APR 23, 2024 JLM 84°F 02:33 PM 07:33 AM EST
A prank bigger than the BBC’s “spaghetti tree” hoax or a colossal failure of the Israeli Prison Service?

PA media describes elaborate university studies for hundreds of prisoners earning academic degrees, yet Israel reports there are no academic studies for terrorists in prison.

 

On April 1, 1957, a well respected BBC documentary show broadcast a three minute section on a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from the family "spaghetti tree". At the time spaghetti was relatively new to the UK and most people did not know how it was made.

The following day hundreds of viewers contacted the BBC to question the authenticity of the story or ask for more information about spaghetti cultivation and how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. The BBC reportedly told them to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

Years later, CNN would crown the BBC "spaghetti tree" broadcast as "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled."  

Is the Palestinian Authority out-doing even the BBC?

According to the PA there are literally hundreds of terrorist prisoners studying for academic degrees, under the auspices of the Al-Quds Open University, while serving their sentences within Israeli prisons.

Every year there are grandiose ceremonies to award the degrees to the graduating prisoners, with PA officials explaining how the prisoners “have turned the prison and the cells into seminars and courses through their perseverance in studying.”

The figures for attendees have varied wildly in previous years. In December 2016, Ounes Amr, the Al-Quds Open University President, claimed that there were 484 terrorist prisoners, from three prisons, who were studying Arabic Language, Islamic Education, and Social Work and that the university was hoping to add a fourth prison and reach a total of 600 students.

By August 2017 the number of terrorist prisoners studying had risen to 700 [Wattan, independent Palestinian news agency, Aug. 12, 2017] and by December of 2017 the number had risen to 840 [Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 4, 2017]. By February 2018, the number of terrorists prisoner students had risen to 1,000 [Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Feb. 22, 2018].

At the 2019 graduating ceremony, the director of the PA funded PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Qadri Abu Bakr, said there were 1,026 terrorist prisoners “currently registered in the education program to complete their first degree.” [Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, Jul. 24, 2019]

On previous occasions the PA has explained [The Al-Quds Open University Message, December 2016] that the study materials are brought into the prisons by lawyers visiting the prisoners. The studies themselves are supervised by the prisoners with Master’s degrees or Doctoral degrees who oversee the terrorist students, giving tests and grading them.

However, could the whole degree program be nothing more than a scam?

In contrast to the elaborate PA exhibitions, in an official answer to Palestinian Media Watch in 2017, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) claimed that the organization strictly enforces the 2011 decision of the Israeli government following the kidnapping and extended captivity of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to prevent terrorist prisoners from studying for academic degrees.

In a recent meeting with the Head of the IPS and other senior IPS staff, attended, inter alia, by PMW’s Head of Legal Strategies, the Head of the IPS again confirmed that the prisons strictly enforces the study ban.

In the meeting, the Head of the IPS mocked the “quality of the degrees” adding that she cannot be held responsible for external organizations who wish to confer dubious degrees on the terrorist prisoners. She stressed that within her jurisdiction, inside the prisons, the ban is enforced completely.

The polarized positions of the PA on the one hand, and the IPS on the other, beg the question: Are there literally hundreds of terrorists studying for degrees in the Israeli prisons, without the IPS even knowing or realizing what is happening or is the subject of the terrorist prisoner academic studies and degrees just an elaborate PA hoax bigger than the BBC's "spaghetti tree" hoax?

📸 Reuters

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