It is not often that the British media takes a critical look at the Palestinian Authority. Continued incitement on Palestinian TV has ensured that an entire generation of Palestinian children have been conditioned to hate, valuing death and “martyrdom”. We applaud Matthew Kalman of the Daily Mail for covering this issue and bringing attention to a horrific video (click on image below to view) of a child sending her suicide bomber mother to her death:
Palestinian TV is showing a music video in which a four-year-old girl sings the praises of her suicide bomber mother and vows to follow in her footsteps. The little girl grasps a stick of dynamite from a drawer in her mother’s dressing-table and says: “I will follow Mummy”.
The shocking footage is being aired repeatedly on Al-Aqsa TV, the official station of the new Palestinian unity government headed by prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Israel. The video is shown between programmes without any accompanying commentary.
It shows a child actress playing four-year-old Duha Riyashi singing to her mother, Reem, as she prepares for a suicide bombing. Reem Riyashi, a 22-year-old mother of two from Gaza, blew herself up at the entrance to a joint Israeli-Palestinian industrial zone in January 2004, killing four Israelis. She was the first mother to join the grim death-roll of suicide bombers and the first woman despatched on such a mission by Hamas.
In the two minute video the young child sings as her mother prepares the bomb next to her dressing-table in the bedroom. She sings: “Mommy, what are you carrying in your arms instead of me? A toy or a present for me?”
Later, she sees the news of her mother’s suicide on television and realizes her mother was carrying a bomb. At first, the child cries for her mummy, begging her to come and put her and her brother to bed. But then she sings: “Instead of me you carried a bomb in your hands / Only now, I know what was more precious than us / May your steps be blessed”. At the end of the video, Duha opens the dressing-table drawer to find a stick of explosives like the ones used in suicide bomb belts. Grasping the deadly material, she vows to copy her mother: “My love will not be words / I will follow Mummy in her steps,” she sings.
Days before her death, Riyashi posed for the camera holding an AK-47 assault rifle in one arm and in the other her year-old son whose tiny fingers are grasping a bomb.
Her two young children were interviewed on Al-Aqsa TV earlier this month Duha was encouraged to recite a poem called “Mama Reem”. “Reem, you are a fire bomb, Your children and submachine gun are your motto,” chanted the little girl.
More material can be found at the excellent Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors Palestinian Arabic language media and schoolbooks.
Please express your appreciation to the Daily Mail for covering this important issue – [email protected]
BBC PAYS £200,000 TO ‘COVER UP BALEN REPORT’
HR UK has been closely following the attempts by the BBC to prevent publication of the Balen Report into whether the corporation’s reporting is biased against Israel. Our Freedom of Information request was rebuffed by the BBC, along with lawyer Steven Sugar who has relentlessly pursued the case. According to the Daily Mail:
The BBC has been accused of “shameful hypocrisy” over its decision to spend £200,000 blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East….
BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public.
The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC’s coverage in the region….
Politicians have branded the BBC’s decision to carry on spending money, hiring the one of the country’s top public law barrister in the process, as “absolutely indefensible”.
They claim its publication is clearly in the public interest.
The BBC’s determination to bury the report has led to speculation that the report was damning in its assessment of the BBC’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict that the BBC wants to keep it under wraps at all costs.
Read the full story here.
Please write to your local MP to express your dissatisfaction with how the BBC is spending UK taxpayers’ money and also to demand that the contents of the Balen Report be released.
to media bias.
