A new one for the Bridge for Sale Department comes this from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to RB:
The Palestinian Authority has decided to impose restrictions on preachers who deliver Friday sermons in West Bank and Gaza Strip mosques, a senior PA security official told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday.
Under the new restrictions, preachers would not be able to deliver sermons that have not been authorized by the PA, he said....
"From now on, the preachers will be given speeches prepared in advance by the PA authorities," the official said. "Anyone who does not abide by the text will be fired."...
On February 4, Ibrahim Mudiris, a prominent PA preacher, said in a sermon broadcast live on the PA-owned television station and translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute: "We do not love any land more than the land of Palestine. Had the Jews not expelled us from it with their planes, their tanks, their weapons, their treachery around us, we would never leave you, O Palestine.
"We tell you, Palestine, we shall return to you, by Allah's will. We shall return to every village, every town and every grain of earth which was quenched by the blood of our grandparents and the sweat of our fathers and mothers. We shall return, we shall return. Our willingness to return to the 1967 borders does not mean that we have given up on the land of Palestine."
Sorry, guys. Banning hate speech simply drives it underground and deeper into the warp and woof of the culture that hears it. Mahmoud Abbas would do a lot more good if he said that yes, Hitler massacred ca. 6,000,000 Jews, and that Israeli integration of its Mizrahis is something that should shame every Arab state that will not permanently resettle its Falastin refugees and their descendants--and it should shame UNRRWA, too. He might even do some good if he honestly acknowledged that Arabic wasn't spoken in his country until AD 600+; and that Arabs and Jews are kin who need to work something out. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for this to happen.