In response to my blog about the controversial hamas mickey mouse cartoon that I wrote about my colleague had this to say. It merits being published here.

well Erin,

the first thing that occurred to my mind when I went through your text was wow, she really must have made great efforts in watching all the episodes and asked someone to translate them to be able to study a case then spread her message clearly, and hence I had the feeling that you have implied real efforts to pass a message, I couldn’t ignore it. As a result I thought of conducting a survey to study the impact of this cartoon on our children’s behavior. I could have asked my daughter but she watches teletebies and barnies and I personally have not heard about it before. The best way to do it was by asking parents from different districts about the effect of Farfur’s character on their children’s behavior and daily practices. I picked up the phone and called a friend in Gaza to ask him about this cartoon, and as a father of three children, a person engaged to different media resources and our colleague, I thought he may have watched it with his kids, especially being in Gaza with the continuous extensive military operations, watching cartoons maybe the only way for kids entertainment, but he actually said:

“ What is this cartoon about?” so I told him I am asking you because I don’t know and looking for this information, please ask your wife she must have watched it with the children, they must have watched it ,But neither his wife nor his children have heard anything about it. I was disappointed because I felt desperate to know and hear from the kids but decided not to give it up and call Maram a mother of two gorgeous daughters, Maya and Remeen, she was my classmate and is living and working in Ramallah , I asked the same questions but she said:” I am sorry, I would like you to conduct your survey but I didn’t hear about it, but still if you want to know about it’s effect over our children’s behavior I can be helping you, I will ask my friends “, so she started to call different mothers working with her and I kept on calling and asking other friends from Jerusalem , Abu dies, Beit Hanina, until I figured out that this is not a cartoon which was watched as much as it was advertised for in the international community ,and have understood that Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi demanded forbidding this cartoon show, indicating that he doesn’t want to see our kids watching a cartoon that may effect their formation politically .I was amazed by the results and then stopped for seconds and thought, I must be wasting time instead of studying a cartoon show that was stopped 3 months ago and hardly anyone have watched it, I should be doing a survey on the military attacks that we are obliged to see and suffer from everyday.

At the end you can easily change TV channel but can you change the reality of assassinations, military attacks, human rights violations??