Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 13th year of his four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority, is deemed a moderate Palestinian leader, one with whom Israel can and should negotiate.
Is it “moderate” to say that Jews caused the Holocaust with their “social behavior,” such as moneylending?”
Is it “moderate” to say: “Israel is a colonial project that has nothing to do with the Jews . . . Europeans wanted to bring the Jews here to preserve their interests in the region”?
Is it “moderate” to say that most of Europe’s Jews, alleged by Abbas to have been offered by Hitler the right to transfer their assets to Palestine, thought their money was more important than their lives, and therefore stayed in Europe?
Is it “moderate” to say that Jews do not have a historical connection to the Land of Israel?
Is it “moderate” for Abbas to say that he will not accept any American-proposed Israel-Palestinian peace deal?
The “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas said all these things April 30 in a speech to the Palestinian National Council.
The message is getting out. No less than the custodian of the Islamic holy places, Saudi Arabia, in the person of its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, just this week is reported to have said last March: “For the past 40 years, the Palestinian leadership has missed opportunities again and again, and rejected all the offers it was given. It’s about time that the Palestinians accept the offers, and agree to come to the negotiating table — or they should shut up and stop complaining.”
Again, that’s not the pro-Israel lobby speaking. That Saudi Arabia speaking.
We would just substitute “98 years” for “40 years.” It was in 1920 that the leaders of the Arabs in Palestine lashed out in violence against the Jewish community there — a time when there were no “West Bank” settlements and no State of Israel.
There will be no Palestinian moderate until the legitimacy of a Jewish state, based on millennia of Jewish roots in the Land of Israel, is, well, not “recognized,” since it makes no more sense to “recognize” the intimate Jewish connection to Israel than it does to recognize that George Washington was president of the United States. A genuine Palestinian moderate will not “recognize” Israel, but simply live with the facts. Mahmoud Abbas lives in his own world, with the real Zionist being Hitler, the Zionist pioneers who died of malaria having been dispatched by the Queen of England, and the ancient Jewish temples in Jerusalem a gimmick.
The Saudi prince may have been a bit harsh when he said, “There are much more urgent and more important issues [than Palestine] to deal with — such as Iran,” because the Palestinian culture of pay-for-slay and prioritized poverty are urgent issues. No one benefits from incentivizing terrorism and diverting concrete from housing to terror tunnels. But essentially the prince is right. The primary issue in the Middle East is unrelated to the Palestinians. It is Iran. A genuine Palestinian moderate would make peace with Israel for the same reason that former Arab enemies of Israel now work with Israel — against Iran.
Copyright © 2018 by the Intermountain Jewish News
