JERUSALEM, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Newly elected Palestinian President Mamoru Abbas has ordered Palestinian television to stop broadcasting bloody imagery.
Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has told television station officials to tone down aggressive programming. References to suicide bombings as "martyr operations" have been changed to "explosions" and eulogies to suicide bombers, previously referred to as "martyrs," have given way to nature programs and romantic films, reported the Sunday Telegraph.
"He said that he does not want a screen full of blood," Radwan Abu Ayash, the head of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, told the Telegraph. "We must avoid bloody things, which are not a good image for our people."
One Palestinian, Ibrahim Wahbehm, who lives in Bethlehem welcomed the change.
"People salute Abu Mazen's understanding of the need to make the broadcasting moderate, because the old style under Arafat was not only dull but it brought incitement and hatred," he said.
