Hamas children’s TV program calls for the ‘slaughter of Jews’

A popular Hamas children’s program that usually gives advice to youngsters, such as instructing them to listen to their parents, aired a call for the “slaughter” of Jews in Israel late last month, according to Palestinian Media Watch.

All Jews must be “erased from our land,” Nassur, a stuffed bear who hosts the weekly program, Tomorrow’s Pioneers, on Hamas’s Al-Aksa television, explained to a child who called in to a September 22 show. “We want to slaughter them, Saraa, so they will be expelled from our land… we’ll have to [do it] by slaughter.”

Nan Jacques Zilberdik, an analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, which translated the program and regularly monitors Palestinian media, said Tomorrow’s Pioneers, which comes out of the Gaza Strip, is available via satellite around the world. The program often blends pragmatic advice with hate, she said.

“Generally the program also transmits good messages to kids like drinking milk or asking parents permission to do something, but we also find these very problematic messages like the call to kill Jews,” she said.

Furthermore, Zilberdik said that in her organization’s broader monitoring of Palestinian media, no objections to or repudiation of hatred-inciting messages being included in children’s programs had been found.

This is not the first time Palestinian Media Watch has discovered hateful content in programs made for children.

In 2007, the NGO discovered a Mickey Mouse-type figure who also called for the slaughter of Jews.

After worldwide outcry, the character was executed on the program by an Israeli interrogator, and was soon replaced by another character who expressed similar sentiments, Zilberdik said.

The following comes from a transcript of the program aired on September 22:

Nassur: “There won’t be any Jews or Zionists, if Allah wills. They’ll be erased.”

Saraa: “Chased away.”

Nassur: “And just like we will visit the Qaaba [in Mecca]… everyone will visit Jerusalem.”

(A seven-year-old boy on the phone tells how his father, a member of Hamas’s Izzadin Kassam Brigades, “died as a shahid (martyr).”)

Nassur to boy: “What do you want to do to the Jews who shot your father?”

Boy: “I want to kill them.”

Saraa: “We don’t want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land.”

Nassur: “We want to slaughter (nidbah-hom) them, so they will be expelled from our land, right?”

Saraa: “Yes. That’s right. We will expel them from our land using all means.”

Nassur: “And if they don’t want [to go] peacefully, by words or talking, we’ll have to [do it] by slaughter (shaht).”

(Al-Aksa (Hamas) TV, September 22, 2009)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvE5K9W6UUk&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]