State Department Calls Palestinian Authority ‘Antisemitic’ [View all]

JNS.org – For the first time, the US State Department has explicitly accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) of promoting antisemitism, a signal Jewish groups are hoping will lead to change in US policy.

According to a newly released State Department annual report on international religious freedom, official PA media “carried religiously intolerant material,” citing Palestinian television programs that called Jews “evil” or “denied a historical Jewish presence in Jerusalem.”

Previously, US officials labeled the PA denial of Jewish ties to Jerusalem as “material criticizing the Israeli occupation,” but stopped short of calling it antisemitism. Arab media channels that carried the antisemitic content were “nonofficial PA and non mainstream,” according to last year’s report.

The Obama administration no longer claims that the PA is working “to control and eliminate” expressions of antisemitism in its media outlets. Officials dropped an assertion made in previous years that the PA acted to “prevent preaching” of “sermons with intolerant or antisemitic messages.”

http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/08/17/state-department-calls-palestinian-authority-antisemitic/#