by Joseph Pruder, Frontpagemag.com
On July 6, 2010, the day Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama at the White House, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Charles Levinson and Jay Solomon entitled “U.S., Israel to Burnish Ties,” which stated:
U.S. officials said they will continue to press Netanyahu to firmly commit to discussing the fundamental issues involved with creating a Palestinian state, as one of a number of confidence-building measures. U.S. officials acknowledged that without this, (Palestinian Authority Chairman) Abbas will face trouble selling the idea of direct talks to a skeptical Palestinian population and neighboring Arab states.
One of the excuses given by administration sources to justify pressure being put on Israel for additional concessions is that the Arab League has given Abbas “a four month window” to show that advances have been made towards Palestinian statehood through indirect talks with the Israelis. Abbas, according to Wall Street Journal reporters, will not move into direct talks with Israel unless the Arab League extends its endorsement.
During the recent White House meeting, President Obama echoed Abbas’ demands that Israel agree to a complete freeze on construction of new Israeli settlements, or take other confidence building measures. Netanyahu, relieved by the smooth-going meeting, relented to Obama’s demands without countering publicly with demands of his own. Moreover, Netanyahu announced several Israeli concessions including granting the Palestinian Authority security forces more control over areas in the West Bank, and unilaterally releasing Palestinian prisoners loyal to Abbas. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to negotiate with Abbas the fundamental issues required to develop an independent Palestinian homeland, including borders, security and the status of East Jerusalem.”
In the wake of Netanyahu’s previous White House meeting with Obama, during which Obama treated him in a most humiliating way, Netanyahu was only too anxious to have a “successful meeting,” even if it meant that, once again, Israel would make unilateral concessions. In appeasing Obama and Abbas, Netanyahu instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to charge an Israeli soldier with manslaughter in the death of Palestinian civilians during the last war with Hamas in Gaza. The Netanyahu government also eased the entry of proscribed goods into Gaza.
Abbas is exercising “unabashed chutzpah” – and getting away with it – in large measure because of the “unabashed partiality” on the part of President Obama towards the Palestinians in failing to publicly demand concrete confidence-building measures from the Palestinians. During Obama’s recent White House meeting with Abbas in early June, Obama fleetingly mentioned the “anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian society,” to which, according to the Chicago Sun-Times (July 6, 2010), Abbas responded: “we’re not doing that.” Abbas, however, was not excoriated by the likes of the New York Times, Washington Post, or for that matter, by administration officials for his bold faced lie and continued incitement against Israel and Jews. They let him slide.
According to Palestinian Media Watch, the Palestinian Authority (under Abbas) systematically indoctrinates young and old to hate Israel and Jews. Using every form of media available to them, every means of education, and every form of cultural structure it controls, Abbas oversees an integrated operation that actively promotes religious hatred, demonization, and conspiracy libels, in order to present Jews as endangering Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and humanity as a whole. As a result of this instilled hatred of Jews and Israel, most Palestinians justify murder of Israelis, and suicide bombing against Jewish targets.
Imagine an 8th grade Palestinian child reading “Your enemies (the Jews) have murdered your children, have sliced open the stomachs of your wives, and seized the beards of your honorable Sheikhs and have driven them into ditches of death.” Or, the impact on Palestinian society when a Palestinian historian, Nabil Algam, declares on Palestinian TV (10/22/09) that Jews have no history in Palestine and that the Jews seek to erase a 5000 year old Palestinian history. Consider the impact of a Palestinian Muslim Sheikh’s sermon, broadcast on Abbas-controlled Palestinian TV that charged: “The Jews are the enemy of Allah, and the Prophet says Kill the Jews.” One can only imagine what is said in mosques by imams whose sermons are not broadcasted. And then there was the recently aired Palestinian TV program from which stated that “Israel spreads prostitution and drugs among Palestinian youth.” For those who prefer to read, there is no shortage of contemptible material available, such as the recent story entitled “Israel commits Nazi-like crimes that threatens humanity,” which appeared in the Palestinian daily Al Hayat Al-Jadida.
Since the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn in September 1993, the U.S. and, to a slightly lesser degree, the Israeli government, have failed to demand an unequivocal end to such ugly incitement whose only purpose is to encourage violence and hate. Instead of preparing the Palestinian society for peace and compromise with Israel, Palestinian leaders from Arafat to Abbas, have prepared them for perpetual struggle against Israel. In fact, Abbas stated on July 7, 2010, in an interview with his PA controlled Al Hayat Al-Jadida, “If you (the Arab states) want war, and if all of you fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don’t have the ability to do it.”
It is both ironic and disturbing to witness Israel being pressed by the Obama administration and the media to prove that it is “serious” about peace with the Palestinians, while the Palestinians have demonstrated time and again that they are unwilling to give up their armed struggle against Israel – whatever Israel’s size may be. Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) charter, which was never revised, states their aim to likewise dismantle the Jewish state. In July 2000, when President Clinton hosted a summit at Camp David with Prime Minister Barak and Yaser Arafat, Arafat left a table where most of his demands were offered. He chose instead to renew the armed struggle (intifada) against Israel. Barak had offered Arafat most of the West Bank and all of Gaza, a swap of Israeli territory, as well as a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.
According to Robert Malley and Hussein Agha’s “Camp David Tragedy of Errors,” published in the August 9th 2001 New York Review of Books, Mahmoud Abbas, one of the leading negotiators (and current PA chairman) said even before the summit that the Palestinians ”made clear to the Americans that the Palestinian side is unable to make concessions on anything.” Abbas also maintained that the whole process was “some sort of a trap.”
