PA TV Cultivates Culture of Terror and Death

June 26, 2005

To achieve this, the PA regularly refers to Palestinians killed while engaging in anti-Jewish activities as shahideen (martyrs)—the highest honor a Muslim can achieve—and encourages their mothers to celebrate when their sons die as such. This practice was amplified in connection with International Woman’s Day. In a Friday sermon broadcast on Palestinian TV, PA Minister of Waqf (Muslim religious trust) Sheikh Yusuf Juma Salamah pressed local Arab mothers to be like a Muslim poet during the early Islamic period, Al Khansah, who greatly rejoiced when her four sons were killed fighting non-Muslims.

Al Khansah “sent her four sons, her offspring, to battle…as a service to this religion. When she was notified that they had become shahideen, she said, ‘Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths,’” Salamah taught. The sermon was attended by Abbas, whose regime had promised only days earlier to end incitement to violence in local mosques and on PA TV.

Also in March, Al Khansah was again featured in a skit broadcast on PA TV, in which a father taught his son to honor and respect the matron’s view of her sons’ deaths. The previous week, the television station interviewed Palestinian university students for International Woman’s Day. The comments of the dean of media at Al-Aqsa University—in which he expressed admiration for the “unique Palestinian woman…She is the one who shouts for joy on the day of the shahid”—were promptly broadcast.

“Promoting the Al Khansah ideal for Palestinians is a very powerful message for Muslims…[She] is considered the archetypal mother of shahids, a woman glorified by Palestinians for encouraging her sons to kill and die for Allah and rejoicing when they achieved their shahada deaths,” Marcus explains.

Photo Credit: