What is Fatah celebrating today?

Caroline Glick asks What is Fatah celebrating today?  The answer is not a pleasant one.

Today [January 2, 2013] Fatah members in Dehaisheh, outside Bethlehem celebrated the terror group's special day by parading around in paramilitary uniforms, khafiiyehs and ski caps while brandishing rifles, axes, mock-up rockets and other terror paraphernalia.

But what so far has gone unnoticed by the media here -- and of course the media worldwide - is that today is not the anniversary of anything. It is not Fatah's 48th birthday. Arafat established Fatah in either 1957 or 1959 in Kuwait.

On the night of December 31, 1964-January 1, 1965, Fatah conducted its first terrorist attack against Israel. So today's 48th birthday celebrations are not honoring Fatah's birth, but Fatah's first terrorist attack, which took place 48 years ago, yesterday. Incidentally, and rather poetically, the attack was a failed attempt to bomb Israel's national water carrier, (that is, to poison Israel's wells...).

So much for the alleged moderation of Abu Mazen and his cohorts. Yitzhak Rabin was right, Abu Mazen is a terrorist and will always be one.  If only Shimon Peres would see it, the Middle East would be a different place.

Well, that's what I have to say.

Stephen M. Flatow

PLO official: Palestine should be free of Jews. So what's the surprise?

YNET is reporting on comments made by the PLO ambassador to the US that Palestine must be free of Jews.  The people need "separation" he says.  And they gripe about apartheid?

I have seen Palestinian Arabs interact with Jews on many levels.  (I'm talking about the average Palestinian in the street, before you think otherwise.)  And the interactions are good.

Elliott Abrams, a former US National Security Council official, said in response that according to such plans, Palestine will be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews.

Before we get worked up, remember, the PLO is headed by, in the words of Yitzhak Rabin, a terrorist, Abu Mazen, who also moonlights as a Holocaust denier.

We should expect nothing less from people trying to have their own state, should we?  Sad, very sad.

Read the full post from YNET.

stephen flatow alisa israel

From JPost.com - Analysis: PA cabinet changes show Abbas is freaking out

The "freaking out" reference is from the article headline; I didn't make it up.

In any event, could the chickens be coming home to roost for Mr. Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, after all these years? Abbas, I was personally told by the late Yitzhak Rabin, was a terrorist, and he, therefore, most likely has the penchant as his comrade in arms Arafat had for pocketing cash intended for Palestinians on the street, and working to keep power rather than democratically share it.

The uproar in Tunisia and Egypt may hit the streets of Ramallah, then what? An Islamist government takeover (read here Hamas) or will the moderates in Palestinian society gain a voice they have been forced to suppress for so many years?

Read the full JPost.com article - Analysis: PA cabinet changes show Abbas is freaking out

Palestinians and their Arab brothers

For a fellow with a PhD. in history, Abu Mazen, can't seem to get his facts (or sentiments) straight. While in Kuwait to build support for the Palestinian Authority's decision to avoid negotiations with Israel, he said,

"Kuwaiti-Palestinian relations are historical and excellent. It is a great honor for us that the Fatah movement was launched in Kuwait."

Does he have amnesia?  Where was he when Kuwait expelled thousands upon thousands of Palestinian Arabs from the country following the Gulf War.  (That was the war when missile attacks by Iraq against Israel were greeted by parties in the streets of Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank.)

Author Hassan A El-Najjar writes

Following the 1991 Gulf War, Palestinians in Kuwait were reduced from a thriving immigrant community of more than 400,000 to less than 30,000 in 1998. Kuwaitis forced them out of the country using a systematic and violent campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Palestinian official support for Iraq during the crisis was used as an excuse for that campaign.

So, with friends like the Kuwaitis who needs enemies. Rather than tour the Middle East gathering support for his policy of delaying negotiations, he should be sitting down with the people who can resolve his problems for once and all time--the Israelis.

Well, that's what I think.