In The Middle East, Compared To Morsi -- Abbas Is More Of A "Petty Pragmatist"

In his regular feature, The Goldberg File, that is distributed via email, Jonah Goldgerg had a feature last week on November 30 entitled Hitler, the Moderate.

In a nutshell, Goldberg warned against mistaking pragmatism for moderation:

President Obama marveled at Mohamed Morsi's "pragmatism" because Morsi didn't punctuate his ululating with chants of "Death to Israel!" Moreover, Morsi opted not to go to war with Israel now. Both Obama and Joe Klein took this as proof that Morsi's a "moderate." To me this is like someone in 1935 saying Hitler was a "moderate" for not invading Poland before he was ready to invade Poland.
Note: I'm not saying that I know Morsi will invade Israel. The future is unknowable. He may end up more constrained by the Egyptian people than he'd like. Who knows? What I am saying is that it is idiotic to conclude that Morsi isn't ideologically committed to the tenants of the Muslim Brotherhood (which includes eventually erasing Israel), simply because he refused to let Hamas dictate his agenda to him. The pragmatist Morsi used his success with the cease-fire to parlay it into seizing dictatorial power -- power Morsi the ideologue needs to take care of business.

But with all the talk of Morsi, there is a small-time pragmatist in the Middle East who gets overlooked.

Abbas gets ignored -- in part because of his corruption and incompetence.
But that only adds to the camouflage.

The media does not seem to find it newsworthy that Abbas

• Incites hatred against Israel by honoring terrorists who murdered Israeli children
• Pays a salary to terrorists who are serving time in Israeli prisons
• Attempts to intimidate the free press
• Refuses to negotiate peace with Israel
• Serves as president nearly 4 years after his term in office ended, with no sign of presidential elections
• Talks of a unity government with a terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel
• Violated the Oslo Accords by going to the UN to upgrade the status of "Palestine", after milking those accords for all that he could get

Morsi may be playing for bigger stakes, and has negotiated his consolidation of power -- until recently -- with surprising ease. Obama's buddy Erdogan has also maneuvered his country towards Islamism.

One was given the role of overseeing the Israel - Hamas ceasefire  and the other is best buds with Obama.

Compared to those pragmatists, Abbas is at best merely a "petty pragmatist"

But the fact remains that despite how little Abbas has accomplished during (and after) his term in office, he is still around, convincing the West that he is the moderate peace partner for Israel despite all of the contrary indications and the counterweight to Hamas.

Abbas has taken one step closer towards recognition of a Palestinian state, without having to negotiate with Israel, while getting the West to help him violate the Oslo Accords while accusing Israel multiple times of being a racist state -- and is still considered a peace partner.

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