House of Houses (partially lost Palestinian children's TV show; 2008-2020)
This article has been tagged as NSFL due to its disturbing content.
The title card for the show used in seasons 3 and 4.
Status: Partially Lost
House of Houses is a Palestinian children's TV show created and directed by Walaa Al-Battat and directed by Ali Jawarish, and it was filmed at Ramallah in the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation. The show aired on the Fatah-affiliated station Palestine TV from March 28, 2008 to December 11, 2020. During its 12-year run, 178 episodes were made for it. The show was a competion against another Palestinian children's show called Tomorrow's Pioneers which aired on the Hamas-affiliated station Al-Aqsa TV. The program was very controversial, with several disturbing messages being taught in poems and dialogues. These included Anti-Semitism, Islam, Terrorism, and other Anti-Western topics. This even lead to the deletion of a YouTube channel called "palwatch" in March 2016 after uploading a clip of the show because of hate speech[1]. Despite this, the show also had positive themes.
Premise
The show was a talk show that discussed the life in Palestine living under the Israeli occupation. The host, Walaa, would say in the episodes "All our land will return to us". The program featured sketches, children playing their musical instruments, step-by-steps on how to make types of crafts, and the host taking calls from the public. The studio and the show itself were presented in a style of preschool and children's shows like Sesame Street, although with disturbing content applied to it.
Controversies
Do to some of the show's disturbing nature, Israeli and pro-Israeli institutes such as Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) as well as an Israeli censorship website would publish clips of the show on their website and YouTube channels to show the world the indoctrination these children were being exposed to. However, at the same time, these websites and the YouTube Channels were attacking the show.
According to nablustv.net, [2] it states:
[...] said that Israeli websites are attacking the program and broadcasting distorted messages to the world that it incites terrorism against Israel.
Al-Battat explained that there is an Israeli censorship website that incites against the program and its content, noting that it publishes clips that are taken out of context to show the world that Palestinian official television incites and teaches children to terrorism and murder.
Al-Battat said that there are Israeli parties that do not want us to spread the national and historical culture of the Palestinian issue to our children, so they are inciting the program to change its policy and its national and entertainment content. [...]
Availability
Do to Palestine TV only uploading episodes of their programs on their social media until 2012, full episodes of seasons 1 and 2 are unavailable and only clips exist, while full episodes of seasons 3-7 are available on Palestine TV's Dailymotion, YouTube, and Facebook accounts. Despite this, 6 episodes from seasons 4 and 5 were uploaded in full on YouTube, but they have since been deleted and weren't archived on the Wayback Machine, leaving them completely lost with the exception of screenshots of these episodes that were supposedly the thumbnails of these videos.