Farfur still on air
Mickey Mouse clone still preaches Islamist hatred
(Source: pmw.org.il)
As Fatah and Hamas supporters killed each other in the streets of Gaza, Al-Aqsa TV aired another episode of its controversial show Tomorrow's Pioneers last Friday.
The program hit the airwaves not 48 hours after Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti said that he had ordered Hamas to remove Tomorrow's Pioneers from the air, pending a review.
Many organizations, including Palestinian Media Watch, the Anti-Defamation League and Walt Disney's daughter Diane Disney-Miller, have denounced the show for using a copy of Disney's Mickey Mouse to spread Islamist propaganda and encourage violence against Jews.
The only seeming concession to international outrage over Tomorrow's Pioneers was a diminished role for the costumed mouse. However, Friday's program featured a segment where Farfur is caught cheating on a test.
"It was against my will, Uncle Hazem," Farfur sobbed to the show's newest character, played by Al-Aqsa TV deputy director Hazem Al-Sha'awari. "Because the Jews destroyed our home, and when the Jews destroyed our home I couldn't find my notebooks."
After being punished for his transgressions, Farfur delivers the segment's moral: "I'm calling on all children to read more and more to prepare for exams because the Jews don't want us to learn."
Afterwards, Farfur took a phone call from a little girl who identified herself as Amani. She sang the popular Hamas song, which says: "[Occupied] Jerusalem we are coming, we will not rest and we will not be humiliated."
Unlike previous shows, it was 'Uncle Hazem' delivered the majority of the show's propaganda. Sitting next to 12-year-old Saraa', he extolled the virtues of a world Islamist state that would promote "good, love and justice."
"Ask history," he continued, "and ask the Jews did they live in a time period better than the one they lived under Islam. And ask the Christians how their security was assured in their churches and monasteries.
"Do you remember Andalus (their term for the Iberian Peninsula, which contains Spain and Portugal)?" Hazem asked.
Muslim forces, led by the Umayyad Caliphate, invaded and subjugated the Iberian Peninsula in 718 AD. Christian forces slowly reconquered the peninsula over the next seven-and-a-half centuries, culminating in the surrender of Granada in 1492.
"This dear Andalus will return one day," vowed Hazem.
"We remind you, dear children," said Saraa', "that the glory and the civilization of the (Islamic) nation, you shall restore."
Nine men have been killed, and 70 wounded, in gun battles between Fatah and Hamas supporters since Sunday. The two political parties are fighting over who controls the Palestinian Authority's 80,000 strong security force. Most of the officers are loyal to Fatah head (and PA president Mahmoud Abbas), while Hamas has responded by assembling their own 6,000-strong milita.
Interior Minister Hani Kawasmeh has resigned over the conflict, accusing both sides of thwarting his efforts to stop the violence.
