The New York Times Despairs Of Abbas

But that does not stop the reflex to continue to cover for him. On the one hand, The New York Times voices their disappointment about:

...the depressing passivity that Mr. Abbas displayed in an interview with The Washington Post before his White House meeting.

Mr. Abbas suggested that his only role in the American-led peace initiative is to wait — for Hamas to join in a unity government, for Mr. Netanyahu to act. He said he can’t ask Arab states to have anything to do with Israel, “until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution,” the columnist Jackson Diehl quoted him as saying. “Until then, we can’t talk to anyone,” he said.

Yet old habits die hard and the editorial immediately follows this up with the following:

Mr. Abbas has made some important progress. Palestinian security forces (financed and trained by the United States and other countries) have become more professional and more willing to head off attacks.

Now think about that for a second. We are talking about forces which are financed by other countries, trained by other countries and intended to protect against 'attacks' from without (Hamas) and within (radical splinter groups)--and this is a sign that Abbas "has made some important progress"? Abbas--as he does so well--is sitting back while others infuse billions into his corrupt regime to keep his position afloat. 

Some progress.

Yet, in all seriousness the New York Times intones that Abbas needs to do even more:

He must redouble efforts to halt the constant spewing of hatred against Israel in schools, mosques and media. He must work harder to weed out corruption. Unless Mr. Abbas’s government does more to improve the lives of Palestinians it will surely lose again to Hamas in elections scheduled for January.

It is amazing how much nonsense can be fit into one small paragraph--how can Abbas increase efforts that he himself does not make?

The PA chose to name its latest computer center "after the martyr Dalal Mughrabi," who led the most deadly terror attack in the country's history. Her 1978 bus hijacking killed 37 civilians, 12 of them children, including American photographer Gail Rubin. The new center is funded by Abbas's office, which is bolstered by Western aid money. (Al-Ayyam, May 5).

US law prohibits the funding of Palestinian structures that use any portion of their budget to promote terror or honor terrorists. But $200 million of the US's proposed $900m. aid package is earmarked to go directly to the Abbas government, which regularly uses its budget to honor terrorists. In fact, this latest veneration of Mughrabi is not an isolated case, but part of a continuing pattern of honoring terrorists that targets children in particular.

Last summer the PA sponsored "the Dalal Mughrabi football championship" for kids, and a "summer camp named for martyr Dalal Mughrabi... out of honor and admiration for the martyr." It also held a party to honor exemplary students, also named "for the martyr Dalal Mughrabi," under the auspices of Abbas and at which Abbas's representative "reviewed the heroic life of the martyr [Mughrabi] (Al-Hayat al-Jadida, July 23, 24 and August 8, 2008). All these PA-funded activities were to teach kids that a killer of women and children is a role model.

TWO MONTHS AGO, 31 years to the day after the Mughrabi murders, PA TV broadcast a special program celebrating the terror attack, calling the killing of 37 civilians "one of the most important and most prominent special operations... carried out by a team of heroes and led by the heroic fighter Dalal Mughrabi" (PA TV March 11). And its not just Mughrabi who is a Palestinian hero. Despite professions in English by Abbas and other PA leaders that they reject terror, the PA has a long and odious history in Arabic of celebrating terrorists as role models and heroes, often involving US money. [emphasis added]

And while the editorial is worried about the elections next January, it should probably be more concerned with last January--which is when Abbas's term expired. Despite claims by Abbas that legally he is extending his term till next year so that elections for all offices will be held together, the Palestinian Constitution says he cannot do that.

Finally, how can The New York Times recommend that Abbas do more to improve the lives of Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, when in the very same Jackson Diehl column the editorial refers to, Abbas is quoted as saying that

...in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life.

And so it goes: The New York Times despairs of Abbas, while the rest of us despair of The New York Times.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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