The Palestinian Authority shut down the West Bank branch of a TV channel that had incited children to hate Israel.
The shutdown of Al Aqsa TV drew praise from the Coalition Against Terrorist Media, a project of the Washington-based think-tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, that has led the effort to push Hezbollah’s TV station off the air.
Al Aqsa, affiliated with Hamas, incited anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred, most notably through a Mickey Mouse-like figure that danced and sang as he urged kids to “martyrdom” until he was “killed” by an Israeli official on one particularly gruesome episode.
“The P.A.’s decision recognizes that engaging in incitement to violence, particularly when it targets children, is an abhorrent way to raise a generation that ought to be taught to promote peace, not hatred,” Mark Dubowitz, the FDD’s chief operating officer, said in a statement this week. The decision apparently does not affect Al Aqsa’s operation in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas is still in control.
Since cutting off Hamas in June after internecine bloodletting, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has targeted Hamas by firing its Imams and cutting off its charities.
