President Bush's visionary hero

Now what exactly was it that President Bush said about Mahmoud Abbas? Ah yes:

President Abbas was elected on a platform of peace. In other words, he just wasn't somebody who starts talking about it lately, he campaigned on it…We talked about the need to fight off the extremists…And the President understands the ideological struggle. He knows that a handful of people want to dash the aspirations of the Palestinian people by creating chaos and violence…the President has a vision that he can lay out to the people of Gaza that says, here's your choice: Do you want those who have created chaos to run your country, or do you want those of us who negotiated a settlement with the Israelis that will lead to lasting peace?...I'm impressed by the President's understanding about how a vision and a hopeful future will help clearly define the stakes amongst the Palestinian people.

This morning, a 20 year-old Ecuadorean volunteer, Carlos Chavez, was murdered by a Palestinian sniper who shot him while he was working in a potato field on a kibbutz near the border with Gaza. During the day, 26 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip, a barrage which left four people wounded in the beseiged Israeli town of Sderot. Another rocket hit Ashkelon. Rockets are being fired without remission at Israel. Last year, almost 1500 rocket and mortar attacks were fired from Gaza at Israel. To stop this onslaught, Israel is killing Hamas terrorists. Today it killed at least 18 people in Gaza, almost all of them Hamas terrorists.

One of the men who was killed was the son of the former Hamas ‘foreign minister’, Mahmoud Zahar. Last summer, Zahar was asked in an interview why Hamas had chosen to stop suicide bombings two years previously. He replied:

Which do you think is more effective, martyrdom operations or rockets against Sderot? Rockets against Sderot will cause mass migration, greatly disrupt daily lives and government administration and can make a much huger impact on the government. We are using the methods that convince the Israelis that their occupation is costing them too much. We are succeeding with the rockets. We have no losses and the impact on the Israeli side is so much.

And so what did Mahmoud Abbas, the man who stands on a ‘platform of peace’ and who is committed to defeating Hamas, say in response to today’s events?

There was a massacre today against our people, and we say to the world that our people will not remain silent against such crimes,’ said Abbas. In a statement, the West Bank-based Palestinian government said Israel’s ‘ugly crimes were a slap in the face’ to efforts by Bush and the international community to resume peacemaking that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The murder of Carlos Chavez, it seems, was not a ‘slap in the face’ to peace. Of that murder and the attacks on Israeli civilians, the visionary of peace made no mention whatever and, of course, no commitment to stop the Hamas men of violence. Instead, he raved that Israel’s attempt to 'fight off extremists' and thus defend its people from further murderous onslaught was a ‘massacre’. So Abbas defends Hamas, represents them as innocent victims and thus incites more murderous hysteria, hatred and violence against Israeli civilians.

 

Just run those Bush quotes by me again?