Abu Mazen's true colors

Mahmoud Abbas is a Holocaust denier, terrorist and the US's preferred candidate to take control of the Palestinian Authority now that Arafat has died 25 years too late.

Here is Abbas' reaction to Israeli attacks on terrorists who had fired rockets into a Jewish settlement in Gaza, targeting Israeli civilians:

"We are praying for the souls of our martyrs who fell today to the shells of the Zionist enemy," Abbas told a rally in the south Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis, a hotbed of militants.

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"They are freedom fighters and should live a dignified and safe life," Abbas said on Monday in a campaign tailored in part to defuse the distrust of gunmen who branded him a stooge of Israel when their revered ex-guerrilla leader Arafat was alive.

Caroline Glick, the Cassandra* of the Israeli Right, notes:

The residents of Gaza themselves are at their wits' end. Over the past several weeks they have been absorbing volley after volley of rockets and mortar shells, antitank shells and rifle fire. Their homes and synagogues have been bombed. Their children's nurseries and community centers have been hit. Their hothouses have been shelled. . . Speaking to Ynet [an Israeli network], Yaki Yisraeli, treasurer of the community in Gush Katif, said, "If there isn't a suitable response to the mortar fire, people will start defending themselves. The residents serve in all the IDF units and the fear is that they will take the law into their own hands. If the IDF evacuates positions, the residents will take them over."

There are two issues in the "Roadmap" that are never discussed in Western media. First, is Abbas merely a wolf in sheeply clothing? Daniel Pipes, whose accuracy in reading the Middle East political tea leaves is notable, says yes:

. . . no less than his mentor Arafat, Abbas remains intent on eliminating Israel. This is evident, for example, from his recent comments insisting that millions of Palestinian "refugees" be permitted to enter Israel so as to overwhelm it demographically; or from his keeping the virulent content of the Palestinian Authority's media in place.

Second, why is it an acceptable resolution to any "peace process" to make Gaza Judenrein? Why are Arabs allowed to enshrine their prejudices in policy in a way that any Western country would decry if a fellow First-World nation took the same actions? Caroline Glick again:

The moral dimension of the proposed destruction of Israeli communities in Gaza and northern Samaria is one that has received scant attention over the past year since Sharon adopted the Labor Party's plan of retreat and expulsion as his own. Indeed, although it was one of the implicit assumptions of the 1993 Oslo process, the fact that a precondition for a final peace accord with the PLO was that all Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza would be ethnically cleansed has rarely been mentioned. As for Sharon's withdrawal plan for Gaza and northern Samaria, everyone from US National Security Council Middle East Adviser Elliott Abrams to Labor Party leader Shimon Peres to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to British Prime Minister Tony Blair have all noted that the plan, if enacted, will provide a precedent for the destruction of all or most of the remaining Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria with their population of some 250,000 Israelis.

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Gaza residents caused a public outcry when they taped orange Stars of David to their clothes this week. The hue and cry of the politicians on the Right and on the Left said that in using symbols from the Holocaust they were besmirching the memory of the victims of Europe's genocide of its Jews. It would seem that those who decried the residents' symbol have forgotten what a metaphor is.

The point was not that Sharon is Adolf Hitler or that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is Adolf Eichmann. The point of the protest was that Israel is the first Western state to call for the forced removal of Jews from their homes, simply because they are Jews, since the Holocaust and that there is something morally atrocious about the notion that for peace to come — to Israel and to those bombing Israel — it is necessary for entire regions to be rendered Judenrein. And again, as leaders in Israel and throughout the world have stated, the expulsion from Gaza and northern Samaria is simply a preview of coming attractions for what awaits those who live in Judea and the rest of Samaria.

The West has been morally obtuse about the Middle East for decades. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be changing.


* - From Greek mythology: Cassandra was one of the daughters of King Priam of Troy. The god Apollo cursed her after she refused his advances: she would have the gift of fully accurate foresight, but no one would believe her. Thus, she foresaw the Trojan War, its turning-point events and eventual outcome but her siblings and parents never heeded her prophecies. The Trojans lost.