PA Official Praises Palestinian Video Calling for War With Israel

PA official praises singer who tells Palestinians to get ready for war: “The smell of gunpowder is more pleasant than perfume.”

By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel

A senior Palestinian official loves a music video from Gaza that calls for a war with Israel and insinuates that Palestinians should slit the throats of Israelis.

Ramallah and El-Bireh District Governor Laila Ghannam endorsed the new music video “Target Identified” by Gaza singer Abdullah Al-Saideh, which was posted two months ago on YouTube and has more than 21 million views. More than 187,000 people subscribe to his YouTube channel.

In the video, Al-Saideh sings in Arabic about the glory battle, saying “the time has come for a fierce war” and “the smell of gunpowder is more pleasant than perfume” as he lifts a gun to his face, breathes in its aroma and then loads a case of automatic weapons into his car.

Appearing to be addressing Israelis, Al-Saideh looks at the camera and says, “Whoever fights them endangers his life / Don’t get yourself in trouble, ask your ancestors. / Shut up and don’t cross the border / If you cross it, we’ll put an end to your existence.” He then draws his hand across his throat, meaning your throat will be slit.

The video has thousands of comments on the YouTube page. Greetings from people in different countries in the region praise the video, including a comment from a person named Abdullah Saeed, who writes: “Greetings from Yemen to a free Palestine despite the nose of every Zionist pig.”

Palestine Media Watch is an Israeli non-profit organization that translates this common type of anti-Israel incitement to violence from Arabic into English so that the rest of the world can learn the truth about Palestinian society and culture, despite what their leaders say publicly.

On her Facebook page, Ghannam “praised the Palestinian popular artistic heritage and all the efforts whose goal is to preserve it, pass it on to the coming generations, and instill knowledge about it here and abroad.”

In the song’s lyrics, Al-Saideh says of his message: “Our children study it from the day of weaning.”

Although the music video praises violence and calls for war and killing, odds are that very few people have reported complaints about it to YouTube. The original video is in Arabic with no subtitles, so the millions of people who would be appalled by the content simply don’t know that it is there, inciting millions of people to glorify violence against Israel.