The piteous picture of Muhammad al Durah, the 12 year old boy allegedly gunned down in cold blood by the Israelis at the beginning of the second Intifada (September 30, 2000), is back on PA TV, doing his assigned task of recruiting other children to becoming Shahids (martyrs… preferably by taking out as many Israeli civilians as possible while blowing themselves up). During the Intifada, this image was used repeatedly, in particularly when the PA wished to stir up hatred and violence. Indeed one Israeli observer coined the expression MDPH (Muhammad al Durah per hour) as a way to predict levels of violence the next day.

The particular clip they’re showing can be seen here. It was created at a time when the Intifada was losing steam and parents, who noticed their children recruited but not those of the Hamas leaders who sent them to their deaths, were keeping their children indoors. So the PA recruited their child terrorists on TV with a slick video.

PA television airs clip encouraging children to become shaheeds

By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

This week, Palestinian television reprised, after a three-year absence, a clip featuring Palestinian child Mohammed a-Dura, calling to other children to join him in a shaheed heaven for children.

The dramatic heart-wrenching footage of a-Dura, shot dead in crossfire in a clash between Israeli and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip in the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, was broadcast around the world.

Note that the author of the article still considers it a given that the boy was “shot in a cross-fire.” Ha-Aretz does, indeed, have an awful record in this case (one of my students commented that it sounded like a Palestinian paper), but more generally, the Israeli public is little aware of the case that it was staged.

“Palestinian Media Watch” reported on the television clip on Saturday, and announced, “The Palestinian Authority is once again airing video clips designed to influence the behavior of young children and to make them seek deaths as shaheeds.”

The clip, which caused much controversy when it first aired, was taken off the air in the fall of 2003, after Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus, presented the clip at a U.S. Senate hearing.

Following the hearing, senators slammed the clip and criticized it as “horrifying abuse of children.”

In the clip, a child portraying a-Dura is peacefully playing in heaven, and calls to other children, “follow me.” The popular singer Aida performs the song in the clip, which describes how the earth longs for the deaths of children, saying, “How pleasant is the smell of the earth whose thirst is quenched by blood pouring out of young bodies.”

Another clip that aired this week after a long absence depicts a young girl witnessing her mother’s murder and then singing about how she misses her mother. She sings, “If you can’t come to me, I can come to you.”

Palestinian Media Watch reported that the 2000-2003 Palestinian television campaign to recruit young children was so effective, that 70 to 80 percent of Palestinian children during that time wanted to die as shaheeds, according to three separate polls.

Marcus fears that the “sudden and surprising reprisal of the a-Dura clip, calling upon children to join him in a playground in shaheed children’s heaven, may be only the first of many steps in a wide campaign designed to recruit children for the cause.”

A well grounded fear. Maybe this time, the world will respond differently from how it did the last time.