Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, July 24, 2008.

The Palestinian Authority has come up with yet another wild accusation about Israel.

Two PA newspapers – one directly controlled by the office of PA President Mahmoud Abbas – are accusing Israel of releasing rats with supernatural qualities to chase away the Arab residents of Jerusalem. According to the PA papers, the Israeli-Jerusalem rat is:

1. Immune to rat poison;

2. Aggressive and larger than usual;

3. Unafraid of cats and able to scare them away;

4. Highly fertile — female rat gives birth to 140 babies a year, four times the normal average;

5. Highly selective — Jewish residents of Jerusalem apparently are not affected by these rats.

Israel’s goal, the libelous PA articles accuse, is “to turn the residents’ life into a living hell, forcing them to leave.” Interestingly, the articles do not mention how the rats are trained to differentiate between Jewish and Arab residents of Jerusalem.

The following are the two stories:

“…one of the most amazing things that we’ve read during this month is that [Israeli] settlers have been bringing chests filled with rats and releasing them in the Old City’s [Arab] neighborhoods; they breed and have become a major curse… the [Arab] residents’ efforts to counter this infestation have failed, especially since cats run away from these rats because of their size and ferocity…

All of the conventional efforts to kill them have not succeeded, because they seem to be immune to poison and they breed in the sewers. It is known that this female rat gives birth seven times a year, each time giving birth to 20 babies; which compels Jerusalem’s [Arabs] today to face the dangers of settlement and the infestation of rats…”

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, controlled by the office of Mahmoud Abbas, July 18, 2008]

“Large numbers of [Israeli] settlers have been bringing huge cages full of rats and releasing them onto the streets and alleys of the Old City [Jerusalem]…in order to turn the [Arab] residents’ life into a living hell, forcing then to leave…”

[Al-Ayyam, July 17, 2008]

Creating libels against Israel is a pivotal aspect of the Palestinian Authority’s incitement to hatred against Israel and Jews. PMW reported earlier this month that the PA media were accusing Israel of conducting Nazi-like experiments on Palestinian prisoners).