Mahmoud Abbas: Terrorist

It is time for the world to stop buying into the charade of "good cop, bad cop" being played by Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas. Abbas is just as bad as Hamas, and maybe more so because he hides his support for terror and genocide against Jews.

For example: Abbas is the nominal head of Fatah, which has never dissociated itself from its own Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, responsible for countless terror attacks. The most charitable interpretation of this relationship is that Abbas is a bumbling figurehead with no real power to stop his own (paid!) people from terror attacks; the worst is that he approves everything that they do. As the heir to notoriously two-faced Yasir Arafat, one tends to believe the latter explanation.

His own Al Aqsa leader was just quoted as celebrating the death of 16-tear old American Daniel Wultz:

Abu Nasser, a senior leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in the West Bank, rejoiced in Wultz's death. Abu Nasser is part of the Brigades leadership in the Balata refugee camp suspected of plotting the attack.

"This is a gift from Allah. We wish this young dog will go directly with no transit to hell," Abu Nasser said.

Terror group Islamic Jihad commented on the idea that they might try to assassinate Abbas:

"There is no difference between us and President Mahmoud Abbas that would make anybody even think of throwing a stone on him," said Khaled al-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza.

His pals at Al-Aqsa also threatened Europe and America for withholding their welfare checks:

"We won't remain idle in the face of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, the US and other countries," said a leaflet issued by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip. "We will strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries, here and abroad."

At a Naqba celebration, Abbas said:

"Our first priority is to lift the economic and political siege, then to end the occupation of our land once and for all, and to establish our independent Palestinian state."

Any question as to which land he is referring to? The Fatah logo answers that nicely:

Also notice the priorities: the state is the last of his list, even though he could declare an independent state today.

Of course, we cannot forget that Abbas was one of the first Arabs to jump on the Holocaust-denial bandwagon, back in 1983:

In 1983, in an early public example of denial from an indigenous Middle Eastern source, a Palestinian named Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) wrote The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement. In the book, Abbas suggested that the six million figure was "peddled" by the Jews but that in fact "the Jewish victims may number six million or be far fewer, even fewer than one million." In 1995, reports of the book's existence reached the Western press, largely because of the public prominence that Abbas had attained as the chief PLO architect of the Oslo peace accords and cosigner of the 1993 Declaration of Principles in Washington. The California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center publicly called for Abbas to clarify his position on the Holocaust, but no clear statement was forthcoming. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, Abbas tried to frame the issue in terms of realpolitik. "When I wrote The Other Side...we were at war with Israel," Abbas said. "Today I would not have made such remarks...Today there is peace and what I write from now on must help advance the peace process."

In other words, my words do not necessarily reflect my reality.

Abbas is also less than forthcoming as he circles the globe trying to extort money from Western governments, money that history has shown goes towards terror - either by paying PA "policemen" who moonlight as terrorists, or by freeing up money for terror, or that is laundered through UN agencies and NGOs towards terror.

Contacts with solid information – all speaking off the record – describe the current PA fiscal crisis as political or “artificial” in nature. There are other PLO holdings – of considerable magnitude – Abbas would be able to draw upon.

So while Abbas may not brandish a gun like his predecessor, and while he may wear suits, his goals and methods are indistinguishable from Arafat, the godfather of modern terror. And an Abbas-led PA is no more peaceful in its goals than Hamas. Anyone who tries to prop up Abbas is acting according to the terror playbook, and a West panicked by Hamas needs to remember that the alternative is no more peaceful and considerably less honest.