Wednesday, March 4, 2009
So we're being asked to set the PLO/PA up with yet another television station. Khaled Abu Toameh knows exactly where that's going to lead: New Palestinian TV - To Broadcast What?
American and European taxpayers are now being asked to fund a new TV station that will broadcast from Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians that is controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
The new satellite station is intended to serve as a mouthpiece for Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction...
...While targeting Hamas, the Fatah newspapers, radio and TV stations and Web sites have also been inciting against their peace partner, Israel, and against the US and Europe - the same parties that are financing Fatah and supplying it with weapons. Ironically, it is this type of incitement that drives more Palestinians into the open arms of Hamas.
Why? Because if you are telling your people day and night how bad and evil Israel is, your people will then say that this means that Hamas is right - you can't make peace with Israel or any Jew. And if you are telling your people (through your media) that the Israelis are war criminals and colonialists and land thieves and cowards and vampires and children killers and are basically responsible for all the miseries of the Palestinians, what will the people think of Mahmoud Abbas when they see him meeting with any Israeli? They will certainly spit in his face and ask him, "Why are you talking to these Jews? You yourself have told us how bad and evil they are."
The last thing the international community needs to do is to fund yet another Palestinian media outlet that promotes hatred, violence and anti-Western sentiments. The new Fatah TV station is not going to be much different than the other Fatah-run media organizations. If anything, it will help raise another regeneration of Palestinians on hatred and glorification of suicide bombers.
We've seen this all before. All those lovely and highly produced Hamas productions inciting genocide and child suicide/murder we've been watching on Hamas' Al Aqsa TV are produced in a TV station provided by Western money. Fatah productions are almost as bad as the Hamas versions, as PMW and MEMRI have amply documented. It's purely an illusion to imagine that this time things will work out differently.
Likewise, Hillary Clinton is now putting pressure on Israel not to enforce its own law with regard to housing in Jerusalem: Clinton, Abbas meet in Ramallah
Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes in eastern Jerusalem.
The U.S. secretary of state also said at a news conference Wednesday in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Israeli construction in eastern Jerusalem was "unhelpful" to peace efforts. Clinton and Abbas met prior to the news conference.
Clinton said Israel's plans to demolish Palestinian homes are a violation of international obligations. Israel says the homes are being destroyed because they were constructed illegally...
This is simply the same old appeasement that both the West and the Israeli authorities themselves have tried and which have failed, making matters worse, time and time again. The best thing Israel can do is enforce the rule of law. The best thing Hillary can do is butt out. Do we never learn? This is just more on the job training for a group of people naive about the region. Allowing the Arabs to create demographic facts and undermine Israeli authority does not help the peace process.
Would an American city permit shanty towns to spring up willy-nilly?
What if one appeared along the US-Mexican border - for example along the San Andreas Fault?
What if people were killed when the poorly constructed housing fell down?
Is it "ethnic cleansing" to undertake urban renewal projects in depressed neighborhoods?