Abbas is choosing the wrong friends. Illustrative. Photo Courtesy of UN Photo/Marco Castro
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has never been all that friendly towards Israel, but last week he unleashed an invective-filled speech at the United Nations that sounded like a hateful enemy towards the Jewish State. Along the way, Abbas accused Israel of genocide and racism.
He said all of this in spite of the fact that Israel is not guilty of these sins, and Abbas’ own Palestinian partners are. Let’s look more closely:
Easily the harshest statement made by Abbas, whose speech was published on the United Nations’ website, is the accusation that Israel attempted “genocide” in the last Gaza war. This is vicious distortion of the truth.
Israel, while Gaza Palestinian terrorists were firing rockets at their civilians, continued to allow supplies and food to enter Gaza. Furthermore, they even allowed sick and injured Palestinians to enter Israel so they could receive treatment in places such as Turkey.
Helping the weak and hurting of an enemy people hardly sounds like genocidal intentions. Furthermore, according to reports, Israel repeatedly warned Palestinian civilians about the threat of pending attacks, seeking to reduce the number of civilian casualties and collateral damage.
Social media sponsored by the IDF even reported that Israel avoided some strikes due to the presence of civilians in the area.
Opponents might point to the hundreds of dead Palestinian civilians as the only evidence they need that Israel was slaughtering their neighbors. But again, that fails to tell the story.
Hamas repeatedly used their own people as human shields in the conflict, with the IDF Blog noting they even discovered a Hamas manual encouraging such tactics. Hamas stored weapons in mosques and used hospitals and schools in their fight with Israel, according to confessions by captured Hamas terrorists.
Actual genocide in the Middle East is not that hard to find. Just look north of Israel at Syria. The Syrian regime has killed tens of thousands of their own civilians, bombing areas indiscriminately and even using chemical weapons on their own people.
Furthermore, Abbas need only look across his table to see genocidal tendencies in Gaza. Hamas, his partner in their unity government, has launched thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians, fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus, and sponsored a number of suicide bombings in civilian locations.
And perhaps Abbas should look at his partners before he starts hurtling accusations of racism as well. While Israel has given Arabs the right to vote, provides medical care to Palestinians, and even has Israeli Arabs in their legislature, Hamas has made some of the following comments about Israelis:
“Oh, Zionists, #Netanyahu’s government dragging you for hell, you have the choice whether to stay in hell or escape, go back home in Germany.”
“You have to drag yourselves out of hell, go back home now, go back to Garmany [sic], Poland, Russia, America and anywhere else.”
—@AlqassamBrigades Twitter posts
Urging an entire group of people leave their homeland sounds pretty racist. And the argument that the term “Zionists” is political and isn’t racial is hard to make considering the link between the nations mentioned is they’re where Jews have lived before.
Besides, Zionism is the belief that Jews should have their own country—since when is that a bad thing?
Abbas primary example of brutality directed at a Palestinian civilian by racist Israelis was the tragic murder of a Palestinian earlier this year. However, he failed to mention that Israel quickly caught the perpetrators of this heinous crime, nor did he note that the crime was an inexcusable retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Israelis by Hamas.
So while Abbas has leveled some shocking accusations, libelously, against Israel, he has conveniently ignored actual crimes committed by Hamas in accepting them as partners in his government.
Abbas has pointed one finger at Israel, while ignoring the other four pointed at himself.
Tragically, it’s not hard to see genocide and racism in the Middle East. There needs to be a lot more people speaking out against these crimes. But it’s not Israel that needs the tongue-lashing.
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, September 28, 2014)