Palestinian Media Watch has just released a major report, “How PA Schools celebrated October 7” by Director of PMW Itamar Marcus (pictured) and Ahron Shapiro.
“Oct. 7 was used to teach math, and the ‘best’ answers, those which celebrated Hamas’ terror, were posted on Facebook by the school. PA schools held assemblies with readings and poems by children celebrating the atrocities and torture…PA schools also celebrated the Palestinian pride, honor, and joy of Oct. 7.”
The report has been thoroughly researched and is detailed and precise in its information. You can see highlights of that extensive report here: https://palwatch.org/page/42380 . Additionally, the entire report can be downloaded.
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What follows below are a handful of examples of what has been documented in the report:
A 3rd grade teacher gave her class this assignment:
“Create a verbal math question based on the war in Gaza, using 9 X 150.”
“Seven answers were so good that the PA school decided to publicize them by posting them on its Facebook page.”
One third grader wrote: “[Hamas’] Al-Qassam Brigades sent 150 Jihad fighters to nine settlements…in Israel. How many Jihad fighters entered the settlements?”
“Answer: 1,350 Jihad fighters.”
The teacher commented, “May Allah protect you, champion! Victory to the residents of Gaza!”
Screenshots of the children’s notebooks along with teachers comments are in the report.
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“As odious as the math questions were, the PA school assemblies were blood fests, with numerous PA schools featuring readings and posters celebrating Oct. 7, referring to the murder, the blood, the death, and the torture.” (All emphasis in the report.)
From a student at the Kharas Girls’ Elementary School:
“… We woke up to the sounds of laughter…It was impossible to express the emotions in our hearts, and we never imagined such pride in our people on our faces. The sense of honor that we felt is indescribable.“
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“October, month of blood, you have arrived, welcome…
Open your door, we are death.
We will let you taste eternity in fire…
Only blood do we see as an ally,
And we will cool the fire in our heart with the body parts and screams of soldiers.
Open your door, we are death, or close it – we will get to you, the target is identified.”
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From a student at Sinjil Boys’ High School, cited on Facebook:
“October 7 will be a date that historians will mark in the coming years, and it is a historic day that brought us joy and restored our hope for liberation and independence.”
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From a student at the Yasser Arafat Girls’ High School, cited on Facebook:
“[The men] of Gaza – they are the ones who lit up our faces and raised our heads.
They are the ones whose ground we kiss beneath the soles of their shoes, and we give our lives for them….”
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From a student at the Deir Al-Sharaf Boys School, cited on Facebook:
“The revolution is coming, coming.
In Jerusalem, we will raise a flag, and it will return to its people.”
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The behavior of PA schools and the expressed sentiments of the students makes one’s blood run cold.
But there is something else that also does: The unmitigated gall of those who are promoting the founding of a Palestinian state now – all those who close their eyes to the evidence of what the PA truly is and insist that Palestinian Arabs have a “right” to a state of their own.
Surely those supporting that state do not truly imagine that, should a Palestinian state be established (Heaven forfend!), these young students would approach Israel with peaceful intent.
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And then there is the issue of the strength of the Palestinian Authority armed forces today – a matter that is exceedingly worrisome. Let it be clearly understood: the concern is that these armed forces must never have the capacity to actualize the words expressed by the students.
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According to Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs:
“In breach of the Oslo Accords, Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank) is now host to an armed force ten times larger than the total number of terrorists who invaded from Gaza….It is a trained and prepared military body that holds tens of thousands of weapons. Many of its members have already participated in terrorism against Israel and its citizens…This force consists of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security apparatuses.”
This is from Hirsch’s report, “The PA’s Massive Army Threatens Millions of Israelis Within Just 22 Kilometers.”
Hirsch explains (emphasis added here and above):
“According to the agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority Police Force was supposed to be a small policing body responsible for maintaining local public order. It was to consist of police and intelligence components tasked with combating ordinary Palestinian crime on one hand and terrorist organizations such as Hamas, the Popular Front, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terror groups on the other. For this purpose, the parties even agreed to arm them with a limited quantity of weapons.
“…..what began with sincere intentions (at least on the Israeli side) quickly turned from a modest police force into an army of terrorists.
“Originally, the PA police in Judea and Samaria, including all its components, was limited to 12,000 personnel equipped with 4,000 rifles, 4,000 pistols, 120 light and heavy machine guns, and 15 armored vehicles.
“Over the years, the PA blatantly violated the Oslo Accords by transforming the small police force (whose members were called “policemen”) into large and branched bodies known collectively as the ‘PA security apparatuses,’ whose members are called ‘soldiers.’ From a small, limited force, these apparatuses now number approximately 70,000 soldiers. Instead of limited weapons, they possess tens of thousands of rifles and pistols. They undergo genuine military training and are equipped with dozens of armored vehicles. Some weapons were supplied with Israeli government approval, while others were smuggled into Judea and Samaria or produced locally.”
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Hirsch writes that Israel – with sincere intentions – permitted enlargement of the PA force beyond what was designated by Oslo. The Israeli expectation was that this force would cooperate in taking down terrorist elements in Judea & Samaria. There was a naivete to this expectation that no longer exists.
“The PA has chosen to act decisively only against elements that threatened its own political stability and Fatah rule, while demonstrating deliberate leniency toward other terror infrastructures.”
The reality is that the PA forces not only often work with terrorist groups, embedded within those PA forces are a good number of terrorists. Consider:
“The nightmare scenario in which PA security forces, including the body they call the ‘Palestine Army,’ shed the pretense of cooperation and turn their weapons against Israel is known in the Israeli security system as the ‘reversal of the rifles’ scenario.
“This is not a purely theoretical concern but a scenario based on painful historical precedent: the terror war (Second Intifada) initiated by Arafat, in which PA security apparatus operatives formed the spearhead of attacks that led to the murder of over a thousand Israelis.
“The term “reversal of the rifles” itself reflects a fundamentally flawed perception regarding the PA security forces. It assumes as a baseline, that these weapons are currently directed against Palestinian terrorists and serve as a shield for Israel, and that any deviation would require a deliberate ‘reversal.’ Reality is entirely different.”
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Regavim, which has been tracking this phenomenon, issued a report entitled “Officers by Day, Terrorists by Night.”
https://www.jns.org/israel-news/16-pa-security-personnel-killed-while-attacking-israelis#
“While the PASF [PA Security Forces] are cracking down on Islamist terrorists in P.A.-controlled cities, especially Jenin, Regavim’s researchers concluded that such confrontations are actually ‘a means of consolidating the Palestinian Authority’s power and legitimacy as the best alternative for “the day after” the ongoing war—in Judea and Samaria, as well as in Gaza.’”
This is a clear-eyed perspective on what is happening. I will return to it below.
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But I did want to touch upon one other related matter: I have written here about the naïve acquiescence by Israel to the arming of the PA forces because the assumption was made that the PA would assist in taking out terrorists in Judea and Samaria.
But Israel was not operating in a vacuum in this regard, as there were several other states that saw fit to became involved.
In 2005, the US established the Office of the United States Security Coordinator. The goals of the Office at the time of establishment were to help the PA strengthen the capacity of its security forces, facilitate the transfer of weapons to these forces, and promote coordination between those forces and the IDF.
This was shortly after Mahmoud Abbas had succeeded Yasser Arafat, and the regrettable misapprehension that Abbas was a moderate prevailed. Thus Abbas’s call for assistance in building his security forces, which he said had remained too weak under Arafat, was heeded. Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton (pictured) headed this project until 2010 and was followed until recently by Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel.
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I have just viewed a portion of an interview of Frenzel (www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_QsVeFYE3s), who says that the PA is committed to peace and living side-by-side with the Israelis. His blindness to the realities of the PA is absolutely staggering. With his words we get a hint of the pressure placed upon Israel to relate positively to the PA.
Large scale battalion training of PA security forces was done in Jordan until 2012. In recent years focus has shifted to smaller specialized programs, and there is talk of training by international partners such as Egypt. Additionally, training continues to be done in Jericho, which is under PA control.
Hirsch writes: “in May 2024, the ‘Jewish Voice’ website revealed that many PA security officers had undergone full military training at the military academy in Pakistan. The training included armored warfare, artillery, shoulder-fired missiles, heavy machine guns, sniping, parachuting, and more.” (Emphasis added)
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The Office is still operational. Sec. of State Rubio had considered shutting it down – reportedly in large part for fiscal reasons – but subsequently there was a reorganization instead.
Military gear and armored vehicles have been provided to the PASF, often with a nod from Israel. There is strong Israeli opposition to transfer into Judea & Samaria of heavy weaponry, automatic rifles and ammunition, which were provided in Jordan. But there are instances when such equipment has been allowed through.
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The Office works with a coalition of nations: 12 participating nations, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Greece, Bulgaria, and Germany.
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So what is the current situation?
There is Judea & Samaria, where the battle for land has been heightened of late. The Palestinian Arabs are seeking control of a significant portion of Judea & Samaria for purposes of establishing a state.
From Israel Hayom less than a week ago:
“Footage from Jericho shows Palestinian forces firing RPGs and heavy machine guns in combat drills…Open-source intelligence…reveals the Palestinian Authority (PA) has stockpiled significant weaponry and resources for a potential all-out war.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has been acting quietly and energetically to establish new legal communities in J&S. Just last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu, addressing leaders of J&S, said that “We are not giving up, we have a vision, this is our land, and it will remain ours.”
The government has established and regularized 104 communities and 160 farms. (“Regularize” means to confer official legal status upon a community previously lacking legal recognition.) The presence of Jewish farms is critical in establishing rights to the land.
The announcement was made on August 19 that Israel has launched plans for building the first 1,400 housing units in Area E1, which sits between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem. There have been several such announcements in the past, none of which came to fruition. There are fierce objections to this building on the part of the PA and its supporters because it allegedly interferes with the contiguity of a Palestinian state. Hopefully, it will become reality this time.
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With regard to the mess that is Gaza, the Board of Peace, which is looking for resolution, entertains notions of a significant role going forward for the Palestinian Authority (or a “Palestinian state”). There has been talk, for example, of Hamas “disarming” by turning their guns over to PA “police.” It is in this context that there is talk of Egyptian training of PA forces. This would be a nightmare and must be blocked. The push for a state in J&S and for Palestinian Arab involvement in Gaza are, of course, interconnected.
All of this clarifies the Regavim assessment that the PA’s selective confrontations with terrorists are actually ‘a means of consolidating the Palestinian Authority’s power and legitimacy as the best alternative for “the day after” the ongoing war—in Judea and Samaria, as well as in Gaza.’
I have just touched the surface. Stay tuned for much more…
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I ask, as I always do, that you please pray. Pray hard for Israel’s strength.
©Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by independent journalist Arlene Kushner. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
