Honesty is not the best policy for the Palestinian Authority

[shira]

Last week Israeli premier Netanyahu declined when The New York Times asked him to write an op-ed for the paper. In a letter to the paper Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s most senior advisor, explained that The New York Times had failed to heed the late Senator Moynihan’s admonition that ‘everyone is entitled to their own opinion but that no one is entitled to their own facts’.

Dermer also gave examples of the distortions and lies the New York Times had published this year. One of them was a historical revision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in an op-ed for NYT in May 2011.

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This week Abbas was caught lying again when he claimed that Hamas had renounced the use of armed resistance against Israel.

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The lies of Abbas pale in comparison to those of PA chief negotiator Sa’eb Arekat.

In an op-ed hilariously entitled ‘The moment of truth’ that was published by The Jerusalem Post last week, Arekat asked the Israeli public to support the Palestinian bid for UN admission because, in his words, ”it is a peaceful, positive and collective investment in peace”.

more...
http://missingpeace.eu/en/2011/12/honesty-is-not-the-best-policy-of-the-palestinian-authority/

[Little Tich]

1. Oh dear. The article is like a schooner of lukewarm, yellow liquid...

The only reason why I'm responding to the article is its reference to the OP-ed in the New York Times written by Mahmoud Abbas. ( Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17abbas.html?_r=1 ) Apparently, there is a quote from his OP-ed that is claimed to incorrectly describe historical events:

“It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.”

According to Missing Peace, “The truth of course is, that Arab forces attacked the Jews in Palestine as soon as the UN voted in favor of partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.” Unfortunately for Missing Peace, the OP-ed is factually correct, and it's Missing Peace that's distorting the truth.

Here's a passage from Wikipedia about what Benny Morris has to say about the first wave of refugees:

Wikipedia: Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus
(edit for clarity)
(snip)
Morris’s ‘Four Waves’ analysis
In The Irish Times of February 2008, Benny Morris summarized his analysis as follows: "Most of Palestine's 700,000 'refugees' fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops." In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Morris divided the Palestinian exodus in four waves and an aftermath: Morris analyses the direct causes, as opposed to his proposed indirect cause of the ‘transfer idea’, for each wave separately.

Causes of the first wave, December 1947 – March 1948
Morris gives no numbers regarding the first wave, but says ‘the spiral of violence precipitated flight by the middle and upper classes of the big towns, especially Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, and their satellite rural communities. It also prompted the piecemeal, but almost complete, evacuation of the Arab rural population from what was to be the heartland of the Jewish State – the Coastal Plain between Tel Aviv and Hadera – and a small-scale partial evacuation of other rural areas hit by hostilities and containing large Jewish concentrations, namely the Jezreel and Jordan valleys.’ More specific to the causes Morris states: 'The Arab evacuees from the towns and villages left largely because of Jewish […] attacks or fear of impending attack, and from a sense of vulnerability.' According to Morris expulsions were ‘almost insignificant’ and ‘many more left as a result of orders or advice from Arab military commanders and officials’ to safer areas within the country. The Palestinian leadership struggled against the exodus.

read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Palestinian_exodus

Hmm, Mahmoud Abbas seems to get it right...

Here is another passage from a wikipedia article about the rise of hostilities, showing that Jews and Arabs were both attackers:

1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
(edit for clarity)
(snip)
Rise of violence
Aftermath of the car bomb attack on the Ben Yehuda St., which killed 53 and injured many more. In all the mixed zones where both communities lived, particularly Jerusalem and Haifa, increasingly violent attacks, reprisals and counter-reprisals followed each other. Isolated shootings evolved into all-out battles. Attacks against traffic, for instance, turned into ambushes as one bloody attack led to another.

The first casualties of the war were passengers on a Jewish bus driving on the Coastal Plain near Kfar Sirkin at 8:20 on 30 November. An eight-man gang from Jaffa, led by Seif al-Din Abu Kishk, ambushed the bus killing five and wounding others. Half an hour later they ambushed a second bus, southbound from Hadera, killing two more. Later that morning, Arab snipers began to fire from Jaffa's Manshiya neighbourhood into southern Tel Aviv, killing at least one person. Shots were also fired at Jewish buses in Jerusalem and Haifa.

Irgun and Lehi followed a strategy of placing bombs in crowded markets and bus-stops. As on 30 December, in Haifa, when members of the clandestine militant Zionist group, Irgun, threw two bombs at a crowd of Arab workers who were queueing in front of a refinery, killing 6 of them and injuring 42. An angry crowd killed 39 Jewish people in revenge, until British soldiers reestablished calm. In reprisals, some soldiers from the strike force, Palmach and the Carmeli brigade, attacked the village of Balad ash-Sheikh and Hawassa. According to different historians, this attack led to between 21 and 70 deaths.

On 22 February 1948, supporters of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni organised, with the help of certain British deserters, three attacks against the Jewish community. Using car bombs aimed at the headquarters of the pro-Zionist Palestine Post, the Ben Yehuda St. market and the backyard of the Jewish Agency's offices, they killed 22, 53 and 13 Jewish people respectively, and injured hundreds. In retaliation, Lehi put a landmine on the railroad track in Rehovot on which a train from Cairo to Haifa was travelling, killing 28 British soldiers and injuring 35. This would be copied on 31 March, close to Caesarea Maritima, which would lead to the death of forty people, injuring 60, who were, for the most part, Arab civilians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947%E2%80%931948_Civil_War_in_Mandatory_Palestine

The passage by Mahmoud Abbas is infinitely more correct than the one by Missing Peace...

So what's going on here? I think that there's a smear campaign going on against Mahmoud Abbas and his attempts to create a Palestinian state. By falsely portraying Mahmoud Abbas as being a fabricator of history, the Palestinians are somehow underserving of a state. In this particular attempt, a hasbara meme is used, and like all hasbara, it's completely untrue. It's very bad form to knowingly use lies in order to defend a particular position, it actually just makes it worse.

As for the rest of the claims in the article by Missing Peace, I choose to not comment on them.

[shira]

2. That paragraph in question by Abbas is a complete distortion that is terribly misleading...

Abbas omitted the fact that the Palestinians rejected the Partition Plan and instead went to war against the Jews. That paragraph from his speech at the UN makes it appear as if the Jews started the war and tossed Arabs out before the Palestinian victims and neighbroing Arab states responded.

Your quotes from Morris do not support Abbas, as what happened to Palestinians was based on their rejection of the Partition Plan and their choice to go to war against Israel's Jews.

Abbas is undeserving of support for his lies. UNESCO is now shocked and dismayed at the PA (which he runs) as they deplore and condemn his organization for portraying what Hitler did to Jews as something noble...
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-view/news/unesco_statement_on_palestinian_childrens_magazine_zayzafouna/

[azurnoir]

3. Israel never formally accepted the partition either did it?

in fact the green line proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt doesn't it? you omit the fact that Israeli or Palestinian Jews murdered in cold blood the UN negotiator who was trying to negotiate an armistice and one their leaders (Yitzak Shamir) was made PM of Israel, wasn't he?

and your still beating the children's magazine horse eh? I take simply having the funding fro UNESCO cut is not satisfying enough? The PA was not responsible for what the magazine published almost a year ago the magazine itself was period and as to UNESCO's reflexive and cowardly arse covering there are some questions they need to answer too as the essay written by a 10 year old child was published fully 6 months prior to the onset of UNESCO's funding

[shira]

4. Actually, the Jewish leaders of Palestine did accept it through the Jewish agency...

From your fave source, wiki...

The proposed plan was accepted by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, through the Jewish Agency.[3][4] The plan was rejected by leaders of the Arab community (the Palestine Arab Higher Committee etc.),[3][5] who were supported in their rejection by the states of the Arab League.

(This page was last modified on 18 December 2011 at 10:29)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine


As to Abbas and the PA, the PA (and that's Abbas) funds the magazine - they control all media in the W.Bank as well. Also, "the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of education and its former minister of education are both on the magazine’s advisory board, Samuels noted."

That makes Abbas and the PA responsible.

You know, if this was some one-off, that would be one thing. But this vile hatred and bigotry from Abbas and his PA (through Fatah) is routine.

http://palwatch.org/

Literally hundreds of examples there of what the PA does WRT Holocaust denial, distortion, admiration of Hitler, hatred vs. Jews, etc.

I don't see how anyone can rationally defend that and provide cover for Abbas.

[azurnoir]

5. where does it say that David Ben Gurion who was the leader formally accepted the partition plan ?

here is what he said from your link

he majority of the Jewish groups, and the Jewish Agency subsequently announced their acceptance of the proposed Jewish State, and by implication the proposed international zone, and Arab State. However, it had been stipulated that the implementation of the plan did not make the establishment of one state or territory dependent on the establishment of the others.[22]

The Jewish Agency criticized the UNSCOP majority proposal concerning Jerusalem, saying that the Jewish section of modern Jerusalem (outside the Walled City) should be included in the Jewish State.[23] During his testimony Ben Gurion indicated that he accepted the principle of partition, but stipulated: "'To partition,' according to the Oxford dictionary, means 'to divide a thing into two parts'. Palestine is divided into three parts, and only in a small part are the Jews allowed to live. We are against that."[24]

essentially he rejected the plan while claiming to accept it the subsequent land grab in 1947-1948 proves that

[azurnoir]

6. and as to your other contention

you reveal more than is intended IMO the real target here for the Weisenthal Center et al is Abbas and PA along with UNESCO the writings of a 10 year old in a rather obscure Palestinian children's magazine are simply a vehicle for that end

The magazine that published the essay is responsible period

[shira]

7. This isn't some one off or rare occurence...

There are literally hundreds of examples here of hate, bigotry, intolerance, Jew bashing, Hitler admiration, etc...
http://www.palwatch.org/

But you don't believe Abbas or the PA are in any way responsible for any of that, correct?

[azurnoir]

8. moving the goal posts again?

say has Netanyahu apologized for each and everyone of slurs against Palestinians and gentiles by the Rabbi's on his payroll?

[King_David]

11. Imagine defending a magazine

That publishes Flattering articles about Hitler ?

Unbelieveable , don't you think ?

[azurnoir]

12. yes I do is someone defending it? who?

as I said the magazine is responsible for what was published and the magazine is the one that should criticized and offer apology don't you think?

[jimmie]

13. You think this is the first time the palestinian media..

has praised hitler ?

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=655


of course its just anti-zionism

[vminfla]

9. Great article

Abbas' statements were over-the-top deceitful. Who actually believed that Hamas was going to renounce terrorism or that Abbas would finally show up at the negotation table after close to two years of willfully refusing to negotiate?

[jimmie]

10. ”it is a peaceful, positive and collective investment in peace”.

huh?

alternative universe much?

Take another hit,Sa'eb.