PLO MEDIA SAY ISRAEL WITH DESECRATES QURAN, BUT DO NOT CONDEMN ROCKET
ATTACKS
By Michael Widlanski

JERUSALEM--June 8, 2005-- Voice of Palestine radio offered great air time
Wednesday morning to charges that Israeli jailers in the Megiddo Prison had
deliberately desecrated three copies of the Quran, Islam's scripture, by
throwing the book on the floor during a search of Palestinian prisoners'
cells.

"Prisoners in Megiddo Prison began a three-day strike today to protest
the desecration of the Holy Quran in the prison yesterday by Israeli
security forces and police," declared VOP radio.

The new charges of Quran desecration come at a time that Israel has
been charged with planning to desecrate Islamic holy sites, according to
the Palestinian broadcast and print media directly controlled by Mahmoud
Abbas, head of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The PA media and its mosque speakers often draw a direct parallel
between "the American Occupation Army in Iraq" and "the Israeli Occupation
Army," strongly suggesting that both are enemies of Islam, while the
Palestinian media and text books make fun of the idea that there was ever a
Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

"Members of the police began hurling the copies of the Quran in front of
the eyes of the prisoners," Palestinian prisoners
said, according to VOP radio.

The truthfulness of the story, Palestinian state radio said, was
vouched for by Israeli Arab MK Muhammad Baraka.

[Note-Israeli Arab MKs and the Israeli Islamic Movement had a major role in
the outbreak of the current Palestinian-Israeli War of 2000-2005 (in which
several thousand people have died) as well as the Temple Mount riots in 1996
(in which about 50 people died) after charges that Israel had desecrated the
grounds of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The theme of Quran desecration has been an
important motif in the Palestinian media in the last three weeks, since
Newsweek Magazine charged American prison authorities with having desecrated
the Quran in an American-run prison in Cuba. About 20 people died in riots
following the Newsweek charges, that were later withdrawn -MW]

Earlier, VOP radio opened its morning broadcasts with a re-run yesterday's
news that PA Prime Minister Ahmad Qreia (nicknamed Abu 'Ala) had strongly
condemned the Israeli policy of assassinations as carried out in Qabatya
yesterday(VOP radio, 8AM-Jerusalem Time).

Prime Minister Qreia called for international intervention to stop
Israeli war crimes, specifying intervention by the "Quartet"-the US, the
European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Once again VOP identified the dead men as Murawah Kmeil and Nasser
Abdel-Rahim Zakarna, and it pronounced them martyrs.

"This is a serious and direct danger to the tahdiyya," VOP radio quoted
Qreia, referring to the so-called Palestinian "cooling-off period" of not
attacking Israelis.

In its fifth news item, VOP reported that the PA Interior Ministry had
published a statement calling for all Palestinian groups to observe the
tahdiyya for the sake of Palestinian national interests and national unity.

In its sixth item, VOP morning news hinted at the four rocket attacks
on Sderot inside Israel yesterday when, citing "Israeli military sources,"
it mentioned that an Arab worker, identified as Salah Mraneh, was killed
when another rocket landed on an Israeli "colony" in Gaza. VOP also told
its listeners that a rocket killed another man-a Chinese worker. It did not
tell its listeners that two Palestinian Arab workers had died in the attack,
but it reported that the attack was carried out by Islamic Jihad. There was
no condemnation or criticism of this action.

REPORT COMPILED BY MICHAEL WIDLANSKI ASSOCIATES.
COMMISSIONED BY THE CENTER FOR NEAR EAST POLICY RESEARCH.

[Permission to quote or reprint from article conditional on citing Michael
Widlanski or Michael Widlanski Associates.]
--Dr. Michael Widlanski is a specialist in Arab politics and communication
whose doctorate dealt with the Palestinian broadcast media. He is a former
reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times
,The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post.