23-May-17: Abbas on Manchester and Sbarro

Bethlehem this morning: Trump and Abbas [Image Source]

In 2008, President-for-life of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas announced he was awarding the PA’s highest medal, the Al Quds Mark of Honor, to Ahlam Tamimi, who masterminded the massacre at the Sbarro Jerusalem pizzeria. (Abbas' decision to make the award was widely criticized by outsiders and was eventually overturned.) The blood-drenched act of terror which Abbas was so anxious to honor was, like last night’s Manchester atrocity, an attack directed specifically at children by means of nail-enhanced explosives delivered by a human bomb.

Our daughter Malki, just 15, was one of those murdered in the pizzeria. We're acutely aware of how Abbas thought to honor Tamimi because of Malki's death and the deaths and horrible injuries of the other innocents caught up in the bombing.

This morning, that same President-for-life, Mahmoud Abbas, said in Bethlehem to the US President:

"Allow me… to condemn the horrible terrorist attack that occurred in the British city of Manchester… I do offer my warm condolences to the Prime Minister of Britain, families of victims, and the British people."

It's time for people who understand brazen hypocrisy when they encounter it, and especially members of the news reporting industry, to say openly what should have been said years ago: that in the community of civilized nations and people, condemnations mouthed by those deeply engaged in terror - like Mahmoud Abbas and those who report to him - are illegitimate and should be neither heard nor tolerated.

There are situations where the condemnation of terror is as morally indefensible as the terror itself.