The Commentator on PMW bulletin - Abbas honors terror leader

by Robin Shepherd

Before anyone thinks I have gone all misty eyed over this, let me be absolutely clear in saying that it appals me that "moderate" Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has just given a medal of honour to the leader of a brutal terror organisation that has slaughtered men, women and children.

That said, restated, and underlined, you really do have to wonder at the sheer stupidity of the Palestinian leadership. Barely has John Kerry, US Secretary of State, left the region offering guarded optimism at the prospects for peace and Abbas comes out and does this.

According to a piece that The Commentator ran this morning, pegged off the indefatigable watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch, Abbas has given the "Star of Honour" to Nayef Hawatmeh, the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

The DFLP has been responsible -- see here -- for a whole litany of atrocities. Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters grieve to this day at the horrific manner in which their relatives were taken from them.

You've heard all that before... except that you haven't if you rely for your information on media outlets such as the BBC and almost all others in Europe that never report such matters. Even though the latest revelations of Abbas's mendacity will impact on up-to-the-moment policy initiatives from the United States -- in other words, the issue really is newsworthy -- the mainstream media in Britain and Europe will just ignore it.

Israel is used to this of course. But what really makes one shake one's head is that the ultimate victims of Abbas's behaviour are bound to be the Palestinians themselves. They will simply never get a state of their own as long as this continues. Undoubtedly, there are wreckers on the Israeli side too. But they would be totally sidelined by the vast majority of Israeli political society but for the fact that the core charge against the Palestinian leadership, such that there really is one, stands up.

Put another way and from a different perspective, the so-called pro-Palestinian lobby in Western countries is either utterly stupid or utterly cynical -- they're either so deluded that they think demonisation of Israel and a corresponding whitewashing of Palestinian misbehaviour will get the Palestinians a state; or they're just acting out pathologies in their own warped psyches and don't, ultimately care a hoot whether the Palestinians live or die.

I've long favoured the latter explanation, and I'm starting to find it difficult to find a counter argument.

The plain fact is that the Palestinians are not in favour of any real-world peace with Israel, they never have been, and neither have their so called supporters in the West. If you disagree with that conclusion, please send your questions and objections to Mahmoud Abbas, with his latest honouring of a blood-stained mass murderer foremost in your mind....