Fatah honors Saddam Hussein

The main square in the Jenin refugee camp has been renamed by Fatah after Saddam Hussein, the brutal dictator who engaged in genocide against various ethnic groups, invaded two of his neighbors, and routinely had innocent people ritually killed for his own pleasure. Yeah, that Saddam Hussein.

Yet Fatah is an ally of the United States. An ally to the tune of an additional $86 million dollars of your tax dollars spent on improving Fatah's military force. The money is granted to "assist the Palestinian Authority presidency in fulfilling PA commitments under the road map (peace plan) to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza," according to a U.S. government document.

That's okay, though, because Fatah is fighting against Hamas, and is therefore against terrorism, against violence, and just generally a friend of the American way of life. This renaming of the main square is obviously a clerical error, a mistake, a political gaffe. Heck, just read the American media accounts of Abbas's latest speech:

AP - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told a large rally of his Fatah movement Thursday that he won't allow fighting with their Hamas rivals to continue and called on opposing factions to respect each other.

AFP - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas assured tens of thousands of supporters that he was determined to prevent further factional clashes with rival Hamas after weeks of internecine bloodshed.

While both of these articles contain quotes from Abbas's speech, neither contain any of the following language, also from the same speech:

When Fatah was established, it was accused of treason and we were chased in every place. But with the will and determination of its sons, Fatah has and will continue. We will not give up our principles and we have said that rifles should be directed against the occupation.... We have a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation. It is forbidden to use these guns against Palestinians. The occupation has perpetrated brutal attacks in Jenin, Beit Hanun and Ramallah.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but if you want to really see the news in Israel, read an Israeli paper. If you read American news stories written by Americans, you're going to hear what Americans want you to hear. You can't be educated if you don't read both sides of every story.

The fact is Abbas did call for Palestinian restraint, as the American media claims. He just wants Palestinians to stop fighting each other, so they can use the $86 million dollars the U.S. just gave him to go fight the Israelis.

Thanks to No More Spin for the heads-up on this story.

Labels: israel, media

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