You Only Need Fulfill One Requirement To Be A Moderate Muslim

How else to explain that Abbas is supposed to be a moderate Muslim and a fitting peace partner for Israel?

Such a claim ignores what Abbas says and does.

As Isi Leibler notes, Abbas is not an moderate Muslim peace partner for Israel in any sense of the word because he:

• Refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, insists that the “occupation” dates back to 1948 and even denies any Jewish link with the Holy Land;

• Sanctifies mass murderers of Israeli women and children by bestowing honor on the killers and granting state pensions to their families;


• Rules over an authority in which the controlled media, mosques and state educational system incite hatred against Jews and deny Israel’s right to exist;

• Endorses the execution of any Palestinian who sells land to a Jew;

• Assures his people that any future Palestinian state will be entirely cleansed of Jews;

• Is committed to reuniting with the genocidal Islamic Hamas, the charter of which calls for the murder of all Jews and the elimination of Israel.

Another acclaimed Muslim moderate is Professor Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Birzeit University--an acclamation that again is surely lacking:

He conveniently ignores that Israel as a Jewish state was the rationale for its creation by the United Nations in 1947. He also overlooks the inconsistency that the new Palestinian entity would be governed by Sharia law and cleansed of any Jews, and that there is no Arab country which remotely extends similar rights to minorities comparable to Israel. Furthermore, he has the gall to condemn Jewish intolerance toward other faiths in Jerusalem, disregarding the fact that it was only when Jerusalem came under Jewish sovereignty in 1967 that freedom of religious association and worship were extended for the first time to all religions -- in dramatic contrast to the manner in which the Jordanians ruled the city.

Leibler concludes:

Nusseibeh’s turnaround reaffirms that there is not a single Palestinian leader of political, religious or intellectual distinction who could be described as a moderate and who would be willing to support a negotiated settlement to achieve genuine peace deal with the Jewish state.

The problem is that in order to qualify as a moderate Muslim all you need to qualify is to be breathing--an attribute that seems to be in short demand among serious moderates seeking to negotiate a real peace.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Moderate Muslims and Palestinians.