Reading Textbooks with the Pro-Israel Right

Itamar Marcus holds up a Palestinian crossword puzzle. The clue reads: "What is the Jewish center for eternalizing Holocaust lies and propaganda?"

The answer: Yad Vashem.

"This is way beyond incendiary," he tells us. "This is going on every day."

About 40 people have assembled in a law firm conference room in the Trump Tower to discuss the Palestinian problem. Marcus, founder of Palestinian Media Watch, stands at a table, pulling anti-Israeli literature from a pile in front of him.

From a Palestinian Authority eighth-grade textbook: "Mark the subject and object of the following sentence: Jihad is the religious duty of every Muslim man and woman." From an "articulation and epigrammatism" lesson, also intended for the eighth grade: "Jaffa, we will return to you tomorrow, with the harvest."

Marcus works out of a Jerusalem apartment with five translators. His staff scours Palestinian newspapers, textbooks and scientific reports, looking for inflammatory material. "We read everything, because we never know where we're going to get messages," he explains.

It's Tuesday, two days after Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to run for prime minister. After leaving office in shame a year and a half ago, Bibi's riding the public opinion polls, having reemerged?like Napoleon from Elba?for his triumphant One Hundred Days. No one's quite sure how this happened, though Marcus is partially to thank.

"I dread to think," he says, "what the future might be if we hadn't gotten this out, and people still had the image of Arafat kissing babies."

Marcus started out in the Labor Party. A school teacher and children's book author (Moshe's Adventures in Brachaland), by 1996 he was an adviser to Labor's Religious Affairs Minister, Shimon Sheetrit. There, he was "first exposed to Palestinian inflammatory material," and began to drift to the right. When Likud replaced Labor years later, Marcus stayed on.

But something happened. Now, under another Labor government, "Israel isn't using the information, because of her political agenda," he says. He now works, he tells us, without so much as a secretary. He wants to hire more translators and to maintain a budget of $15,000 a month. Likud's fallen angel needs cash, and envelopes are passed around.

Marcus waves his pointer finger. "In order to understand the passionate hatred of the Palestinians, we have to understand where they're coming from... Zionism is seen as a European ploy to break up the Arab world while ridding Europe of the burden of her Jews..." And: "We are to Palestine as whites are to South Africa."

Marcus deflates, winds down. His hands find the sides of his legs. He relaxes; breathes out the last of his speech with a slight lisp and an upward inflection. The audience waits for him to go too far, but he doesn't. So the ball passes to them. And an hour later, the mood's changed slightly; people start to answer their cellphones, and some of us get up to refill our popcorn bowls. There's enough background noise, that is, to give the hardliners a chance to speak freely.

First the woman with the chapped lips: "Our right-wing government?Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu?they're still talking about supporting the peace process." The remaining listeners shake their heads and cluck their tongues and quietly ululate among themselves. "Our leaders need the courage and the backbone to say this is useless and there is no process with Arafat."

The cameraman pipes up: "Bibi said it."

"What?"

"Bibi said it this week, that the process was useless."

Then the old man with the approximate dimensions of Jerry Stiller:

"In the Bible...the Arabs were respectful of us because they were afraid of us... Meir Kahane was right!"

The longhaired chthonian-type in high-heeled boots squints and administers a supportive hear, hear.

"We'll give them 90 days to leave...and I don't give a damn if that's a dictatorship!"

People shuffle in their seats. A small man wearing a turtleneck raises his voice.

"I'm Moshe Bellow, and I want to know, what action are we going to take? That's what we should be asking." With a flourish: "We need," he exhales, "to stop saying they, and to start saying we!"

This meets with much success. The camera is dismantled. The popcorn is rediscovered. Then someone has an idea.

"Any relation to Saul?"