i love israel: Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

יום ראשון, 18 בספטמבר 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Mahmoud Abbas is...The Rejectionist (poster)
Video of Mahmoud Abbas' intransigence
Eight devil worshipers arrested in Lebanon for blasphemy

Mahmoud Abbas is...The Rejectionist (poster)

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 11:01 PM PDT

Moderate, shmoderate.

See also my last post, this one from last week, and this one from two weeks ago.

That's a lot of intransigence for a supposed "moderate."

Video of Mahmoud Abbas' intransigence

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 06:11 PM PDT

Does this look like someone who desperately seeks peace in the region and is willing to do what it takes to enable his people to live in independence and dignity?

Keep in mind that the three things he rejects out of hand - Israel being characterized as the Jewish state, Israel keeping of large settlement blocs in any final agreement, and that the "refugee" issue cannot be solved within Israel - are all US positions.

All three of these issues are accepted as obvious by every major American pundit, certainly every major liberal Jewish commentator on Israel. Ask Jeffrey Goldberg, or Tom Friedman, or even Roger Cohen and Nick Kristoff, and they will tell you (with some variation) that these are three issues that the Palestinian Arabs must compromise on if they want their state (certainly the last two.) They have plenty of demands on Israel but these are considered the bare minimum that is expected from the Palestinian Arab side.

But they refuse to believe what Abbas has said explicitly for years. This may be a recent video but Abbas has been hammering at these points since he succeeded Arafat.

Is there anything that Abbas can do or say to convince them that he is not a peace partner? Probably not. They will continue to cling to their wishful thinking that it is possible to make peace with a recalcitrant, intransigent and inflexible proponent of Greater Palestine. (Make no mistake - the insistence that Israel not be considered the Jewish state and that millions of Arabs must flood into Israel as part of any final agreement means exactly that.)

Take the worst things that these ever-so-wise pundits say about Lieberman and Netanyahu and Sharon before that, and you can see that they apply far more to Abbas than to any of them. This video proves that as explicitly as possible.

Unfortunately, the liberal Jewish crowd are so wedded to their narrative of a "moderate Abbas" and a "hawkish Likud" that they will continue to close their eyes and ears and escape to their comfortable fantasy world that they themselves have constructed.

If these pundits can see this video and somehow explain it away as being only rhetoric, they are proving that their own ability for self-deception far outweighs their ability to admit they were wrong - very, very wrong - for so many years.

Eight devil worshipers arrested in Lebanon for blasphemy

Posted: 17 Sep 2011 05:18 PM PDT

From Naharnet:

Eight people, including several girls, were arrested on Friday on suspicion of blasphemy and drug possession in Mount Lebanon.

The National News Agency said the suspects are devil worshippers and are self-harming.

Military Examining Magistrate Saqr Saqr is expected to charge the eight on Saturday, NNA said.

Lebanese law prohibits blasphemy and immoral conduct.

I believe the penalty in Lebanon for blasphemy is a few years in jail. In Saudi Arabia, it's death. (h/t Dan)