posted June 05, 2006 01:45 PM            

GLOBAL JIHAD
Cartoon: Palestinian child urinates on Lady Liberty
Hamas official publication depicts desecration of democracy
Posted: June 3, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
WorldNetDaily.com

The current issue of the officials Hamas weekly features a cartoon of a Palestinian child urinating on the Statue of Liberty, which is holding a book labeled "Democracy."

The cartoon in Al-Risala is typical of the visual and verbal attacks on U.S. symbols often seen in Palestinian Authority publications, says the Israel-based monitor Palestinian Media Watch.

Hamas, officially considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, now governs the Palestinian Authority.

The Statue of Liberty, in particular, is a symbol that has been mocked and denigrated in PA cartoons for years, the group says.

The Palestinian daily Al Hayat Al Jadida recently expressed the sentiment of the cartoon, condemning the U.S. "for many years of trying to penetrate Islamic youth with dubious things such as the ideas of democracy."

Over the years, Palestinian cartoons with the Statue of Liberty have depicted the American icon as a suicide terrorist, a prostitute, igniting the world's fires, being imprisoned by the FBI and CIA, an evil Condoleezza Rice, representing Israel, destroyed with Superman at the "Gates of Baghdad."

Palestinian Media Watch notes that except for this week's Hamas cartoon, all the previous cartoons denigrating the U.S. symbol of freedom were in newspapers controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party.

As WorldNetDaily reported last month, the Hamas' children's website included comic strips encouraging hatred of Israelis, who are defined as "evil Zionists."

One strip featured two boys who come upon supposed toys in the street.

"Don't take any of them!" warns one boy. "These are not toys, but booby-trapped bombs that will explode in the hands of those who touch them. They are placed here by the evil Zionists to kill innocent Palestinian children."