Cynthia Yacowar-Sweeney is a Montreal-based PR communications professional and a research associate of Canadian Institute for Jewish Research (CIJR). She monitors and comments on Mideast media reports.
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PA senior officials made threats to stop the foreign press from broadcasting scenes that reflect Palestinians in a way they do not want to be seen. Through intimidation of journalists, only the Palestinian version of events dominates televisions and newspapers. The PA dictates what should and what should not be filmed. That's why we will never see any pictures of an Arab student party at Jerusalem's Hebrew University celebrating the attack. Nor will we see videos of Palestinian celebrations throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

An Associated Press (AP) photojournalist videotaped a huge celebration of over 3,000 Palestinians, including PA security personnel, in Nablus last Friday. Officials from Arafat's Tanzim militia group threatened his life, just as the Italian journalist was threatened after broadcasting the video of the barbaric lynchings of two unarmed Israelis by a mob of Palestinian rioters in Ramallah last October. An Arafat aide told AP that the PA "cannot guarantee the life" of the videographer if the footage was aired. No other tapes of the Nablus festivity exist because foreign journalists were prevented from covering the event, having been confined to a Nablus hotel by armed Palestinians.

Another AP tape of a large Gaza celebration last week was seized by the PA, showing 1,500 Palestinians burning Israeli flags, praising bin Laden, prime suspect in last week's terror attacks. The tape was returned with sections deleted. Photographers were warned not to publish pictures of the large bin Laden poster carried by the revelers. BBC and many other TV stations that aired shots of the thousands celebrating in Nablus, Gaza and east Jerusalem, mentioned later in the week that there were actually only a handful of celebrants, contradicting earlier reports and images. AP later reported that only a few hundred demonstrators were present in Gaza, and that the demonstration was commemorating an Israeli Arab suicide bomber who killed three Israelis over a week ago in Nahariya. Media intimidation at its best.

Agence France-Press, a leading worldwide news agency, also succumbed to intimidation. Immediately following the U.S. terror attack, an AFP photograph depicted Palestinian men and children rejoicing. A couple of days later, it published a photograph in an attempt to regain international support for the Palestinians, depicting Palestinian schoolchildren in solidarity with the U.S. A portion of the caption read that both Palestinians and Israelis have shown support for the victims of the attacks.

Major damage control was in the works. Palestinian political leaders pretended to condemn the carnage. Arafat, known for signing accords he never heeds and agreeing to ceasefires he fails to uphold, said, "I present my condolences to the American people and to President Bush, not only in my name but in the name of ALL the Palestinian people." We cannot be expected to believe this, knowing that last November in a poll taken by Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, 73% of Palestinians supported suicide attacks against the U.S. They have been burning American flags for years.

Their public displays of sympathy for America, televised worldwide, mean nothing, like the footage of Arafat donating blood for the U.S. victims of terrorism, being broadcast by the very same news networks that were threatened earlier. Arafat is urging Palestinian children to demonstrate in support of the U.S. so that they can be captured on TV screens worldwide. They are seen lighting candles at a vigil, standing solemnly in moments of silence, and carrying English signs showing support for the U.S. These feigned acts of humanity are desperate attempts by the PA to portray most Palestinians as that which they are not - supporters of Western values.

These so-called acts of humanity are diametrically opposed to the deep anti-American hatred that Arafat and has instilled in his people on a daily basis through his state-controlled media, school textbooks, mosque sermons and summer jihad camps. They all advocate the religious duty of killing Americans and their allies, namely Jews, in any country - as issued in bin Laden's 1998 "fatwa" (Islamic death warrant) published worldwide. "The U.S., including the American people and the Israeli people, has rightly become Enemy No. 1 of the nations," according to a columnist in an Egyptian government-sponsored newspaper.

And more damage control. Arafat and his PA are denying that these celebrations ever took place. Arafat argued that "it is clear and obvious that it was less than 10 children in East Jerusalem, and we punished them."

According to Palestinian media-master Hanan Ashrawi, "those people rejoicing are a minority, and they do not represent the Palestinian majority, and acted with no knowledge of what really happened." Not true. Those 'thousands' of people rejoicing were not a minority, and they knew exactly what had happened. In fact, that was the reason for their celebration. They glorified the suicide pilots as heroes and martyrs. No amount of damage control can ever erase the appalling images of the Palestinians celebrating the carnage, which took place in the U.S.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

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