Palestinian Authority Music Video Lauds Yasser Arafat: 'Oh AK-47 Make Sounds of Joy

Palestinian Media Watch, a watchdog group whose sole purpose is to monitor print and broadcast media -- particularly put out by the Palestinian Authority, has uncovered a new PA music video honoring the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

The lyrics glorify Fatah's use of violence and lauds the ever-powerful rifle. According to PMW, the video has been broadcast seven times on official PA TV thus far.

The song speaks of Arafat's life and idolizes him as a model of violence, revolution, and war. It celebrates through words and visuals the violence of the rifle: "Boom out loud, oh voice of the machine gun... Oh AK-47, make sounds of joy."

The lyrics, in full, are as follows:

"Engrave on the rifle butt the symbol of Fatah's Al-Asifa

My trigger makes sounds of joy to the Elder (Arafat)

while the rifle sounds aloud

Boom out loud, oh voice of the machine gun,

Yasser [Arafat] lives inside us

[Despite] the day (of his death) on Nov. 11,

the [Palestinian] cause has not died

He is present inside us as an idea and as light,

a fire burning in [our] chest

He [Arafat] taught the whole world how to revolt.

Yasser - symbol of freedom

Oh Elder, I swear by [your] uniform and your keffiya

Oh bullets of the defiant, [your] shot fights 100 [men]

He lived and died in an atmosphere of war,

he crossed the world from east to west

Mahmoud Abbas is on the same path

when it comes to [our] state and identity

We fired the rifle, we faced the storm

We responded to the cannon with a pistol

Using stones, we ignited a revolution and wrote [history], oh Fatah men

On the rifle butt, we have engraved [Fatah's] symbol

On the grip, we have engraved "Arafat"

On the top cover we have inscribed the history of the free

On the barrel - the name of the homeland

The flash-suppressor ignited and burst

Here it is, oh rifle sight

The state is only a few meters away

Oh action-spring, receive and shoot [bullets] continuously

Change the magazine - there are hundreds [of them]

Load it into the chamber

Oh AK-47, make sounds of joy and salute the Elder (Arafat)"

Yasser Arafat is, of course, perhaps best known for invoking terrorism and leading the intifadas against Israel. In fact, then-Saudi Prince Bandar once said he was a perpetrator of "crimes against the entire region" when Arafat refused the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offers to establish a two-state solution during the 2000 Camp David summit.