Cheering Palestinians Footage Suppressed



by Brent Baker

Wonder why you haven't seen much video since the day of the terrorist attacks of Palestinians celebrating it? The Weekly Standard magazine disclosed last week that “anyone who tried to film or photograph cheering Palestinians after that first disastrous bit of footage was released might have gotten himself killed.”

An excerpt from the Scrapbook in the September 24 edition of The Weekly Standard tells the story:

Perhaps the most disgusting images following the attacks on the

World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the ones of Palestinian

men, women, and children dancing in the streets in east Jerusalem, celebrating the death of thousands of Americans, yelling, “God is great,” and enjoying some celebratory sweets.

The jarring scenes — so at odds with the familiar images of aggrieved Palestinian victimhood that are a staple of international news broadcasts — infuriated Americans, and, for a different reason, the Palestinian Authority. Frantic apologists for Yasser Arafat, who have spent years toiling in the propaganda vineyards, saw their long work souring before their eyes. Yasser Arafat rushed off to give blood for shipment to America — and the gesture got him almost no credit. By the end of the week, though, some media sympathizers were cluck-clucking that too much had been made of this footage, that the video is atypical — that, after all, we have been shown the same images over and over.

But there's a good reason for this last fact, that also does no credit to the Palestinian Authority. Anyone who tried to film or photograph cheering Palestinians after that first disastrous bit of footage was released might have gotten himself killed. Hence AP footage of similar celebrations in Nablus was never released.

According to the AP, which protested to the Palestinian Authority, Arafat-allied Tanzim militia made death threats to an AP cameraman who recorded the Nablus footage. “Several Palestinian Authority officials spoke to AP in Jerusalem urging that the material not be broadcast. Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Arafat's cabinet secretary, said the Palestinian Authority 'cannot guarantee the life' of the cameraman if the footage was broadcast.” This is why no one has yet seen the AP's video of the Nablus rally, which reportedly numbered 4,000….


(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)

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