords and militia leaders, three media executives were singled out for responsibility in the genocidal attacks on the Tutsis. Hassan Ngeze, publisher of the mass-circulated Kangura newspaper, and Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, executives of the Rwandan RTLM radio station, were charged with conspiring to perpetrate the violence.
The sentences handed down by the ICTR ranged from 35 years to life. “Amazingly,” writes Darshan-Leitner, “the defendants were not convicted of any specific act of violence or victims. Instead they were found guilty, through their radio broadcasts
and articles, of whipping up anti-Tutsi passions that resulted in mass murder by others.”
The ICTR's 350-page decision noted that under international law states have the powers and right to limit speech to protect their own national security and safeguard their citizens. However, governments additionally have an obligation to restrict and impede speech that advocates: "national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence."
In its decision the ICTR drew a precedent for such a stiff penalty for those ‘merely’ engaging in systematic hate speech, by comparing the Rwandan defendants to the infamous Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, who published the anti-Semitic Der Stuermer. Decades earlier, the Nuremberg Tribunal adjudicating the war crimes of the Third Reich found that Streicher's racist writings acted as a "poison injected into the minds of thousands of Germans which caused them to follow the National Socialist Party's policy of Jewish persecution and extermination."
The Nuremberg judges gave Streicher the death penalty for his journalistic incitement.
Darshan-Leitner believes that Palestinian Authority and other Arab-run media has crossed the very same line as the Rwandan convicts. “Throughout the more than 40 months of this current intifada, Israel and its Jewish citizens have also been at the center of an escalating campaign of racial incitement and hate speech,” writes Darshan-Leitner. “Barely an evening passes without Israeli television viewers being treated to video samples of the latest racist and anti-Semitic incitement on Palestinian Authority, Syrian, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian and Hizbullah television.
“The menacing and deranged broadcasts of the local Arab media seem to be united and unrelenting in their message: We Jewish infidels are less than human, and killing us is a meritorious act.
“Whether it's the masked Palestinian gunmen in Ramallah or the speeches of the turbaned Iranian-backed terrorists in the Bekaa Valley, or the videotaped final testaments of Hamas suicide bombers in their Gaza homes, the words all sound surprisingly the same. The viciousness of their imagery and the dangerous anti-Semitic stereotyping they employ all seem designed to glorify the terrorists and encourage the killing of Jewish civilians.”
What is perhaps most worrisome in the case of hate speech in the Arab media is the degree to which such hatred of Jews has become normative, with frequent occurrences of such hate speech in main stream Arab media. “The hate speech of our Arab enemies would not, indeed, have sounded much out of place on the pages of Der Stuermer or the Rwandan Kangura.
Shurat HaDin points out that “the international community has finally been handed a clear and unequivocal legal precedent that the racist speech inflicted on Israel's citizens by the Palestinians encourages their violence against us. The reasoning of the ICTR's decision mandates that broadcasters and publishers have an obligation to restrict hate speech or face the penal consequences. Those who provide a media forum to encourage racist violence are guilty of crimes against humanity. The ICTR's long sentences for criminal incitement that led to murder constitute a powerful example of how seriously hate speech is now viewed under international law.”
Shurat HaDin – The Israel Law Center is calling upon Israel to go after those who “pump out hate and incitement in the local Arab media. We have allowed our Palestinian neighbors carte blanche to vilify and slander us with words that no free and self-respecting Jewish community would ever allow to continue. We have contented ourselves with targeting the lowly killers without any punishment for those Palestinians who motivate and incite them. Criminal indictments for crimes against humanity should be issued by our Justice Ministry to the key Palestinian broadcasters and journalists engaging in daily anti-Semitic diatribes. Those who operate Palestinian television and radio stations and the printing presses engaged in hate speech should be arrested along with the other suspected killers.
“In public trial a direct evidentiary connection can be made between increasing Palestinian media incitement and the perpetration of terrorist acts by its viewers and readers. The defendants will be offered the opportunity to explain the legitimacy of their dangerous lies and libels.
“Moreover, in handing down long sentences to these Palestinian media figures an Israeli tribunal can provide a powerful deterrent to others. Every nation has not only the right but the obligation under international law to prosecute crimes against humanity and racist incitement to murder.
Shurat HaDin concludes by stating, “Mere words, the ICTR has established, could lead to mass murder in Rwanda. Mere words, we will show, have led to mass murder in Israel too.”
In December 2003, the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda (ICTR) found three African media executives guilty of genocide, incitement to commit genocide, and crimes against humanity for the hate-filled reports and editorials they had published and broadcast for the past nine years. It was ruled that these broadcasts had helped set the stage for the genocidal murders that took place in Rwanda in 1994.
”With its ruling,” wrote Shurat HaDin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, “the ICTR
handed down long prison sentences for the trio, establishing that their racist diatribes against a Rwandan minority - mere words - were enough to make them criminally liable for the subsequent murderous attacks of the actual militants.”
Similar to the PA media, the newspapers and electronic media of the Hutu majority incited hatred and urged violence against members of the Tutsi minority. The editorials and broadcasts urged the private militias to kill Tutsi civilians and even targeted specific leaders for death. In 1994, during a 100-day period, Hutu militias unleashed deadly assaults on the Tutsis resulting in mass murder. Most estimates put the number of murdered between 800,000 and one million Tutsi during those three months. UN officials, U.S. forces, and other international forces arrived in Rwanda too late to have prevented the murders, despite the fact that it has been widely documented that both top officials in the UN and the U.S.A. were aware of the mass murders taking place.
In addition to the actual warlords and militia leaders, three media executives were singled out for responsibility in the genocidal attacks on the Tutsis. Hassan Ngeze, publisher of the mass-circulated Kangura newspaper, and Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, executives of the Rwandan RTLM radio station, were charged with conspiring to perpetrate the violence.
The sentences handed down by the ICTR ranged from 35 years to life. “Amazingly,” writes Darshan-Leitner, “the defendants were not convicted of any specific act of violence or victims. Instead they were found guilty, through their radio broadcasts
and articles, of whipping up anti-Tutsi passions that resulted in mass murder by others.”
The ICTR's 350-page decision noted that under international law states have the powers and right to limit speech to protect their own national security and safeguard their citizens. However, governments additionally have an obligation to restrict and impede speech that advocates: "national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence."
In its decision the ICTR drew a precedent for such a stiff penalty for those ‘merely’ engaging in systematic hate speech, by comparing the Rwandan defendants to the infamous Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, who published the anti-Semitic Der Stuermer. Decades earlier, the Nuremberg Tribunal adjudicating the war crimes of the Third Reich found that Streicher's racist writings acted as a "poison injected into the minds of thousands of Germans which caused them to follow the National Socialist Party's policy of Jewish persecution and extermination."
The Nuremberg judges gave Streicher the death penalty for his journalistic incitement.
Darshan-Leitner believes that Palestinian Authority and other Arab-run media has crossed the very same line as the Rwandan convicts. “Throughout the more than 40 months of this current intifada, Israel and its Jewish citizens have also been at the center of an escalating campaign of racial incitement and hate speech,” writes Darshan-Leitner. “Barely an evening passes without Israeli television viewers being treated to video samples of the latest racist and anti-Semitic incitement on Palestinian Authority, Syrian, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian and Hizbullah television.
“The menacing and deranged broadcasts of the local Arab media seem to be united and unrelenting in their message: We Jewish infidels are less than human, and killing us is a meritorious act.
“Whether it's the masked Palestinian gunmen in Ramallah or the speeches of the turbaned Iranian-backed terrorists in the Bekaa Valley, or the videotaped final testaments of Hamas suicide bombers in their Gaza homes, the words all sound surprisingly the same. The viciousness of their imagery and the dangerous anti-Semitic stereotyping they employ all seem designed to glorify the terrorists and encourage the killing of Jewish civilians.”
What is perhaps most worrisome in the case of hate speech in the Arab media is the degree to which such hatred of Jews has become normative, with frequent occurrences of such hate speech in main stream Arab media. “The hate speech of our Arab enemies would not, indeed, have sounded much out of place on the pages of Der Stuermer or the Rwandan Kangura.
Shurat HaDin points out that “the international community has finally been handed a clear and unequivocal legal precedent that the racist speech inflicted on Israel's citizens by the Palestinians encourages their violence against us. The reasoning of the ICTR's decision mandates that broadcasters and publishers have an obligation to restrict hate speech or face the penal consequences. Those who provide a media forum to encourage racist violence are guilty of crimes against humanity. The ICTR's long sentences for criminal incitement that led to murder constitute a powerful example of how seriously hate speech is now viewed under international law.”
Shurat HaDin – The Israel Law Center is calling upon Israel to go after those who “pump out hate and incitement in the local Arab media. We have allowed our Palestinian neighbors carte blanche to vilify and slander us with words that no free and self-respecting Jewish community would ever allow to continue. We have contented ourselves with targeting the lowly killers without any punishment for those Palestinians who motivate and incite them. Criminal indictments for crimes against humanity should be issued by our Justice Ministry to the key Palestinian broadcasters and journalists engaging in daily anti-Semitic diatribes. Those who operate Palestinian television and radio stations and the printing presses engaged in hate speech should be arrested along with the other suspected killers.
“In public trial a direct evidentiary connection can be made between increasing Palestinian media incitement and the perpetration of terrorist acts by its viewers and readers. The defendants will be offered the opportunity to explain the legitimacy of their dangerous lies and libels.
“Moreover, in handing down long sentences to these Palestinian media figures an Israeli tribunal can provide a powerful deterrent to others. Every nation has not only the right but the obligation under international law to prosecute crimes against humanity and racist incitement to murder.
Shurat HaDin concludes by stating, “Mere words, the ICTR has established, could lead to mass murder in Rwanda. Mere words, we will show, have led to mass murder in Israel too.”