ABBAS HELPS ISRAEL BURY ITS CRIMES IN GAZA

ABBAS SELLS OUT THE PALESTINIANS
OF GAZA AND WEST BANK
YET AGAIN.
ABBAS SHOWS THE WORLD WHO HE REALLY IS
~ THE NEW MUBARAK!

Representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization, the executive committee of which seen here, Mahmoud Abbas has abandoned a resolution to hold Israel accountable for its alleged war crimes in Gaza. (MaanImages/POOL/Omar Rashidi) It seems to me that Abbas has finally publicly shown his siding with the West and Israel. Rumors have been floating about that his party is been being armed and trained by America, most likely so that they can attempt to erase Hamas. Seems to me these enablers just want the two groups to do each other in by such fighting when in truth they should unite against the common enemy. However, in this situation, he has caved in at very bad time. I wonder could this be his way of increasing the enmity between his party and Hamas? He is beginning to look, speak, smell and act more like Mubarak every day. However, no matter how you cut it, his actions, or lack of, are criminal. By not speaking out, he is also letting down the people of the West Bank as well. As if he could do that more after his work with the illegal settlements. By Ali Abunimah uruknet 2 October 2009 Just when it seemed that the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader Mahmoud Abbas could not sink any lower in their complicity with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the murderous blockade of Gaza, Ramallah has dealt a further stunning blow to the Palestinian people. The Abbas delegation to the United Nations in Geneva (officially representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization) abandoned a resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone's report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action. Although the PA acted under US pressure, there are strong indications that the commercial interests of Palestinian and Gulf businessmen closely linked to Abbas also played a part. The 575-page Goldstone report documents evidence of shocking Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity during last winter's assault on the Gaza Strip which killed 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority noncombatants and hundreds of them children. The report also accuses the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of war crimes for firing rockets into Israel that killed three civilians. Goldstone's report was hailed by Palestinians and supporters of the rule of law worldwide as a watershed; it called for suspects to be held accountable before international courts if Israel failed to prosecute them. Israel has no history, ever, of holding its political and military leaders judicially accountable for war crimes against the Palestinians. Israel was rightly terrified of the report, mobilizing all its diplomatic and political resources to discredit it. In recent days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that if the report were acted on, it would "strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism," and "strike a fatal blow to the peace process, because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied." Unsurprisingly, an early ally in the Israeli campaign for impunity was the Obama Administration, whose UN ambassador, Susan Rice, expressed "very serious concerns" about the report and trashed Goldstone's mandate as "unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable." (Rice was acting true to her word; in April she told the newspaper Politico that one of the main reasons the Obama Administration decided to join the UN Human Rights Council was to fight what she called "the anti-Israel crap.") Goldstone, whose daughter has publicly described her father as a Zionist who loves Israel, is a former judge of the South African Supreme Court, and a highly respected international jurist. He was the chief prosecutor at UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. That the Goldstone report was a severe blow to Israel's ability to commit future war crimes with impunity is not in doubt; this week bolstered by the report, lawyers in the UK asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. That action did not succeed, but Israel's government has taken extraordinary measures in recent months to try to shield its officials from prosecution, fearing that successful arrests are just a matter of time. Along with the growing international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, the fear of ending up in The Hague seems to be the only thing that causes the Israeli government and society to reconsider their destructive path. One would think, then, that the self-described representatives of the Palestinian people would not casually throw away this weapon. And yet, according to Abbas ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi, the Ramallah PA shelved its effort at the request of the Americans because "We don't want to create an obstacle for them." Khraishi's excuse that the resolution is merely being deferred until the spring does not pass muster. Unless action is taken now, the Goldstone report will be buried by then and evidence of Israel's crimes ~ necessary for prosecutions ~ may be harder to collect. This latest surrender comes less than two weeks after Abbas appeared at a summit in New York with US President Barack Obama and Netanyahu despite Obama abandoning his demand that Israel halt construction of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Also under US pressure, the PA abandoned its pledge not to resume negotiations unless settlement-building stopped, and agreed to take part in US-mediated "peace talks" with Israel in Washington this week. Israel, meanwhile, announced plans for the largest ever West Bank settlement since 1967. What makes this even more galling, is the real possibility that the PA is helping Israel wash its hands of the blood it spilled in Gaza for something as base as the financial gain of businessmen closely linked to Abbas. The Independent (UK) reported on 1 October: "Shalom Kital, an aide to defense minister Ehud Barak, said today that Israel will not release a share of the radio spectrum that has long been sought by the Palestinian Authority to enable the launch of a second mobile telecommunications company unless the PA drops its efforts to put Israeli soldiers and officers in the dock over the Israeli operation." ("Palestinians cry 'blackmail' over Israel phone service threat," The Independent, 1 October). Kital added that it was a "condition" that the PA specifically drop its efforts to advance the Goldstone report. The phone company, Wataniya, was described last April by Reuters as an "Abbas-backed company" which is a joint venture between Qatari and Kuwaiti investors and the Palestinian Investment Fund with which one of Abbas' sons is closely involved. Moreover, Reuters revealed that the start-up company apparently had no shortage of capital due to the Gulf investors receiving millions of dollars of "US aid in the form of loan guarantees meant for Palestinian farmers and other small to mid-sized businesses" (See "US aid goes to Abbas-backed Palestinian phone venture," Reuters, 24 April 2009). Just a day before the Abbas delegation pulled its resolution in Geneva, Nabil Shaath, the PA "foreign minister" denounced the Israeli threat over Wataniya as "blackmail" and vowed that the Palestinians would never back down. The PA's betrayal of the Palestinian people over the Goldstone report, as well as its continued "security coordination" with Israel to suppress resistance and political activity in the West Bank, should banish all doubt that it is an active arm of the Israeli occupation doing tangible and escalating harm to the Palestinian people and their just cause. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

PALESTINIANS FOXED AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

October 1, 2009
On The Contrary
By Michael Hoffman

Today the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations' Human Rights division withdrew its push to have the Security Council consider the Richard Goldstone war crimes report against "Israel."

This degenerate capitulation comes on the same day that Former President of Argentina Carlos Menem is charged with obstructing the relentless Israeli-led investigation of the 1994 bombing of the Judaic Association in Buenos Aires which killed 85 Judaic people.

Ten months after 1400 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, their leaders are already consenting to burying the investigation. 15 years after 85 Judaics were killed in Argentina, Israeli leaders are relentlessly pursuing the investigation, bringing it to every forum, hot on the trail of perpetrators, collaborators and every conceivable clue.

Once again, the Palestinians are repeatedly outfoxed and outmaneuvered by their Israeli enemies.

Being only human, after a time I confess to becoming exceedingly exasperated with the almost unimaginable torpor of dull-witted Arabs and the contrasting dynamic energy of shrewd Israelis. I admit that this is a generalization; fallout from my exasperation. But there is a kernel of truth in it.

Sometimes, in my darker moments, I am given to wonder, short of a miracle of God, if the Palestinian nation will ever be anything other than a stateless, occupied territory, due to their own gross ineptitude.

Intellectually, they don't think or fight like the Israelis. Many people will reply, thank God for that. I am not referring to military fighting, however, but to "warfare" in terms of strategic public relations psychology, which includes relentless, one-track mind, pit-bull tenacious, pursuit of war criminals without an inch of compromise or retreat. This is the Israeli way. It has paid huge dividends for their statecraft, not all of it sinister.

Whether it is 85 innocent dead in Argentina, or hundreds in Gaza, the dead are entitled to justice, i.e. bringing the killers to trial, whether it be months or years later. After 60 years, wonder of wonders, at long last the Palestinians have a respected Judaic jurist, Richard Goldstone, to step forward in an international United Nations human rights forum, and courageously announce that Israelis committed war crimes in Gaza and then lied about it.

What do the Palestinian leaders do with this golden apple dropped into their laps? They trade the Goldstone report away as a diplomatic concession to nebulous "negotiations" with Netanyahu being conducted by Obama's mainly Zionist diplomats.

The Palestinian Stepinfetchits, after decades of being victimized by every imaginable American ruse, decoy, snare and deceit, and dozens of U.S. funded Israeli massacres entailing the brutal and ruthless elimination of whole neighborhoods, still believe ~ still believe! ~ in the good faith of the White House.

Peti yaamin lekhol davar.

Copyright ©2009 by Michael Hoffman • www.RevisionistHistory.org