Photo Credit:

H/T Israellycool

As Hadar Sela noted, the BBC erroneously reported that Fatah celebrated its 48th anniversary, at a huge rally in Gaza on Friday, when, in fact – as the group was founded in 1959 – 2013 marks 54 years since the birth of the Palestinian group.

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However, it has indeed been 48 years since one particular event in Fatah history.

Sela wrote:

“What Fatah is in fact celebrating is the 48thanniversary of its first armed attack on Israel which took place on January 1st 1965.”

Interestingly, while other news sites also curiously got the political math wrong, the Guardian got it right, before getting it wrong, in an Agency report titled ‘Mass rally in Gaza to support Palestinian President’s Fatah faction‘, Jan. 4.

First, there was this:

“Throngs camped out overnight in a downtown Gaza square to ensure themselves a spot for the anniversary commemoration of Fatah’s 1959 founding, and tens of thousands marched early Friday, carrying yellow Fatah banners.”

Later in the same piece, there was this:

“The demonstration marked 48 years since Fatah’s founding as the spearhead of the Palestinians’ fight against Israel.”

Indeed, in only 48 (or 54) years, Fatah has achieved so much.

Per CAMERA:

“Fatah’s armed units such as the Tanzim, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Force 17 have organized, coordinated and carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks against civilians.

During the second intifada, Fatah Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for over 300 attacks in which civilians were killed, and according to Israeli authorities, Fatah-linked groups have attempted or carried out more than 1,500 attacks. (International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT)”

Sela noted that among those terror leaders praised by the “moderate” Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, “were Hamas founders Ahmed Yassin and Abed Aziz al Rantissi as well as the founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Fathi Shiqaqi“.

The frequently shrill, often unserious and increasingly hysterical warnings about Israel’s supposed dangerous move to the right – parroted most recently by the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland – is almost entirely devoid of context regarding a sclerotic Palestinian political culture which hasn’t even marginally moved beyond the glorification of violence and demonization of Jews.

It’s truly baffling why so many sensitive souls who advocate on behalf of Palestinians don’t recoil in the face of such political pathos, and evidently can’t empathize with the large majority of Israelis who hesitate to midwife a new state on its eastern border which will, in all likelihood, continue to be compromised by such a reactionary, racist and terrorist ethos.

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Adam Levick serves as Managing Editor of CiF Watch, an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), and is a member of the Online Antisemitism Working Group for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism. Adam made Aliyah from Philadelphia in 2009 and lives with his wife in Modi'in.