Iconic Figure of the West Used to Recruit Children into Terror Networks

Mickey Mouse, since his conception in 1928, has become a figure for the good will of Walt Disney, representing the better world he tried to make for children until, and even after, his death. For 69 years he has worn the crown of the "Magic Kingdom", and welcomed children into Disney Land and Disney World, inviting them to live in a land where, as Walt Would say, dreams come true.

He has become the ultimate figure of innocence, kindness, and the inherent good of Man. This has become such a prevalent theme to Mickey Mouse, that many older children are simply turned away by the overwhelmingly common themes of kindness and good will that become synonymous with America's favorite mouse.

Above all else, Mickey has become a Western Icon - identifiable immediately with the Walt Disney Company, and everything that the West holds dear too.

It is for this reason that it is so surprising - if not for the fact that such messages would be espoused to children in the first place - that the Palestinian Authority controlled by Hamas would aim to mimic Mickey Mouse in their latest bout of propaganda against the state of Israel. Without fail, Hamas has traditionally criticized the West, hand in hand with Iran and Syria. Among the tools of their trade is the demonization of American figures such as the Statue of Liberty.

In Hamas's attempt to, in the words of Duaa Amer of Iqra TV, insure "that the next generation of children will all be true Muslims who know that they are Muslims and know who their enemies are", they have gone so far as to enlist the aid of Walt Disney's legendary figure. Taking on the name Farfour - Arabic for Butterfly - a man with a squeaky voice and a poor imitation of a Mickey Mouse suit espoused the traditional Palestinian claims in a television program aimed towards children that is consistent with Arab Television.

In the program, Farfour instructs the children that they are "laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists", and brings children brazenly from their innocence to a state where Farfour is imploring them to become weapons to "liberate Jerusalem, God willing...Iraq, God willing," and "all countries" that are influenced by Jews or the West, referred to as "murderers".

While it would be pleasant to report Farfour as an isolated incident, Arab television has traditionally espoused anti-Semitic and anti-Western values on their television shows, which represent a macabre twist on America's Public Broadcasting Service. Where Big Bird, Mr. Rogers, and Mickey Mouse aim to help children solve their problems through talking, and aid them in learning fundamental pieces of education such as simple addition and subtraction or the ABC's, young children such as Basmallah, a three and a half year old Egyptian girl, are learning that Jews are "apes and pigs".

In an interview with Duaa Amer that took place on Iqra TV, on May 7, 2002, she was asked several questions about Jews, Islam, and her personal beliefs, years before she has mentally developed enough to be able to come to terms with such things as hatred or beliefs in religion. In a time when she is more interested in the contents on her own feet than what someone around her is trying to say, she recites verses of hatred not conceived on her own. Watching her respond to questions like "Do you like them [Jews]?", she often trails off as she does not understand the questions any more than Pavlov's Dog understands that a bell means to eat.

She has no understanding of the words she uses to answer questions, such as "Why don't you like them [Jews]?", by saying "They are apes and pigs". She is clearly distracted from the main point and trying to respond to phrases with pre-programmed phrases told to her by her educators such as her parents. When she is asked where she is instructed that Jews are "apes and pigs", she informs the interviewer that she is told that by the Koran - a book of Islam she is unable to read at three and a half years old.

This is a tragically constant view on Arab Television, where children are encouraged to latch onto fatherly or parental figures such as Sheik Sharaf al-Din, appearing on Al-Nas Television, and he goes on to welcome them in a form of understanding and acceptance that we'd expect from Mr. Rogers. Unfortunately, where Mr. Rogers would accept letters from children to inform them how to cope with loss or taunting, and always discouraging violence, the charismatic Sharaf al-Din encourages children to call him, and declare that they've learned "...that the Jews are the people of treachery and betrayal...". This clearly hateful sentence is not discouraged and cast down as a normal parent would expect, but is greeted by the rallying cry of Islam "Allah Akbar", or "God is great". He then goes on to encourage the other children to congratulate the young child on the phone, identified as Ruqaya, with similar cries of "Allah Akbar".

He responds by telling him that "We want mothers who teach their sons Jihad" and that "That was the most beautiful thing I've heard".

Arab Television is being polluted with more than simple hatred, aimed at twenty year olds who have seen their brothers bombed at weddings as is so espoused on some news networks and by popular figureheads of American pop culture, but a corruption of the blind, innocent faith that young children place in their elders to emplace in them a fanatical, genocidal desire.

The inclusion of Farfour is, tragically, simply another notch on the board of inhumanity that these television programs bring with them. It demonstrates, however, a kind of desperation that the Palestinian Authority would turn to an American figure like Mickey Mouse, hoping to use the friendliness and good will of that figure to destroy the innocence that all children should be enjoying.

What was the Palestinian response? Rather than the outrage a concerned parent would expect, it is generally laden with excuses for such television.

Samir Zakkout of the Gaza Community Health Program has stated that it is both the "Israelis' and Palestinians' faults", stating that such programming comes about because children cannot "live in peace".

As a child calls in the show and sings a Hamas anthem that calls for the destruction of Israel, it is hard to see how it is anyone's fault but the man who bore the Farfour outfit in order to convince a child, whom they place no value in, to die for the political end of men in robes. While Yehia Moussa, a leader in the Gaza Strip, declares that they have "no problems with Jews", only with the "state of Israel", this is strangely inconsistent with traditional shows that constantly appear on Arab and Palestinian Television.

More importantly, it is not the business of any government to endow in their nation's children a hatred for any entity, be it state or people. World War II Germany, Torquemada's Inquisition, Stalin's regime of terror, Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal Serbian government, and Kim Jong-Ill's tyrannical, Stalinist government are amongst the most reprehensible in human history, and yet our children have no business being burdened with either their evil, or the hatred that many people bear for these governments. A child in America is often too busy occupied with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, swing sets, and learning that today's program is brought to you by the letter Y, and are not given the weight of enmity and hatred for another society of people.