Surprised? Really? War Is Deceit Update: "Israel's Partners for Peace: What They Say in English vs. What They Say in Arabic," by Khaled Abu Toameh for Hudson NY, September 13 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A number of senior Palestinian officials who do not have much credibility among their own people are now trying to sell themselves to Israelis as "partners for peace."This is the same group of Palestinians who in the past advised Yasser Arafat to reject then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer during the botched Camp David summit in 2000. They were among Arafat's inner circle when he walked out of the Camp David summit and initiated the "Second Intifada."
These are also the same officials who, back then, justified the eruption of the intifada as a "natural response" to Israel's refusal to comply with 100% of the Palestinians' demands.
Saeb Erekat, Jibril Rajoub and Yasser Abed Rabbo are now trying to persuade the Israeli public that Israel does have partners for peace on the Palestinian side. And who are the new-old partners? Erekat, Rajoub and Abed Rabbo, of course.
With the help of US taxpayers' dollars, the three, together with other Palestinian officials, are sending their "peace" messages to the Israelis in English. The campaign, according to Palestinians, is being funded by the US Agency for International Development [USAID].
The campaign targets only the Israeli public. No similar messages are being sent to the Palestinians despite promises that they would....
"The campaign targets only the Israeli public. No similar messages are being sent to the Palestinians despite promises that they would..."
Shocker...
These guys could walk under a snake wearing a ten gallon hat. And I don't mean the snake is wearing the hat.
This is the same group of Palestinians who in the past advised Yasser Arafat to reject then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer during the botched Camp David summit in 2000. They were among Arafat's inner circle when he walked out of the Camp David summit and initiated the "Second Intifada."
These are also the same officials who, back then, justified the eruption of the intifada as a "natural response" to Israel's refusal to comply with 100% of the Palestinians' demands.
..................
I had been casting an increasingly jaundiced eye on the "Palestinians'" involvement in the "peace process", but this was what finally convinced me it was just an ugly charade on the "Palestinians'" part.
That they had received almost everything they demanded—and likely could have negotiated the rest if they had proceeded in even vaguely good faith, since Israel and the West were so eager—and responded with the savage violence of the Second Intifada proved to me that they had no interest whatsoever in peace with Israel.
Later, after 9/11, I learned much more about exactly why that was.
Whatever President Bush's other shortcomings, he was wise to keep America's pushing of the "peace process" on Israel to as minimal a level as possible.
A couple of things for new arrivals to this forum, now and in the future, to read.
First: "Why Islam Will Never Accept the State of Israel".
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/why_islam_will_never_accept_th.html
Read it and reread and learn it by heart and spread it around.
Everything that this article says in the space of three or four pages can be backed up at length by the evidence - the texts and the facts - compiled in weighty tomes such as Andrew Bostom's "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism".
Second, to see that Muslim hatred toward, and oppression of, the Jews, predates by century upon century the resurrection of the Jewish state of Israel, here is a witness from AD 1200: the great Jewish physician, theologian and philosopher, Maimonides, Moses ben Maimon, who had lived in various Islamic countries and knew what he was talking about. He wrote a letter to the Jews of Yemen, who were at that time undergoing a savage persecution at the hands of their Muslim overlords.
Here are portions of that letter, reproduced in Bat Yeor, "The Dhimmi: Christians and Jews Under Islam", pp. 351-52.
“Remember, my coreligionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins,
God has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us. .
{Note that dhimmis blaming themselves for what the Muslims are doing to them, and ascribing it to Divine punishment, etc., is far from a new phenomenon...'It must be something we did wrong...!' - dda}.
"Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they. . . .
"Although we were dishonored by them beyond human endurance, and had to put up with their fabrications, yet we behave like him who is depicted by the inspired writer: “But I am as a deaf man, I hear not, and I am as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth (Psalm 38: 14).
"Similarly our sages instructed/ us to bear the prevarications and preposterousness of Ishmael in silence….
"We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation, as Isaiah instructed us, “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair” [Isaiah 50: 6].
"All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continual maltreatment which well nigh crushes us.
{Note well: NO amount of self-annihilation, of abject submission, by the dhimmi, to his Muslim overlords, is EVER complete enough or abject enough to satisfy the Muslims - dda}.
"No matter how we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition, as David predicted: “I am at peace, but when I speak, they are for war” [Psalm 120: 7].
- Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), Iggeret Taiman (Epistle to Yemen), edited by A S Halkin; translated by B. Cohen, New York, 1952 [p. 18].