IMRA Newsletter
Palestinian Media Figures guilty of advocating Mass Murder
The Jerusalem Post
Feb. 2, 2004
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1075730352523
While many around the world seem focused on the upcoming legal confrontation in the International Court of Justice involving the legitimacy of the security fence, another important decision in a different international forum seems to have passed by unnoticed.
In early December 2003, the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda (ICTR) found three African media executives guilty of genocide, incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity for the hateful reports and editorials they had published and broadcast nine years before.
With its ruling that could impact on our own regional warfare, the ICTR handed down long prison sentences for the trio, establishing that their racist diatribes against a Rwandan minority - mere words - were enough to make them criminally liable for the subsequent murderous attacks of the actual militants.
Throughout the early 1990s, when this African conflict was unfolding, the newspapers and electronic media of the Hutu majority incited hatred and urged violence against members of the Tutsi minority. The editorials and broadcasts urged the private militias to kill Tutsi civilians and even targeted specific leaders for death.
The Rwandan media played no small role in formulating extreme public opinions of the Hutu community, glorifying violence and fanning the flames of the civil-war.
In 1994, during a 100-day period, Hutu militias unleashed deadly assaults on the Tutsis resulting in mass murder. According to estimates, more than 800,000 were killed during those three months. Only then did UN officials and international forces arrive in Rwanda to investigate the reports of genocide.
In time, order was restored and arrests were carried out for the killings. A special criminal tribunal was established and indictments were brought against ruling the Hutu political figures and militia leaders.
IN ADDITION, three media executives were also singled out for responsibility in the genocidal attacks on the Tutus. Hassan Ngeze, publisher of the mass-circulated Kangura newspaper, and Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, executives of the Rwandan RTLM radio station, were charged with conspiring to perpetrate the violence.
Last month, the trio were found guilty of using the media to incite the 100-day genocidal campaign against the Tutsis.
The sentences handed down by the ICTR ranged from 35 years to life. Amazingly, the defendants were not convicted of any specific act of violence or victims. Instead they were found guilty, through their radio broadcasts and articles, of whipping up anti-Tutsi passions that resulted in mass murder by others.
The ICTR's remarkable 350-page decision noted that under international law states have the powers and right to limit speech to protect their own national security and safeguard their citizens. However, governments additionally have an obligation to restrict and impede speech that advocates: "national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence."
In its decision the ICTR compared the Rwandan defendants to the infamous Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, who published the anti-Semitic Der Stuermer. Decades earlier, the Nuremberg Tribunal adjudicating the war crimes of the Third Reich found that Streicher's racist writings acted as a "poison injected into the minds of thousands of Germans which caused them to follow the National Socialist Party's policy of Jewish persecution and extermination."
The Nuremberg judges gave Streicher the death penalty for his journalistic incitement.
THROUGHOUT THE more than 40 months of this current intifada, Israel and its Jewish citizens have also been at the center of an escalating campaign of racial incitement and hate speech. Barely an evening passes without Israeli television viewers being treated to video samples of the latest racist and anti-Semitic incitement on Palestinian Authority, Syrian, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian and Hizbullah television.
The menacing and deranged broadcasts of the local Arab media seem to be united and unrelenting in their message: We Jewish infidels are less than human, and killing us is a meritorious act.
Whether it's the masked Palestinian gunmen in Ramallah or the speeches of the turbaned Iranian-backed terrorists in the Bekaa Valley, or the videotaped final testaments of Hamas suicide bombers in their Gaza homes, the words all sound surprisingly the same.
The viciousness of their imagery and the dangerous anti-Semitic stereotyping they employ all seem designed to glorify the terrorists and encourage the killing of Jewish civilians.
The hate speech of our Arab enemies would not, indeed, have sounded much out of place on the pages of Der Stuermer or the Rwandan Kangura.
The international community has finally been handed a clear and unequivocal legal precedent that the racist speech inflicted on Israel's citizens by the Palestinians encourages their violence against us.
The reasoning of the ICTR's decision mandates that broadcasters and publishers have an obligation to restrict hate speech or face the penal consequences. Those who provide a media forum to encourage racist violence are guilty of crimes against humanity.
The ICTR's long sentences for criminal incitement that led to murder constitute a powerful example of how seriously hate speech is now viewed under international law.
IT IS long past time for Israel to go after the conspirators who pump out hate and incitement in the local Arab media. We have allowed our Palestinian neighbors carte blanche to vilify and slander us with words that no free and self-respecting Jewish community would ever allow to continue. We have contented ourselves with targeting the lowly killers without any punishment for those Palestinians who motivate and incite them.
Criminal indictments for crimes against humanity should be issued by our Justice Ministry to the key Palestinian broadcasters and journalists engaging in daily anti-Semitic diatribes. Those who operate Palestinian television and radio stations and the printing presses engaged in hate speech should be arrested along with the other suspected killers.
In public trial a direct evidentiary connection can be made between increasing Palestinian media incitement and the perpetration of terrorist acts by its viewers and readers. The defendants will be offered the opportunity to explain the legitimacy of their dangerous lies and libels.
Moreover, in handing down long sentences to these Palestinian media figures an Israeli tribunal can provide a powerful deterrent to others.
Every nation has not only the right but the obligation under international law to prosecute crimes against humanity and racist incitement to murder.
Mere words, the ICTR has established, could lead to mass murder in Rwanda. Mere words, we will show, have led to mass murder in Israel too.
The author, an Israeli attorney, is the Director of Shurat Hadin - Israel Law Center.