By Elad Benari
A Palestinian Authority-based NGO, the Burj Luq-Luq Social Center Society organization, recently performed a puppet show for children in east Jerusalem to promote non-smoking.
The educational message delivered by the puppets, however, instructed children to replace cigarettes with machine guns. A video of the puppet show was uploaded to the NGO’s website. It was accessed by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research organization, which monitors and translates the PA-based media. The organization translated the video and presented it on its website.
In addition to teaching children not to smoke, the puppet show glorified death and violence and educated children to see Jews as “enemies” who kill the Arab youth of Jerusalem.
One of the puppets in the show said, “I wanted to stand before the audience and sing to Jerusalem, which is being kept from us. Jerusalem, whose youth are being killed by the Jews, to sing and to say:
Jerusalem, we are coming, Jerusalem, the time of death has arrived.
Jerusalem, we will not surrender to the enemies or be humiliated.”
A second puppet responded, “What am I doing to myself [by smoking]?
I, and many other youth like me, think that through cigarettes we will be adults and men. Jerusalem doesn't need youth who hold cigarettes.
It needs men who hold machine guns, not cigarettes.”
PMW also noted that according to the Burj Luq-Luq Social Center Society’s website, it is or has been supported by various branches of the UN, including UNICEF and UNESCO, in addition to international donors, including:
“... the French consulate, the Swiss Development Agency, the Youth Development Department, which belongs to the Association of Arab Studies the 'Orient House,' the Italian Institutions Union, the Faisal Husseini Institute... UNFPA” and Arab countries, as well as the PA Ministry of Youth and Sports.
PMW has documented in the past how UN and international donor money has been used to support PA institutions or organizations that incite hatred and promote violence against Jews and Israel. Among other examples, PMW documented that UNESCO supported a PA-based magazine for youth that glorified Hitler because he killed Jews.
Following PMW's exposure and international protests, UNESCO stopped its funding of the magazine, saying it “deplores and condemns the reproduction of such inflammatory statements in a magazine associated with UNESCO's name and mission and will not provide any further support to the publication in question.”
