Tag Archives: Abbas

Palestinian President Abbas Praises Dead Terrorists As ‘Martyrs’

Posted on by
Reply
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority

IPT:

by John Rossomando

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is viewed in the West as a moderate relative to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. But that may be because Western media ignore incendiary rhetoric Abbas routinely makes in Arabic.

An example came earlier this month, when Abbas praised a litany of deceased Palestinian terrorists as martyrs. That includes Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Palestinian Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shikaki and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine founder George Habash. Abbas named each during a January 4 rally for Palestinian unity in Gaza. The rally took place on the eve of Egyptian-sponsored unity negotiations with Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal in Cairo.

“We must remember the pioneers, the Grand Mufti of Palestine Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini as well as Ahmad Al-Shukeiri, the founder of the PLO,” Abbas said in a translation of the speech made by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Al-Husseini was a close ally of Adolf Hitler who instigated terror attacks against Jews and moderate Palestinians in pre-World War II Palestine. He also helped organize a Muslim SS division and was complicit in the Holocaust, preventing the rescue of 19,000 Jewish children.

“The National Socialist movement of Greater Germany has, since its inception, inscribed upon its flag the fight against the world Jewry. It has therefore followed with particular sympathy the struggle of the freedom-loving Arabs, especially in Palestine, against Jewish interlopers,” Al-Husseini wrote during World War II.

The State Department declined to comment when asked about these statements by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

“Saying such things is a form of incitement,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “We are seeing rhetoric in camps that were previously seen as moderate, and it is rhetoric heading in the wrong direction.”

It is a direct response of the populism that followed the Arab Spring.

The rhetoric also stands in stark contrast with what Abbas said in November when he pledged there would no Third Intifada on his watch. “As long as I’m sitting here, in this position, I will not allow an intifada. We will act only through diplomatic and peaceful means,” he said.

Such rhetoric has been matched to Israel’s south by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who called the Israelis “the descendants of apes and pigs” in 2010 when he said the “Zionists” needed to give the Palestinians everything they want or face war.

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was struck by the lack of attention those comments, which were only recently translated and released by MEMRI, garnered in the West. “One possibility is, to borrow a phrase, the soft bigotry of low expectations,” he wrote. “Another: Anti-Semites have done such a thorough job of convincing the media that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist that when it does pop up it causes a paralyzing form of cognitive dissonance.”

Related articles

U.N. Says ‘Aye’ to Palestinian Terror State

Posted on by
2

large-450x313By P. David Hornik

Late Thursday evening, Israel time, the UN General Assembly voted to confer nonmember statehood on the Palestinian Authority by a sweeping majority.

Even Israel’s hopes of putting together a “moral minority” of Western-country nays had crumbled, with France and Italy pronouncing themselves in favor of the Palestinian nonmember state and Britain and Germany abstaining. Israel, the United States, Canada, and the Czech Republic stood virtually alone in opposing the move by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.

The nonmoral majority of Western countries ratified Palestine (actively with ayes or passively with abstentions) even though doing so is a blatant violation of the Oslo Accords they had once piously sanctioned. And they did so even though last week and the week before, Gaza—where almost half of Palestinian Authority Palestinians live—had fired 1600 hundred rockets at civilian targets in Israel, every single firing a manifest war crime intended to kill and injure men, women, and children.

It is said that the Gaza eruption led some European countries to change their minds and vote in favor of the resolution (or abstain) so as to strengthen Abbas’s “diplomatic” approach over Hamas’s violence. Abbas’s diplomatic polish and peacemaking disposition were well in evidence when he addressed the General Assembly in September, saying among other things:

During the past months, attacks by terrorist militias of Israeli settlers have become a daily reality, with at least 535 attacks perpetrated since the beginning of this year. We are facing relentless waves of attacks against our people, our mosques, churches and monasteries, and our homes and schools; they are unleashing their venom against our trees, fields, crops and properties, and our people have become fixed targets for acts of killing and abuse with the complete collusion of the occupying forces and the Israeli government.

As Israel’s UN ambassador Ron Prosor noted in a stinging op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “Many countries in the Assembly are taking an approach to Palestinian statehood that is…Pavlovian…. For decades, the body has rubber-stamped any Palestinian whim no matter how ill-advised, ill-conceived or illogical.”

Prosor went on to list some glaring shortcomings of the Palestinian Authority/Gaza that—seemingly by any normal calculus of Western countries—would disqualify it rather than qualify it for statehood, such as:

● Lack of control over territory, with Abbas’s Ramallah-based, official Palestinian Authority having had zero control over Gaza since Hamas seized power there in 2007. Prosor could have added the tenuousness of Abbas’s rule in the West Bank itself, where towns are run by clan-based extortion gangs and Israeli forces are all that prevents a Hamas takeover.

● The fact that Gaza is a terrorist state in every sense of the term, “a haven for global jihadist organizations like al Qaeda,” a beachhead for Iran in its ongoing war for Israel’s annihilation.

● The fact that democracy has not exactly flourished in Islamist Gaza or, for that matter, in the West Bank, where “journalists, bloggers and activists continue to be jailed and tortured…for crimes such as ‘extending their tongues against the Palestinian President’” (see reports here and here).

● The fact that the Palestinian Authority is bankrupt, totally dependent on foreign aid, yet “devotes 6% of its annual budget to payments for imprisoned terrorists and the families of suicide bombers”—while using its educational autonomy to instill a culture of hatred of Israel.

And to all this Europe voted yes—or at best took refuge in a cowardly neutrality.

Read more at Front Page

 

Related articles

Ruler of Qatar Visits Hamas

Posted on by
Reply

Qatar’s Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh

by Daniel E. Rogell for IPT:

Qatar’s Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani became the first head of state to visit Gaza since the Hamas terrorist organization seized control of the territory in June 2007, Ynetnews reported Tuesday. The visit was facilitated by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government, which issued a statement praising the move as part of its campaign “to break the siege on the people” of Gaza.

It marked a major reversal in Qatar’s relationship with Israel, which until January 2009 included clandestine talks and growing bilateral trade relations. The Qatari leader denounced Israel’s policies and praised the people of Gaza for standing up to the Jewish state with their “bare chests.” The Associated Press called it Hamas’ “biggest diplomatic victory since taking power five years ago.”

Hamas, for its part, was thrilled by what was “a state visit in all but name.”

“It is the first visit by an Arab leader at this level to Gaza,” Hamas said in a statement. “This breaks the political isolation of the government and opens the door to break the siege.”

Despite vehement opposition from the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Sheik Khalifa also pledged $400 million for the beleaguered territory. Israel accused Qatar of taking sides against the Palestinian Authority government and claimed the decision was “hurting the Palestinians and the chance of pulling Gaza out of the mud and onto the road for peace.”

An aide to Palestinian President Abbas, Nimr Hamad, condemned Khalifa for giving “the impression that the visitors recognize their rule and that would reinforce the split [between Palestinian factions] and not help the reconciliation.”

Hamas has widely benefited from the creation of new Islamist regimes and the fall of Arab dictators. Islamist governments in Tunisia and Egypt have welcomed the Gazan terrorist group, despite attempts by the United States to crack down on its funding. Hamas has also profited from the flow of weapons out of Libya since Muammar Gaddafi’s fall.

Related articles