So apparently we're gearing up for the next big World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2009, and the US, Israel and Canada are already talking about boycotting the thing if the text of the declaration isn't to their liking. I remember the first Durban love-fest from eight years ago, right before 9/11. Back then, this conference that was supposed to be about WORLD racism got bogged down with petty fights and the usual accusations against Israel, instead of, you know, actually talking about racism. So the US and Israel got all huffy puffy and bolted the thing (with the contemptible Shimon Peres of course expressing his oh so deep regret at having to do so).
This, of course, accomplished little, and only allowed the anti-Israel crowd to express their hatred before a worldwide forum with no opposition (the most vicious stuff actually took place at an NGO Forum outside the boundaries of the conference).
And now they're doing the same thing again. The US, Israel and Canada are all puffing their chests and threatening to boycott if the World doesn't do a good enough job of pretending it has something other than hatred for Israel.
This type of thing happens all the time with the UN -- the best example was the 16 years of political arm-twisting to get enough countries to pretend to repeal the infamous "Zionism is a form of racism" General Assembly resolution (I don't think that resolution was ever TRULY repealed, but that's a topic for another day). I just don't get it.
To me, there's nothing wrong with having the truth on display. If the world thinks Zionism is racism, or that the Holocaust (capital "H") isn't unique, fine. Let them say that. I want to know how they REALLY feel. Don't make back room deals to get them to lie while thinking the nasty thoughts (and ultimately acting on them) anyway. Heck, the UN doesn't even try to hide its feelings most of the time. It spends literally 1/3 of its time either condemning Israel or basking the suffering of the Palestinians, who are, of course, the most unjustly oppressed minority on the planet (if only the blacks in Darfur realized how good they have it!). Every November 29 (the anniversary of the 1947 General Assembly Partition Resolution), the UN celebrates its annual "Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People." Seriously. So let them say what they want at conference. If nothing else, it will probably be immensely entertaining.
The proper response is not to boycott this circus, but to send your toughest folks over there to rub the barbarians' face in their idiocy with the whole world watching. I'd love it for once for somebody from Israel or the other parts of the civilized world to say "Zionism is racism? Are you retarded? There are Israelis of virtually every race on the planet. If you want so real racism, read the PLO Covenant, which explicitly states in Article 5 that you have to be an Arab (a RACE) in order to be considered a Palestinian. That's some bitchin' old-school racism right there. Talking about Zionism, which has absolutely nothing to do with race, at a conference on racism is just downright nutty." The response to that would probably be worth the price of admission alone.
Showing posts with label PLO Covenant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PLO Covenant. Show all posts
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The "Moderate" Mahmoud Abbas
I saw this a few weeks ago from the Middle East Media Research Institute and had to write about it. Some absolutely priceless statements are in there from Mahmoud Abbas. You know Abbas, right? He's the secular "moderate" peace-lover who is the Great Hope for ending the Arab/Israeli Conflict. Never mind the fact that Abbas was Arafat's number 2 guy in the PLO for roughly 40 years while they were conducting more terrorist attacks than Hamas could ever dream of. Never mind that the reason we call Abbas "Dr." is that he wrote a Ph.D thesis arguing: (i) that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis; and (ii) that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust was purposefully inflated to further Zionist aims.
Isn't that so cute and moderate? Don't you just want to pinch his cheek? And oh yeah, he probably personally financed the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre.
But back to the MEMRI article. See, the big difference between the PLO and Hamas is that the PLO recognized (say it with me now) "Israel's Right to Exist." This is the big thing preventing the US from dealing with Hamas -- they won't say those magic words. So yeah, the PLO will recognize the right of us Jews to live in Israel while Hamas won't. Um, not so much, according to a briefing our Peace Prince gave to a Jordanian newspaper at the end of February:
"Abbas stressed that he is opposed to the so-called 'Jewish state,' saying, We already rejected such a proposal at the Annapolis summit, last November in the U.S. [In fact,] the summit almost broke up over this issue. We were asked at the time [to agree] that the summit's concluding statement should refer to the Jewish state – but we categorically objected to this..."
Read that again so it fully sinks in. They will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Of course, this is not very surprising since PA negotiator Saeb Erekat said basically the same thing several weeks ago (with just as little coverage from the media). In January 2001, Faisal Husseini, another "moderate" the Israelis thought they could deal with, told an Egyptian newspaper that the Oslo Accords were a "Trojan Horse" and that the ultimate strategic goal remained the same: all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The goals of the PLO are what they always have been: declare a "Palestinian State" in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and deluge Israel proper with millions of Arabs through the so-called "Right of Return" to take over the country demographically and ultimately unite the whole area as "Palestine" with a large Arab majority ruling over the Dhimmi Jews just like old times.
Abbas even has a nice "moderate" attitude when it comes to lobbing missiles at helpless civilians. They're not bad because killing civilians is bad. No, they're bad because they provide a "pretext" for Israel to hit back (note to Radical Islamists: terrorism often does make civilized people want to hit back).
In fairness to Abbas, it's perfectly rational and understandable for him not to be satisfied with a nice cuddly little state next to Israel. His family isn't from the "Occupied Territories." He was born in Safed, from where his family fled the fighting in 1948. So giving back the territory conquered in 1967 doesn't settle the issue for him at all. Nor does it settle the issue for the PLO, most of whom come not from Judea, Samaria or Gaza, but from families who also fled Israel proper from 1947-49.
Under the Palestinian Narrative, which Mahmoud Abbas wholly subscribes to, their land was stolen out from under them by foreign,imperialist, colonialist (insert further pedantic-sounding pejoratives here) Jews, they want it ALL back, and they're willing to fight for it for as long as it takes. Just read the PLO Covenant.
So why this "Palestinian State" business? Why this Trojan Horse? Well, during the Cold War, the PLO was heavily allied with the Soviets, and the Soviets taught them to say things the West wanted to hear. No more driving the Jews into the sea and destroying Israel. Now it's all about the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, about vindicating universally recognized human rights under (drum roll please) International Law (don't worry, we're not going there with this note). So in 1974, the Palestinian National Council passed what is known as the "Phased Plan." Basically, the PLO would take any portion of "Paleistine" it was offered and declare a provisional state. But the endgame remains the same -- use the "Palestinian State" as a launching point to take over the rest of the land.
THAT is the "moderate" philosophy of Mahmoud Abbas. And that's why the so-called "Two State Solution" is no less fictional than Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.
Isn't that so cute and moderate? Don't you just want to pinch his cheek? And oh yeah, he probably personally financed the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre.
But back to the MEMRI article. See, the big difference between the PLO and Hamas is that the PLO recognized (say it with me now) "Israel's Right to Exist." This is the big thing preventing the US from dealing with Hamas -- they won't say those magic words. So yeah, the PLO will recognize the right of us Jews to live in Israel while Hamas won't. Um, not so much, according to a briefing our Peace Prince gave to a Jordanian newspaper at the end of February:
"Abbas stressed that he is opposed to the so-called 'Jewish state,' saying, We already rejected such a proposal at the Annapolis summit, last November in the U.S. [In fact,] the summit almost broke up over this issue. We were asked at the time [to agree] that the summit's concluding statement should refer to the Jewish state – but we categorically objected to this..."
Read that again so it fully sinks in. They will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Of course, this is not very surprising since PA negotiator Saeb Erekat said basically the same thing several weeks ago (with just as little coverage from the media). In January 2001, Faisal Husseini, another "moderate" the Israelis thought they could deal with, told an Egyptian newspaper that the Oslo Accords were a "Trojan Horse" and that the ultimate strategic goal remained the same: all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The goals of the PLO are what they always have been: declare a "Palestinian State" in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and deluge Israel proper with millions of Arabs through the so-called "Right of Return" to take over the country demographically and ultimately unite the whole area as "Palestine" with a large Arab majority ruling over the Dhimmi Jews just like old times.
Abbas even has a nice "moderate" attitude when it comes to lobbing missiles at helpless civilians. They're not bad because killing civilians is bad. No, they're bad because they provide a "pretext" for Israel to hit back (note to Radical Islamists: terrorism often does make civilized people want to hit back).
In fairness to Abbas, it's perfectly rational and understandable for him not to be satisfied with a nice cuddly little state next to Israel. His family isn't from the "Occupied Territories." He was born in Safed, from where his family fled the fighting in 1948. So giving back the territory conquered in 1967 doesn't settle the issue for him at all. Nor does it settle the issue for the PLO, most of whom come not from Judea, Samaria or Gaza, but from families who also fled Israel proper from 1947-49.
Under the Palestinian Narrative, which Mahmoud Abbas wholly subscribes to, their land was stolen out from under them by foreign,imperialist, colonialist (insert further pedantic-sounding pejoratives here) Jews, they want it ALL back, and they're willing to fight for it for as long as it takes. Just read the PLO Covenant.
So why this "Palestinian State" business? Why this Trojan Horse? Well, during the Cold War, the PLO was heavily allied with the Soviets, and the Soviets taught them to say things the West wanted to hear. No more driving the Jews into the sea and destroying Israel. Now it's all about the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, about vindicating universally recognized human rights under (drum roll please) International Law (don't worry, we're not going there with this note). So in 1974, the Palestinian National Council passed what is known as the "Phased Plan." Basically, the PLO would take any portion of "Paleistine" it was offered and declare a provisional state. But the endgame remains the same -- use the "Palestinian State" as a launching point to take over the rest of the land.
THAT is the "moderate" philosophy of Mahmoud Abbas. And that's why the so-called "Two State Solution" is no less fictional than Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.
Collective Punishment and Projection
Now THIS is an awesome article! In short, Michael I. Krauss, a law professor at George Mason University, completely demolishes the collective punishment claim the Arabs have made with respect to the blockade of Gaza. It only leads to the rather sad question of why such an article is published in the AMERICAN Thinker rather than in a press release from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Krauss makes some of the same points I did in my note titled "Israel's Media Problems" -- namely that the blockade, rather than being illegal collective punishment, is a perfectly legal instrument of war under international law. His analogy was slightly different than mine though. Krauss pointed to the U.S. blockade of Cuba in 1962, which had far less of an adverse effect on the citizens of that country than the Union's blockade of the Confederacy, which I referenced. The point, though, is that all of these blockades were perfectly appropriate under international law. If anything, Israel's blockade is MORE legal than what occurred during the Cuban missile crisis. While missiles were installed in Cuba and aimed at the United States, Cuba, to my knowledge, never took any actual military action against the United States. In contrast, Hamas fires missiles at Israeli civilians every day.
The last paragraph is especially refreshing since it refers to an instance of psychological projection, a recurring trend in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arabs falsely accuse Israel of "collective punishment" against their civilian population. However, as Krauss points out, it is HAMAS who commits acts of collective punishment by launching missiles exclusively at civilians to collectively punish the Israeli population for the actions of its government and military.
Most Arab grievances against Israel simply involve the Arabs psychologically projecting their own acts and crimes onto the Israelis. My favorite example is the rather amusing charge that "Zionism is racism." Of course, this is plainly absurd to any rational person since there are Israelis of just about every race on the planet. Contrast this with the PLO Covenant, which explicitly states that to be a "Palestinian", you have to be an Arab (or at least have an Arab ancestor):
"Article 5:The Palestinians are those ARAB nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father - whether inside Palestine or outside it - is also a Palestinian." (emphasis added)
Other articles of the Covenant also equate being a Palestinian with being an Arab, such as:
"Article 1:Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation."
Also, while I'm on the topic of the glorious PLO Covenant, I would be remiss not to point out Article 9, which kind of puts all of the fool's errand Peace Plans we've suffered through into perspective:
"Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it . They also assert their right to normal life in Palestine and to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty over it."
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