Finally, a Palestinian incitement index!

The world needs a Islamist incitement index....

Israel is to begin officially monitoring incitement in the Palestinian Authority and will periodically issue a report on it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last week.

Netanyahu also decided to appoint Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of Military Intelligence's research department, as government coordinator for incitement in the PA.

"We will set parameters by which to measure the level of incitement," Netanyahu told the committee. "People must know exactly what is happening on this issue, because for a peace agreement, education toward peace and acceptance of Israel are needed."

The main focus of the monitoring process will be whether inculcating a "culture of peace" becomes part of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's plan for building the institutions of a Palestinian state. "This should not wait until the day a state comes into being," a senior Israeli government official said.

Israeli officials involved in monitoring incitement in the PA concede that there is almost no crude incitement of the type common under Yasser Arafat. "There are fewer expressions of open incitement to terror, but there is encouragement of a violent atmosphere," one official said.

The "incitement index" will be produced by monitoring broadcasts in the official PA media, statements and actions by senior PA officials and textbooks, a senior Israeli official said. All of these will be examined for incitement, encouraging an atmosphere of violence and/or manifestations of anti-Semitism.