The Fatah organization is celebrating the 43rd anniversary of its first terrorist attack, an attempt to sabotage Israel’s National Water Carrier on January 3, 1965.
Please note that this was two years before the start of ‘The Occupation’ of the West Bank and Gaza.
As part of the celebration, they are fighting with Hamas members in Gaza with at least 8 dead between them overnight. But never mind, I can’t get too upset about this.
The acronym “FATAH” [ÙتØ] is created from the complete Arabic name: HArakat al-TAhrir al-Watani al-Filastini [Palestinian National Liberation Movement], becoming “HATAF”, which, since it means “sudden death” in Arabic, was reversed to become “FATAH”. The word Fatah is prominently used for the Islamic expansion in the first centuries of Islamic history, and so has strongly positive connotations for Muslims. — Wikipedia
Fatah was founded in 1954 by Palestinian students, including Yasser Arafat (who actually was born in Cairo and was not a Palestinian at all). Arafat became Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee in 1969, a year in which the PLO claimed 2,432 terrorist attacks against Israel.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] is composed of several factions, Fatah being the dominant one. Here are two short quotations from the PLO Charter (official English version — the Arabic is even more explicit):
Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. Thus it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase…
Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine [Arabic version says “liquidation of the Zionist entity”].
Although President Clinton demanded of Yasser Arafat that this charter be modified as part of the Oslo agreement, this was never done (see also letter of Ambassador Dore Gold here). Over the years, Fatah has been responsible for more Israeli deaths than any other terrorist faction, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.
In fact, according to the Israeli internal security service (Shabak) the murderers of Ahikam Amichai and David Rubin, who were killed last Friday were both Fatah members and Palestinian Authority employees. One of them was a PA policeman.
Nevertheless, the US and other international donors have pledged $7.4 billion to the Fatah-dominated PA. The US — your tax dollars — is supplying rifles, ammunition, training, and even paying for armored personnel carriers for them, supposedly to ‘fight terrorism’.
This is like paying Kellogg’s to fight cornflakes.