Palestinian incitement: Genuine problem or right-wing dream?

Last edited Sat Feb 22, 2014, 04:13 PM - Edit history (1)

An extraordinary opportunity to study the issue was laid at the doorstep of the Israeli courts in the form of a series of lawsuits filed against the Palestinian Authority by the families of settlers killed during the Second Intifada. The plaintiffs claimed that incitement in the official Palestinian media led to the murder of their family members.

The plaintiffs based their claims on an official assessment drafted by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), one of several resource-rich right-wing think tanks that track the Palestinian media as well as remarks made by individual Palestinians, monitoring words of incitement. PMW’s findings are quoted by Israeli officials and are sent to members of Congress. The organization is lead by Itamar Marcus, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, and who represented Israel in the Wye summit in 1998 on the issue of incitement. Marcus is also a member of the Prime Minister’s Office’s Palestinian Incitement Index Monitoring Committee, whose findings were presented at the most recent Cabinet meeting. Marcus himself writes position papers on incitement for the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry. He also briefs the prime minister, cabinet ministers, advisors, and defense personnel on the subject. In the interest of full disclosure, I was asked to submit a professional assessment for the defense (Yossi Arnon, defense counsel, representing the Palestinian Authority) in the aforementioned trial.

Marcus’ is a known method used by right-wing monitoring groups that advise our government: random, non-methodological gathering of accounts over many years, the majority of which are not even attributable to the Palestinian Authority, which our government is currently attempting to depict as a regime of incitement. In these questionably-gathered accounts, no attempt is made to distinguish between statements issued by the official Palestinian Authority media and those of Hamas, who are known for attacking the Palestinian Authority no less rabidly than they attack Israel. Moreover, a misleading mixture was concocted of news content and individuals expressing opinions. The “juiciest” accounts for Middle East news commentators, such as remarks made by a Gaza Sheikh calling the Jews monkeys and pigs, are mainly found in the Hamas-controlled media.

Furthermore, the gatherers of “evidence” of incitement do not bother to employ any accepted fact-checking methods whatsoever, nor do they adhere to even the most basic research protocols. Every media researcher knows the time-tested methods for analyzing media content: qualitative, quantitative, or a combination of the two. Yet the opinion-makers on the subject of Palestinian incitement against Israel make use of none of these. The argument that the Palestinian media, an official organ of the Palestinian Authority, incites against Israelis has never been tested using any valid research tools.


http://972mag.com/palestinian-incitement-genuine-problem-or-right-wing-dream/87553/


eta for those who've never heard of Itamar Marcus he is one of those responsible for Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. the DVD that was distributed via newspapers during the 2008 Presidential campaign