This stuff keeps coming out about so-called “good guy” Abu Mazan. It appears he was involved in funding the terrorist massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. An Israeli civil rights group has asked that U.S. and German law authorities open an investigation into Abu Mazan’s role:
While recent newsmedia profiles of Abu Mazen have accentuated the Palestinian leader’s alleged “terrorism-free” personal history, the Shurat Hadin charges that in 1972, Abu Mazen, then a high ranking PLO official, provided financing for the terrorist attacks being perpetrated by Yassir Arafat’s PLO faction Fatah under the nom de guerre Black September.
Shurat Hadin is basing its information on published statements by the terrorist who masterminded the the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (“Abu Daoud”). In his French-language autobiography, Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, Abu Daoud describes the role of Abu Mazen in providing the funds to carry out the Black September Olympic attack.
Furthermore, in an interview with journalist Don Yaeger of Sports Illustrated Magazine in August 2002, Abu Daoud reiterated his charges that Abu Mazen supplied the money for the deadly attack.
The sad thing is that we seem to have such low expectations of anyone who can step up to assume a leadership role in the Palestinian Authority. It is pretty much taken for granted that someone who is truly against terrorism can never survive politically, and will never have any clout. So the U.S. and Europe are willing to overlook many things about the man they are backing, Abu Mazan. And they’ll probably overlook this as well.
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Am Yisrael Chai!
Fifteen thousand people attended today’s Yom Ha’atzmaut rally here in Montreal. I just got back and I don’t have time to write extensively about it now, but this evening I’ll post up a detailed account as well as some photos that I took with my trusty digital camera.
It’s great to see the community out in such strength, showing that no matter what happens, our spirit and our love of Israel will not be broken.
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The Jerusalem Post has an interesting interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, currently Israel’s Finance Minister, about his plan to reverse the disastrous trends in the Israeli economy.
Israel with a right-wing economic policy, focusing on lowering taxes, paying down the deficit, and privatization and decentralization? This should be interesting indeed.
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Meryl Yourish isn’t too afraid of the “road map”, because she figures it’s doomed from the start. And what’s more, Dubya planned it that way:
I think the President knows full well that the “Road Map” is doomed from the start. I think he knows that Arafat is still pulling the strings over there, and that terrorism is the lifeblood of the Palestinian Authority. And I think that President Bush is simply waiting for the failure of the Road Map before he tells the “Quartet” that it’s time to dismantle the palestinian terror operations — just like Al Qaeda is being dismantled, and just like Iraq’s dictatorship was dismantled.
Well, planned or not, it’s already a massive failure if week 1 is any indication. Anyone who thinks that this “road map” is going to lead to a real lasting peace is insane.
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And in typical fashion, CBC Newsworld decided to commemorate Yom Ha’atzmaut by doing a newsmagazine segment on Abu Mazan, and how wonderful and peace-loving he is. No mention of the fact that Abu Mazan is a Holocaust denier and that he also supports continued attacks on Israeli citizens living in the Territories. (Both links via LGF).
But then, it is CBC. What else can we expect from them but a bend-over-backwards-to-be-evenhanded approach that draws a moral equivalency between Israeli defense and Palestinian terror?
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In advertising classes, profs would love to go on at length about the most famous ad blunders in history. The Chevy Nova story has reached urban-legend proportions, for example.
Well, this one has gotta be added to that list. I’d hate to be the account exec responsible for this fiasco of an ad for the Hong Kong tourism industry:
(Via Elana).
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Amram Mitzna has resigned as the leader of the Labour party. This was not exactly unexpected, but given the high hopes that people had for him just a few months ago, it’s a real indication of just how far the once-dominant Israeli party has fallen:
Mitzna had been accused of attempting to lead the Labor party too far to the left. He has stated that if he were prime minister he would dismantle settlements unilaterally and negotiate with Palestinians despite ongoing terror attacks. He said that he was convinced Labor’s
land-for-peace agenda would ultimately prevail, that Israel should end Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza, and “must separate from the Palestinians and from so many illusions.”
“Right from the start Mitzna didn’t have a chance of survival in the Labor party,” Yediot Ahronot quoted former Meretz leader Yossi Sarid.
Labour was detached from the reality of the Israeli people. Mitzna, by all accounts, had good intentions, but he simply couldn’t convince a terrorism-weary population that his vision was the way to go.
It will remain to be seen what happens now to the party. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Mitzna’s chief rival in the last leadership contest, is a good bet for a primary candidate.
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It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that antisemitism is on the rise in the U.K.. Ha’aretz reports that the number of antisemitic incidents recorded in the first three months of 2003 was up by 75% over the same period last year:
The CST blamed the sharp rise in anti-Semitism on anti-war campaigners who linked the Iraq conflict to the situation in Israel. Mike Whine, CST’s media director, told the BBC, “The Iraq war fed anti-Semitism because groups from across the political and social spectrum alleged that the war was fought for `Zionist’ interests.”
Whine said anti-war protesters “consistently linked the issues of Iraq and the events in Israel and Palestine.”
The English and the French may not like each other much, but it seems that something they’ve got in common is their hatred of Jews. But before we get too smug over here in Canada, our own numbers aren’t looking that great either.
The rise in antisemitism may not be surprising, but it does nobody any good to be complacent either. This is a red flag that’s been waving in front of our faces for a couple of years now. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that red flags are ignored at our peril.
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