27-Jan-11: The shooter was shot, and the funders are (once again) robbed

Seven days ago, we blogged here (20-Jan-11: Another shooter shot) about yet another in a long line of armed, screaming Islamist terrorists stopped permanently by Israeli service personnel at an Israeli security checkpoint while doing his best to create some new Jewish victims of a Palestinian Arab shooting attack. His kinsman, with the same surname, had done much the same thing three weeks ago - and fortunately that ended the same way.

Now we want to tell you about the aftermath.

The invaluable analysts at Palestine Media Watch quote the Fatah newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida in its Tuesday edition (25th January) reporting on how the 'moderate' Palestinian Arab president Mahmoud Abbas reacted to last Thursday's terrorist attack.

He condemned it absolutely and unequivocally, right? Not exactly.

To be fair, there was an absolute and unequivocal Abbas condemnation of terror this week. But that was an absolute and unequivocal condemnation by Mahmoud Abbas of terrorism in Moscow. (Reminder: Jihadists are believed to be the human bombs who exploded in the Russian capital on Monday. They killed at least 35 people, wounded many dozens more, by attacking the packed arrivals hall of Domodedovo, Moscow’s largest airport.)

Abbas is not the sort of politician who, even on the best of days, expresses anti-terrorism sentiments without some compelling, pragmatic, self-serving reason. To be more direct about this - Abbas, the noted 'moderate', admires terrorists. Greatly, not moderately. And when it suits his purposes, he says the opposite.

A while back (as we blogged here 23-Apr-08: Stop Playing with Puppets), Abbas awarded the Palestinian Authority's very highest medal to two convicted female terrorists currently serving multiple consecutive life terms in an Israeli prison. One of them murdered fifteen men, women and children in a terror bombing attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in August 2001. It's a massacre seared into our personal memory because it happens to have cost the life of our fifteen year old daughter Malki. It had an entirely different effect on the Palestinian Authority's chairman.

It happens that Abbas is under fire this week from all parts of the Arab and Moslem and Islamist world because of Aljazeera's revelations of alleged "concessions" he is said to have made to the reviled Israelis. The man's extreme discomfort and a need to rehabilitate his damaged image in the wake of the Palileaks may help to explain why Mahmoud Abbas chose this week to reiterate to his Palestinian Arab constituents (in Arabic only) his authentic feelings for the acts of terrorists in one of the ways he personally understands best - the use of other people's money:

"The governor of the Jenin district, Kadura Musa, has awarded a presidential grant to the family of the Shahid (Martyr), Khaldoun Najib Samoudy, during a visit that took place yesterday in the village of Al-Yamoun. The governor noted that the grant is financial aid in the amount of $2,000 that the President [Mahmoud Abbas] is awarding to the relatives of the Shahid, who was recently killed as a Martyr at the Hamra checkpoint by the Israeli occupation forces."

(Sincere appreciation to Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik of Palestine Media Watch for picking this up in the January 25, 2011 edition of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. That paper is an official mouthpiece of the PLO and presided over by Abbas himself.)

Since Mahmoud Abbas chose to use public funds this week to express his high regard for the terrorism and the terrorist, we ask these questions.

1. Will the numerous countries, and their aid agencies, that today fund the Abbas-controlled Palestinian Authority to an extent without parallel in the history of foreign aid, respond at all to this act of malfeasance? Yes, we know it's a small action in terms of money, but it speaks very loudly because of what it says about the ongoing threat to people's lives. 

2. Does a payment to the family of a terrorist, because of his terrorism, fit with the approved-use-of-funds rules that donor countries apply to their support of the Abbas regime? 

3. If no, will those countries (lead in terms of the size of their gifts by the EU, the US, Japan, Canada, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Spain and France, according to donor data) publicly acknowledge their unwitting connivance in Abbas' policy of double-talk and covert encouragement of terrorism? 

Postscript: Is there anything that ordinary people can do to express their revulsion for this kind of hypocrisy (by Abbas) and head-in-the-sand apathy (of the donors)? Maybe not. But we do want to suggest expressing your revulsion by doing something entirely constructive. Consider making a donation to Keren Malki, the not-for-profit we founded in our daughter's memory.

Keren Malki does very good work on behalf of families - Christians, Moslems, Druze, Jewish and others - who care at home for a seriously disabled child. It's non-sectarian, non-political, efficient and well run. It empowers families who carry a frequently heavy load with little support from other quarters. Keren Malki is proud of its compliance with the highest standards of not-for-profit management practices. Your small contribution can make a large impact.