Morning links

Mudar Zahran on the real reasons Abbas went to the UN:

Today Abbas is an illegitimate "president," who has overstayed his term two years by refusing to hold free elections; unable to enforce his government's authority on the Gaza Strip, or even to return to his own house there which was seized by Hamas when it took over the Gaza Strip in 2005, forcing out Abbas's Palestinian Leadership Organization [PLO] in a matter of days. Hamas has since consolidated its rule over the Gaza strip, with no sign of Abbas and his fellow PLO leaders being able to restore their authority there. Hamas has consistently shown carelessness, to say the least, toward any "reconciliation" with Abbas, and has not offered any concessions whatever in that regard....[But] At the UN, Abbas was the Palestinians' hero. He was speaking their woes and representing their worries to the world. It did not mater to the average Palestinian that Abbas and other PA officials were living richly while Palestinians suffered; it did not matter that Abbas's political opponents were still being held in Palestinian jails merely for disliking Abbas; nor did it matter that Abbas -- who was requesting for a Palestinian state— was and still is a Jordanian citizen. Abbas seems to have been forgiven by his people for all his sins simply because he invested in an emotionally-charged up speech.

Elliott Abrams at NRO: Abbas strikes out.

The rapturous applause that greeted Mahmoud Abbas, appearing before the U.N. General Assembly in his role as chairman of the PLO, was deceiving. The collection of states that swooned when he mentioned Yasser Arafat’s 1974 appearance in the same hall will never give him a state — nor even the foreign-aid money to pay his delegation’s hotel bills.

His statehood project depends on Israel and the United States, and to a lesser extent on the Europeans (and a bit of Gulf Arab financing). His U.N. gambit has annoyed or offended all of those parties.

GIYUS: Is there still hope for peace?

The UN is a massive joke by David Akin at the Toronto Sun

CAMERA: LA Times remakes Ben-Hur into a "Palestinian nobleman"

Naharnet reports "Israeli Commandos Helped Hizbullah ‘Minister of Infrastructure’ Escape Lebanon"

Anti-Semitism: the real issue that dare not speak its name at The Australian

Arutz-7: The gun of Asher Palmer - the man who was killed with his son when their car was hit by rocks by Palestinian Arab terrorists - was missing from its holster.

"Death to Jews" in Paris Muslim march.

Point of No Return looks at the Moroccan Holocaust conference

And then there is this beautiful graphic at MidEast Truth:

(h/t Yerushalimey, jzaik, Yoel)