Aaron David Miller, whom I quoted at length yesterday on another subject, wrote recently that
Palestinians deserve an independent state living in peace and security alongside Israel. They’ve suffered enough; their cause is just and compelling.
Is it?
Palestinian Media Watch reports,
The Palestinian Authority is against the moment of silence at the Olympics to commemorate the Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympics in 1972. According to the headline in the official PA daily, “Sports are meant for peace, not for racism.”
According to Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestinian Olympic Committee:
“Sports are meant for peace, not for racism… Sports are a bridge to love, interconnection, and spreading of peace among nations; it must not be a cause of division and spreading of racism between them [nations].”[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 25, 2012]These words appeared in a letter sent by Rajoub to the President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge. The letter “expressed appreciation for [Rogge’s] position, who opposed the Israeli position, which demanded a moment’s silence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London.”
The PA daily does not refer to the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 as terror. In the article about Rajoub’s letter, the killing of the athletes is referred to as “the Munich Operation, which took place during the Munich Olympics in 1972.”
The article continues with examples of Palestinian officials — including President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — honoring and praising the planners of the Munich massacre, Amin al-Hindi and Muhammad Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud).
It is not surprising that Abbas called Abu Daoud “a wonderful brother, companion, tough and stubborn, relentless fighter,” because he, Abbas, worked with him as financier of the “operation.”
In a 2002 Sports Illustrated article uncovered by Elder of Ziyon, Abu Daoud was quoted saying that Abbas financed the operation (although the writer of the article suggested that he “didn’t know” that he was financing murder):
Though he didn’t know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud’s allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. “Do you think that … would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?” Abu Daoud writes. “I doubt it.”
Abu Daoud is dead and Abbas isn’t telling, but even if he didn’t know about this particular mass murder, his statement in praise of Abu Daoud indicates that he approved of Daoud’s terrorist activities. The idea that Abbas “didn’t know” that the PLO he financed was responsible for worldwide terrorism is laughable.
To answer my original question, no, I don’t think that the “Palestinian Cause” — which even today has not deviated one millimeter from the cause of Yasser Arafat, and which can be summed up as “drive the Jews out of ‘Palestine’ whatever it takes” — is just.
And they prove it every day, by their own words.
Technorati Tags: Olympics, Munich massacre, Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Daoud, Palestinian Cause
Among the arguments against any kind of Palestinian Arab state is the fact that all official Palestinian bodies are hopelessly inhumane in regard to anything connected with Israel or Israelis. This total lack of willingness to be humane suggests that any Peace procress on their part would be a repetition of what Oslo proved to be. i.e. a desperate cynical trick on their part to pretend at Peace in order to move a step forward in their ultimate aim of destroying Israel.