We should point out that there has been some debate over the translation.

The explanation on the translation problem is HERE.

It turns out that it was a quibble over just one word.

The mouse mimes firing an AK-47. That speaks in every language.

Yeah. The whole Palestinian issue is a minefield to walk on here.

Someone seem to paste on the subtitles to purposely defame against the Palestinians. How the subtitles are structured should leave you in suspect.

Have a chat with the Electronic Intifada (http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml) about this. They’re the most indispensable resource on the Palestine/Israel conflict.

I try to approach this story with laughter. “Farfour”’s speaking style is exactly the same as I would expect from hardline imams preaching their sermons. Every line is screamed, the message is hammered into your head. In summation, the rhetoric isn’t modified in the least to appeal to kids, they just put a sermonizer in a walkaround costume. When I was a kid if I happened to attend mass from a Cotton Mather-style priest, all fire and brimstone, I felt scared and wanted to run away. Children are the same everywhere, and so I wondered if that clip just scared kids watching al-Asqa TV away. :-)

Sticking to the animation theme, when the Mickey Mouse clone says “Condoleezza”, he sounds like Beavis.

i like how the guy holds his giant mickey mouse head on with his left hand.

I think I’m going to be sick.

Sorry to play devil’s advocate, but this isn’t radically different from most of the kids shows you’d see on CBN.

I agree wth Stephen, this is every bit as bad as it looks.

Zaki, why would anyone bother to fake subtitles to defame a nation who just democratically voted a terrorist group into power?
And trusting Electronic Intifada as “the most indispensable resource on the Palestine/Israel conflict” makes as much sense as trusting Pravda for fair and balanced reporting on the Cold War.

If this is what kids are exposed to in a democratic Arab state, it goes a long way to explain why the supply of suicide bombers never runs dry

This was even lower in quality than that suicide-bombing animation that got all over the internet last year.
I like how Farfur has trouble holding his mouse head on. Or is he a cat with a big ear? The world may never know.

Great! Fantastick! That was all we lacked : a beloved worldwide icon condoning hatred!!

You do have a point, Soos. But that doesn’t really put this clip in a positive light, does it now? :-)

Zaki, there are plenty of people that speak Arabic. I doubt anyone would try to pass off fake subtitles; that would be too easy to catch.

>>>but this isn’t radically different from most of the
>>>kids shows you’d see on CBN.

I will *NEVER* grasp the utter lack of sense of magnitude this statement displays. You really see near equavalence here? I mean… REALLY?

>>> Someone seem to paste on the subtitles to purposely
>>> defame against the Palestinians.

They do quite a good job of that themselves. Is there any dancing in the streets on that show? Don’t get me wrong, though. At this point, everyone in the area, including Israel, can go and blow themselves into orbit for all I care.

>>> That was all we lacked : a beloved worldwide icon
>>> condoning hatred!!

Someone call John K!

the set is nice.

No analytical mind here… I’m just plain disgusted.

Well I guess Disney allowing Mickey to appear on a Hamas show is proof positive that Walt DID hate the Jews. (smirk) That girl and whoever is in the Mickey suit could use a ride on “It’s a small world After All”. That would straighten em out!

P.S. They should go on the version of “It’s a Small World” that’s in Orlando because THAT one has Israel in it!

Hey Soos, I understand the playing the devil’s advocate, and I am against the brainwashing of children by any religious group, but I highly doubt you will see anything on CBN preaching such hate and violence. I was raised Christian, and while I am the liberal black sheep of the family and I go round and round with my family about issues like abortion, gays, and our ignoramus president, no one in my family or anyone I have ever been around in the Christian communities would ever advocate the violence and hatred toward just a vast group of peoples. I truly hope that you don’t really believe that statement yourself.

This has to be one of the MOST CRUEL FORMS of Child Abuse out there. I’m shocked you guys didn’t mention the fact that Disney’s daughter has ripped Hama for this. She went so far as to call this pure evil.

p.s. Jeannine - both sides have similar sentiments. for example. http://www.kkk.bz/youthcorp.htm for kids employ similar tactics. if we went around using the kkk site as a way of judging white Christians then surely those who do not want peace will win. This is a terrible way to measure and evaluate the Arab and Muslim world.

Quoting you; violence and hatred toward just a vast group of peoples. No one likes to admit they may actually have faults too. By that I mean the ones you really haven’t gotten used to e.g. the president.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

In the words of South Park, “Terrorists is de crraziest peeples!”

“Sorry to play devil’s advocate, but this isn’t radically different from most of the kids shows you’d see on CBN.”

I think you get the award for stupidest comment of all time with that one, genius. CBN children shows are no different than a Sunday School class.

The show in question has now been pulled from the air; it is unclear WHY, exactly- and while it’s probably because of bad publicity, it is possible that Disney’s legal department may be responsible (they refuse to comment). So, all these years, we’ve been joking about Disney’s lawyers being able to scare anybody…and maybe it wasn’t a joke after all!

That mouse looks like he has a toothache!

Seriously, that is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen. Sic ‘em, Disney!!

Why not show this video to other Muslims, Arabs or more specifically Palestinian-Americans that live in your neighbourhood?

Have you guys ever discuss with them openly about whether this video is legit?

Why would this video opened with “Mickey clone teaches Palestinian children hatred & Islam supremacy” at all?

How come no one here questioned the legitimacy of the website pmw.org.il? Is it a really trustworthy source to look up the the whole Israel/Palestine issue?

Anyone heard of the Black Panther colouring book, btw?

And did anyone here ever look up Marjane Satrapi on Cartoon Brew?

That’s all I can ask.

That mouse looks like he has a toothache!

Ha ha ha ha ha! Must be the implanted one with the ticking sound that he’s holding, destined to go off on the next bus he rides to an amusement park.

But all joking aside, although this is wrong on so many levels, there is a small psychological slip in the “speech” which is scariest of all: When he’s stressing the condemnation all the other world leaders, he refers to Ariel Sharon, then says to himself, “oh yeah, he’s dead.”

This indicates that his mindset is such pre-programmed brainwashing that he spews ahead uncontrolably, without realizing exactly what he is saying. This is the sign of a irrational fanatic, and what’s really scary is that he is not the only one.

wouldn’t it be cool if you punched farfur in the face, then waited a moment to pull off the mickey head, anticipation builds as we reveal the damage, some dude all shaking and sniffling blood. then, a tiny flick to the eyebrow, making him flinch. as you walk away, i bet he would lose balance, and fall over.

Hey Zaki,….are you trying to defend this nonsense?

I don’t think that anyone with any intelligence actually thinks that all
Muslims, Arabs, or Palestinians are like this. And if you think that they do, then your just as bad. I’m sure you don’t, but that’s how your coming off.

In this case, it doesn’t matter about the Israel/Palestine issue, who’s right, who’s wrong…it doesn’t matter…this is the some of the sickest propaganda I have ever seen, regardless of whether or not it is “legit”.

Even if it isn’t legit,…it’s still pretty f’d up,….right?

Now, if it was BARNEY the charachter used, THAT would definitely be sign of the End of days!

Imagine it: “I HATE YOU, YOU HATE ME, WE’RE A GRUNGY FAMILY…”

The Horror!!

Second only to sex, nothing sells better than hate. It’s too bad I don’t believe in God, or more specifically, the existance of divine retribution, because I would love to believe that there is a Hell waiting for people who teach children to hate.

I am fluent in Arabic. The subtitles are 100% accurate. Having watched this incredible video, I feel genuinely sick. But hey, I expect nothing less from Hamas. Or from Islamic Jihad. Or from Hizbollah. Or Al Qaeda. Or the various armies of the apocalypse that pop up daily in Iraq.

I wish Israel would just give these lunatics their stupid land; then we can watch them tear at each other for a change.

come on guys don’t get your panties in a bunch… it’s plainly and simply: poorly done propaganda. and it’s not the first time mickey has been given the job to brainwash the youth of the world.

and i’m sure if the US gave the Palestinians several billion dollars per year and equipped them with nukes and an air force better than our own, israel would talk trash about them and create propaganda against them… oh wait they already do that! the only difference is they’re good at it using things like cnn, nytimes, etc. instead of a stupid kid’s show.

The Palestinians shelved it already. Why should Disney get involved now?

I just feel very sorry for that girl.

So where’s the next episode or is this all there is? SUCH A CLIFF HANGER!!

Brainwashing pure and simple. If I had kids I wouldn’t let them watch this or any so-called children’s entertainment with an extremist political angle.

Akira, the United States already does give the Palestinians millions upon millions of dollars every year, and no, what is on the news stations is not equatable with using cartoon characters to indoctrinate children to hate.
you have to go back to the Third Reich to see that kind of deplorable tactic.

What some people won’t do during “sweeps”.

Actual translation: “Hey Kids! Today is anything can blow up day!”

guido, i dont want to go on and on about this, but the kkk, is not exactly what i am talking about when i mention christians, and i am certainly not blind to the issues in some supposed christian type churches, i watched jesus camp recently and it made me sick.
i am not sure i understand your last bit either. i will never claim that there are not faults within any religious group, and i have never claimed that i dont have faults (except to prospective employers of course). I would never judge all muslims or palestinians based on that one video, i was simply responding to soos’ comment on how you might see something similar to that on cbn.

DanO, maybe you can show me evidence of major US financial aid to Palestine? i tried looking and i don’t see them in any foreign aid lists. if you check out fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/31987.pdf it shows in 2004 the aid to israel close to 3 billion and the list stops with Kenya at .13 billion… if there was palestinian aid it would be less than kenya, definitely nowhere near the ballpark of what we are giving to their enemy neighbor/invader, israel.

For info on aid to Palestinians, see here.

Dan’s right. It’s millions and millions. Akira’s right that it doesn’t come close to what we spend on aid to Israel. Watch the video again, Akira, and you’ll see why that is.

His gloves keep switching hands ._.

Every day, the U.S gives more than $7,023,288 to the Israeli government and military (and at least $108 billion since 1948). There’s no evidence that the Palestinians are given any financial aid.

From a USAID faq:
“[O]n July 16, 2003, the United States, by invoking special Presidential waiver authority, for the first time ever and in recognition of important progress in the reform of Palestinian institutions, signed an agreement with the Palestinian Authority authorizing a $20 million cash transfer for the purpose of maintaining municipal water, sewage and electrical services and providing for PA directed municipal infrastructure development. In December 2004, the United States provided the PA with the second cash transfer of $20 million, which was used entirely to pay off debts to Israeli utility companies. The final $50 million cash transfer to the Palestinians was provided in August 2005 and was intended for small scale infrastructure projects in Gaza. However, as a result of the Hamas election victory in January 2006, this sum was requested back by the United States Government. All other assistance to the PA takes the form of in-kind assistance (training, technical assistance, equipment, etc.) rather than cash.�

How many Palestinians are there that moved to the US? From Wikipedia: According to the US Census Bureau’s 2000 count, there were 72,112 Palestinian-Americans living in the United States, however, The Arab American Institute Foundation estimates the figure at 252,000 while the Palestinian American Council puts it at 179,000 (1999).

There’s a possibility the number of Palestinians who moved to the US or are raised there are growing.

Whatever the count, there are a lot of Palestinians living in America.

Here are some of the well-known Palestinians that lived and earned in America:
Ray Hanania (http://www.hanania.com)

Maysoon Zayid (http://www.maysoon.com)

Dean Obeidallah (http://www.deanofcomedy.com)

And Edward Said, who’ve passed away many years ago.

The point is, with that much Palestinians living in your country, why wouldn’t you show this video with them and discuss with them openly about it?

Please keep in mind that the point of Jerry’s post was about a Mickey Mouse-lookalike, not about US/Israeli/Palestinian relations. Please respect our site rules so we don’t have to start deleting posts not directly related to the topic of the post.

Dear Amid
I bear full responsibility for what I’ve said, and would withdraw myself from this debate regarding the Israel/Palestine. I wish to focus on what’s really important here: Animation.

Arguments such as this would only draw wedges between animators, or fans of animation. Thank you for your time. You’ve all been wonderful.

“I will *NEVER* grasp the utter lack of sense of magnitude this statement displays. You really see near equavalence here? I mean… REALLY?”
Yes. And if the CBN were a Muslim station instead of a Christian one, you’d see it too. The CBN’s children programming delights in the superiority of the Christian religion. The Left Behind series, a masturbatory fantasy where all the righteous are sent to heaven and everyone else is impersonally murdered by Super Jesus is freely handed out to children.

I don’t mean to excuse the AK-47 or other things, but there’s an obvious hypocrisy here. Furthermore, I wonder how many of people outraged by the suggestion that Palestinian children take up arms were similarly outraged after Israel’s last bombing.

So, all those people who keep saying it’s terrible that Disney keeps having the copyright terms extended, and that Mickey Mouse should be in the public domain so that anyone can do anything they want with the character… was this what we were discussing, or did you have something else in mind? ;-)

FYI: after promising not to air anymore of the program, the Palestinian channel has just shown another episode of this reprehensible show. a show that uses Mickey Mouse to espouse Islam taking over the world with armed struggle.(which is quite different than any christian program mentioned where God or Jesus exact any aggression on earth because those religious shows don’t ask their followers to take up arms and kill)

Look, if you’re going to have a cartoon animal teaching kids to blow themselves up, it really ought to be Wile E. Coyote. :)

Hey Soos and Akira and Zaki, please get this straight: NO ONE on Israeli TV or CBN or any US network uses cartoon characters and/or children’s TV shows to advocate MURDER or the violent overtrhow of democracy. Every society and/or religious group uses propaganda for its own purposes but you have to LISTEN to what they’re actually saying. I defy you to find a Mickey rip-off on an Israeli or American network telling his viewers to go kill all the non-believers and take over the world. The cause for Palestinian statehood may be a just one but there’s no excuse for this garbage.

There’s some incredible irony about a such preeminent symbol and icon of American culture being used to denounce the culture it’s been ripped from. The show creators hate America but like Mickey Mouse? In a very messed up way that should speak to the universal appeal of the character, and to the commonality between the Islamic and Western world.

I’m not even going to touch on how wrong it is to encourage and spread hate to children, that is inexcusable.

Also if Islamic kids like this “Farfur” character wouldn’t it be extremely strange to see the real Mickey Mouse some day?

Time to send Mickey to GITMO!!!

>>> Second only to sex, nothing sells better than hate.

I’d rather buy sex than hate.

Wait… that didn’t come out right.

Dear Amid and Jerry,
I am glad that there is this comment forum available for this contentious issue but I have to argue that you can’t justify this posting so easily by saying it is just “about a Mickey Mouse-lookalike, not about US/Israeli/Palestinian relations.” I have been reading Cartoon Brew for years, even as far back as when there was only Cartoon Research…I know that you guys post much that is related to copyright infringement, so it’s not out of the blue. But do you post every instance? I don’t know if that’s such a pertinent argument, but there is a great deal of ‘copyright infringement’ or general parody or let’s-see-how-close-we-can-get-to-stealing all over the world and a lot of it is really funny, I remember the Russian winnie the pooh one, that was an awesome cartoon. Japan, Eastern, Western Europe, if you ask me, Disney characters are clearly well into the public domain, in fact, they’re almost meaningless. This is a mouse, it’s not mickey mouse, it’s a man in a mouse suit, it bears an incredibly strong resemblance to Mickey, yes, but in the end the simplicity of some of these drawings yields easy copying…Readers of this blog might have been turned on to (since it was posted here) the book “the pirate and the mouse” about Dan O’Neill using Disney characters to his own end. It’s a pretty interesting book regarding those issues, O’Neill is a little crazy, but it brings up a lot of questions. Also, Michael Barrier’s book ‘Hollywood Cartoons’ talks about how those early cartoons exchanged hands, from Disney to Lantz, the question of Friz Freleng maybe copying Disney’s mouse in his early work. So that’s all primordial cartoon ooze and here we are now- Mickey is an institution and a flat symbol (has anyone read Bill Watterson talking about the abuse of his characters and how he feels about Calvin and Hobbes merchandise in general?).

Okay, where am I going? I better get there soon. You all know this since I’m sure you all are big fans of this site, like me- I cannot help but be disturbed by this posting on behalf of Amid and Jerry, this is a situation that provokes such ridiculous comments as: “wouldn’t it be cool if you punched farfur in the face, then waited a moment to pull off the mickey head, anticipation builds as we reveal the damage, some dude all shaking and sniffling blood. then, a tiny flick to the eyebrow, making him flinch. as you walk away, i bet he would lose balance, and fall over.” We’re not given enough context in this situation to tell if there’s sarcasm or what in this statement, it is absolutely ridiculous that someone would post that, I hope they understand the irony. Yes, there is propaganda, there is stealing. What is this ‘palestinian media watch’ I’m definitely going to look that up. But Jerry, you posted a snippet from the LA times that had weighted language in it:”If ever there were a real claim that the company suffered dilution to the value of its intellectual property, this is it.” You can’t claim an unbiased, only for the copyright stance here so you have to expect these postings and the sense of urgency on the part of those who post. I have a lot of questions about this clip, who arranged it, what was left out, it is just a piece of media floating on the internet with stray corners all over and no authors, no one accountable- or i’m not computer savvy enough to find out. We have to know what we’re doing or else we’re perpetuating the status quo. Has anyone seen “Outfoxed” or in general watched Bill O’Reilly? I don’t know about CBN or whatever, I do know that propaganda, violent and otherwise exists all over, it may or may not get exposure, and there are degrees of subtlety, from the looks of it this one lacks subtlety, the palestinian nation is under pressure of complete extinction at the hands of a force much much bigger than them (symbolically, literally tied to Disney- the global corporation). They use what they can to survive. Does this make it okay? I don’t know, that’s a debate. Sometimes it works to be Gandhi and sometimes that type of resistance ends in outright genocide that goes unnoticed by the ‘watching’ world. These are extremes but this is an extreme case.

(What I’ve wanted to do for some time is make a stop-motion type (time-lapse photography type) film of the Israeli settlements closing in on Ramallah, not so slowly, really, starting in the hills and moving down into the main town. That’s a piece of animation i’ve been meaning to make myself.

I’m sorry to get so political, but I have to stress that it’s almost impossible to post something like this and justify it by the terms of the website, the interests of the website, this is not an interesting case of stealing, a man in a mickey-type suit, it’s just a heavily weighted one. I enjoy this website a lot and will keep enjoying it and I trust its intellectual choices. I’m sorry to go on for so long, but this is an issue that concerns us all, using the internet as we do, in the globalized world, in a time when arab-u.s. relations are active and there is cause and a consequence for all of our actions. Maybe I went too far and you’ll delete my posting i don’t know. I just needed to make my point (I don’t know if I did).

Elaine, I agree with you that this posting is about much more than copyright infringement and we should expect responses a bit more emotional (and one would hope more thoughtful) than the usual. I think that most have been very insightful and respectful, and the sillier ones may even have a purpose as well.

Buried somewhere within your very long comment is a strong insinuation that this video may be acceptable. That it’s shown out of context and that it may be understandable, given that Israel is threatening to wipe Palestine out altogether. That’s a very strong statement to make. I think you need to study postwar history as well as the Oslo peace accords and see if the reverse is true.

Given that we are all supposed to be apolitical from here on in, I think you were fortunate indeed to get that one out.

All s*it aside..I just ask the “wise” ones..

. Which nation has killed and destroyed most lives in this world in the last century?

. Which is the only nation who used nuclear bomb on innocent civilians..and then destroyed other nations for “alleged” having nuclear bombs..?

Oh scary.. how blind..how 1 sided..