Hallelujah, a new Palestinian leader. Look again. Same old, same old. Did anyone actually expect Chairman Arafat to appoint a Jeffersonian Arab who would dismantle his personalterrorist network, or audit the records of embezzled Palestinian funds?
This new Arafat clone, now dressed in a business suit and tie, is Mahmoud Abbas, an Arab politician and pseudo-historian, best known for his research into “the hyperbole of the Holocaust.”
“Holocaust Denier” would be a more appropriate title for him, since his doctoral thesis, later published as a best-selling hardcover book throughout the Arab world, was entitled “The Other Side: The Secret Relations Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement.”
Abbas is a man who has spent many years of his life obsessing over the “gross exaggerations” concerning the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis (his figure is 890,000). He questions the principle of whether, in fact, the Nazis sought to single out Jews and has denied that gas chambers were used for the extermination of European Jewry. The Flat Earth Society could not have found a more appropriate leader.
Yet much of Israeli officialdom seems thrilled with this so-called “new leadership” whom they actually praise. What is Arik Sharon smoking these days? The Israeli government is so desperate for a Palestinian regime change that they are willing to settle for an Adolf Eichmann who speaks Arabic.
Unfortunately, Abbas has two things that the secular media and much of Europe always admire – a law degree, although his studies were in Egypt and Syria, and a Ph.D., albeit from Moscow Oriental College. His educational development was shaped by Nasserite fascism, Syrian totalitarianism and Soviet Communism – truly a combination from hell.
So now Israel’s negotiating partner is both a doctor and a lawyer. Is that nachas, or what? The world should be reminded that Dr. Mengele was also a doctor and Joseph Goebbels was a lawyer. This proves a rather ironic lesson of the Holocaust. There is no relationship between higher education and morality. Abbas’s credentials are meaningless and dangerous, especially in the context of his major academic focus and where he studied.
Further, why does Abbas require the alias Abu Mazen, an alternative usually reserved for a common criminal? There is something strange about an individual carrying two different names – I’m sorry, but it casts aspersion on one’s character. Abbas supporters naturally brag about his signature appearing on the Oslo Accords. History is filled with hollow signatures. Chamberlain had a signed document from Hitler that he waved proudly. Jimmy Carter had his contract with the North Koreans on nuclear non-proliferation.
Therefore, anyone asking the question “Will terrorism continue with this new PA leadership?” is naive. The only possible outcome will be the novel forms that terrorism might take when sponsored by a political academic whose major area of expertise was Nazi genocide. What sophisticated surprises will the “A-Mazen intellectual mind” institute for the Jews of Israel? Only time will provide the alarming answer, unless Israel and America do the right thing and refuse to recognize anyone affiliated with the present PLO/PA.
Israel must adopt the Bush-Rumsfeld model of new leadership for Iraq. Regime change means Saddam is gone, no sons can replace him, no Tarik Azziz or any other Baath Party leaders. Unless this series of demands are applied to the Palestinian Authority hierarchy, within 10 years there will be 100,000 Israeli or American troops on the brink of war surrounding the new Palestinian state.
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