Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 04, 2015

A rare article about Palestinian corruption in The Economist

IT SEEMS that the ageing politicians who appear on the official Palestine television station are in “urgent need” of a makeover. So, at least, said one of the channel’s directors in a letter to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. He proposed hiring a make-up artist, a prestigious one who has “already worked with several international stations.” Her fee, though, was $12,000 per month—roughly what the average Palestinian will earn in four years. Many such average people are distinctly unimpressed by that kind of extravagance. The document, published last month on a local website, is the latest scandal to roil Palestinian politics. In August it was a letter from an Abbas adviser, begging the foreign minister of Bahrain for $4 million to build an exclusive housing complex for Palestinian officials. Education officials, meanwhile, have been accused of selling off a batch of 1,000 medical scholarships offered by the Venezuelan government.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), the limited self-governing body in the occupied territories, has been plagued by waste, graft and accusations of both since its inception in 1994 following the Oslo accords. When auditors looked at the books three years later, they concluded that nearly 40% of the budget had been frittered away. By 2006, according to the PA’s own attorney-general, officials had embezzled some $700m.

Aman, a local watchdog group, claims that the bloated public-sector payroll includes an unknown number of “ghost employees” whose salaries line the pockets of managers and ministers. There are ghost businesses, too, like a $6m joint Palestinian-Italian venture to build a pipe factory that existed only on paper.

Asked to name the “most serious problem” in their society, 24% of Palestinians say it is corruption—only slightly below the 28% who point to the Israeli occupation. Four-fifths believe their leaders are corrupt. A new poll found that, for the first time, more than half of them want to dissolve the authority altogether. “A majority believes that it has become a burden,” said Khalil Shikaki, who carried out the poll. Perhaps not even a $12,000 makeover can help.

10/04 Links: Thousands attend funerals for Jerusalem terror victims; Inside the Mind of a J Streeter

From Ian:

Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: Why Our Leaders Are Hypocrites and Liars

We contaminate our mosques with our own hands and feet, and then blame Jews for desecrating Islamic holy sites. If anyone is desecrating Islamic holy sites, it is those who bring explosives, stones and firebombs into Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Jews who visit the Temple Mount do not bring with them stones, bombs or clubs. It is young Muslim men who are desecrating our holy sites with their "filthy feet."
These leaders, including Abbas himself, are not willing to send their own children and grandchildren to participate in the "popular struggle." They are fully responsible for sending the children of others to throw stones and firebombs at Jews. Sitting in their luxurious offices and villas in Ramallah, they demand that Israel be held responsible for cracking down on "innocent" Palestinians. Their main goal is to embarrass Israel and depict it as a state that takes tough measures against Palestinian teenagers.
These youths are not taking to the streets to fight "occupation." Their main goal is to kill or cause grievous bodily harm to Jews. When someone tosses a firebomb at a house or a car, his intention is to burn civilians alive.
It is as if our leaders are saying that throwing stones and firebombs at Jews in their cars and homes is a basic right of Palestinians. Our leaders believe Israel has no right to defend itself against those who seek to burn Jews driving in their vehicles or sleeping inside their homes. (h/t Effect)

David Horovitz: The impossible Abbas

Those who retain some sympathy for Abbas note that he is, at time of writing, maintaining his Palestinian Authority security forces’ coordination with their Israeli counterparts. They say it’s hard for him to condemn the latest acts of Palestinian terrorism because he is already widely seen by his public as an Israeli stooge. They argue that it is not Abbas inciting Palestinian terrorism, but rather Arab media reports and a relentless social media emphasis on alleged Israeli attacks at Al-Aqsa.
But the fact is that Abbas has never sought to counter his predecessor Yasser Arafat’s assertion that there were no Jewish temples in Jerusalem and thus, by extension, there is no historic legitimacy for Jewish sovereignty here. The fact is that Abbas has allowed no sense of Jewish connection to the Temple Mount to complicate the Palestinian narrative of Israeli-Jewish illegitimacy there. The fact is that Abbas never moved decisively to prevent vicious anti-Israeli incitement in the Palestinian media. The fact is that Abbas’s PA continued the practice of honoring terrorists and “martyrs.”
The fact is that Abbas, whom many in Israel have even after 2008 insistently wanted to believe is a partner for peace — including Olmert himself, to this day — has long since failed his people and ours.
The fact is that Abbas has quite deliberately fueled the flames of this latest Al-Aqsa-centered terror wave.
Bleak and bitter, paralyzed between his empathy for the settlement enterprise and his concern at Israel becoming a binational state, Netanyahu is not an easy prime minister for a Palestinian leader genuinely seeking a viable, lasting peace agreement.
But Mahmoud Abbas is no such Palestinian leader.

Honest Reporting: U.S., Russian Air Strikes Put Israeli Actions Into Perspective

Israel does not intentionally target civilians. But what about Russia? The commencement of air strikes against targets in Syria have led to accusations that President Putin’s air force is bombing indiscriminately.
A Washington Post analysis of Russian video footage says:
that the first two frames appear to only partially capture the actual strikes. The white puffs on the ground are fragmentation impacts from the bombs exploding off-screen.
While the third strike appears to have hit its target, the other two seem to be missing their intended targets, suggesting that the Russians are using “dumb” ordnance, not precision guided munitions.
And according to the UK’s minister of defense, Michael Fallon:
Our evidence indicates they are dropping unguided munitions in civilian areas, killing civilians, and they are dropping them against the Free Syrian forces fighting Assad.

.@UNRWA employee posts video glorifying stabbing and burning Jews

From the Facebook page of Abou Albaraa, who says he works for UNRWA:

This is a photo of Steven Demetre Georgiou in 1972.

Handsome devil, isn't he?

He is also known by his stage name "Cat Stevens" and is currently known under his Muslim adopted name of Yusuf Islam, but he will always be Cat Stevens to me.

In fact, one of my favorite albums as a kid - we're talking vinyl - was Tea for the Tillerman and particularly the tune Where Do the Children Play?

The reason that I am putting this gentleman into your face - a face that is not very welcome within the Jewish community, or so I suspect - is because I think that he inadvertently raises a very interesting question.

Can we appreciate an artist's art in distinction from that artist's politics?

This is a question that goes to the beginnings of political history.

I do not know how many of you are familiar with Camille Paglia, but she is, from an ideological perspective, a 60s libertarian feminist who got her fifteen minutes from a terrific dissertation that she wrote and turned into a book published in 1990 entitled, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson.

As she gathered something of a cult following through the 1990s, she took to writing semi-popular cultural-critical analyses, some of which came together in a 1994 collection called Vamps and Tramps: New Essays.

It has been a long time since I have read that book, but as I recall there was a segment in one of the essays in which she discusses knock-down-drag-out-fights-to-the-death with other feminist graduate students at Yale toward the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s.

(I would love to have been a fly on the wall.}

She talks about being at a particular graduate student party in New Haven, at the time, in which someone made the insidious mistake of putting Mick Jagger's Under My Thumb on the turntable thus resulting in a lesbian-feminist-graduate-student brawl! I do not know how much actual violence there was - we are talking about graduate students, after all - but there was plenty of yelling, screaming, and pulling of hair, you can be sure.

This is what Paglia's cohort at Yale objected to and, in my opinion, for perfectly good reasons:

The squirmin' dog who's just had her day

Under my thumb

A girl who has just changed her ways

It's down to me, yes it is

The way she does just what she's told

Down to me, the change has come

She's under my thumb

Ah, ah, say it's alright

Under my thumb

A siamese cat of a girl

Under my thumb

She's the sweetest, hmmm, pet in the world

It's down to me

The way she talks when she's spoken to

Down to me, the change has come,

She's under my thumb.

You can hear that tune in your head, but the lyrics are vile.

Because these are Mick Jagger's lyrics, however, the misogynist - or former misogynist - gets a pass, which I take to be a very obvious example of politically correct left-leaning hypocrisy.

I do not know that Paglia appreciated this song in particular, but what she argued is that any individual work of art must stand on its own integral virtues. Whatever anyone might think of Mick Jagger's sexism in 1965 or 1966, when he wrote Under My Thumb, should it influence how we consider his other contributions?

Should we, for example, not enjoy Satisfaction because of Under My Thumb?

The same question, of course, goes to Cat Stevens.

Father and Son is, in my estimation, an absolutely terrific tune and one that I listened to many times long before Mr. Georgiou transmogrified himself from Cat Stevens to Yusuf Islam. And, heck, it would not bother me in the least that he converted to Islam if he had not also justified the Iranian fatwa of death on the head of author Salman Rushdie. In a conversation with students at Kingston University, London, in 1989, when asked about the Iranian Rushdie fatwa, Yusuf Islam said, "He must be killed. The Qur'an makes it clear – if someone defames the prophet, then he must die."

Really? Well, OK, then.

I honestly do not give a rat's tushky about "the prophet."

But does Yusuf Islam's regressive immorality inherently detract from Father and Son?

That is the question.

The same question, of course, goes to Roger Waters of BDS fame and his hugely popular band, Pink Floyd.

The first album that I ever bought as a kid, besides a Beatles album, was Dark Side of the Moon.

For many years I adored Pink Floyd, so you can imagine how disheartening it was when I learned that lead singer and lyricist, Roger Waters, is an anti-Semitic anti-Zionist. For so many years I had no idea, but there it is.

But does this mean that Wish You Were Here is not a great album or that Shine On You Crazy Diamond is not a great tune?

I ask these questions not because I have any particular interest in redeeming such people in your hearts, but because I want to know what you think. I want to know what you think because, on this question, I am not certain what I think.

I do know, however, that I can never listen to such music in the same way again and that is a terrible shame.

The cliché is that you can never go home again... the cliché is true.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

More @UNRWA employees who are fans of Hamas terror

Rafat Salhe is an UNRWA employee in Gaza. And even though UNRWA claims it will not hire Hamas members, it sure seems to hire a lot of Hamas fans.

Dalhe once had this as his profile picture on Facebook:

And he is a fan of individual terrorists as well:

When this "martyr" was first killed, though, Selhe was careful not to identify him with Hamas. He waited until after the war, because Hamas wanted everyone to appear to be a civilian.

Dhafer Abukishk is another UNRWA employee who is a big Hamas fan:

The series of UNRWA employees who violate UNRWA's supposed neutrality standards continues....

Celebrated "non-violent activist" supports murdering Jews and pushes blood libel

Manal Tamimi is a member of the family from Nabi Saleh who has been celebrated and romanticized by Amnesty International and media outlets as leaders of "non-violent resistance." Her husband Bilal videos every weekly demonstration there, and she is related to Bassam Tamimi whom Amnesty is sponsoring on a speaking tour through the US now.

Yesterday, Manal made it clear that while she personally might not murder Jews, she sure supports people who do:

There was more:

@IdoDaniel settlers r not civilians specilay the ones in jerusalem and Hebron so yes im proud of what this man did
— manal tamimi (@screamingtamimi) October 3, 2015

And finally:

Ah, "non-violent not peaceful." The perfect combination to fool peace-loving Westerners who cannot tell the difference.

And she says that Jews drink children's blood for good measure.

Manal's support for violence is exactly what her relative Bassem, Amnesty's darling, believes too:

In the already mentioned tribute to the Tamimis and their village Nabi Saleh that was featured as a New York Times Magazine cover in March 2013, Bassem Tamimi made clear that in his view, “[t]aking up arms wasn’t … a moral error so much as a strategic one.” Reportedly, Tamimi and everyone else in the village “insisted they had the right to armed resistance; they just don’t think it works” and “they resented being asked to forswear bloodshed.”
But it is apparently not necessary to forswear bloodshed and condemn terrorist attacks against civilians in order to win support from Amnesty International and praise from the European Union.
And quite obviously, neither Amnesty nor the EU or the media are much bothered by the fact that a “human rights defender” like Bassem Tamimi would send his young children in an almost weekly ritual, year after year, to provoke soldiers that he regularly denounces as brutal and trigger-happy.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the Tamimis, whose ranks include some of the most notorious terrorists ever.

Yet Amnesty doesn't only support them - they support their propagandizing third graders in the US.

Abbas' biggest lie (poster)

It is tough competition to find Abbas' biggest lie, but I think this part of his UN speech is up there.

And in the few days since his speech, the number of deadly attacks on Jews by his people has increased dramatically.

Abbas himself condoned terror a couple of weeks ago:

His people understood his speech for what it was - a call for a new terror spree.

But the Western media didn't even call him on this obvious lie.

UPDATE: I made a new version of the poster.

10/03 Links: Making Sense of the Senseless; Bibi: World must condemn Palestinian lionizing of terrorists

From Ian:

Two Israeli men killed, 2 injured, in Jerusalem stabbing attack

Two Israeli men in their 40s died of their wounds Saturday night after being stabbed in Jerusalem’s Old City in a terror attack.
One of the men’s wife is in serious condition and their two-year-old baby was lightly wounded. The mother and toddler were taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment.
The men were stabbed in the upper body and were unconscious when paramedics arrived at the scene.
When the attack began, the injured woman managed to run and alert a group of Border Police forces nearby who arrived on the scene and shot and killed the attacker.
The baby was shot in the leg, although it is not yet entirely clear how. Police said the attacker may have grabbed a firearm the father was carrying but it is not clear if he managed to fire it.
The incident occurred near Lion’s Gate in East Jerusalem. (h/t Bob Knot)

Elliott Abrams: The Obama Vendetta Against Netanyahu

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the UN General Assembly this week, neither Secretary of State Kerry nor even our UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, was present.
Why not? The State Department has said Kerry was involved in some kind of conference call or video conference with the White House. OK, let’s call that plausible. What about Power?
Rick Grenell, for years the spokesman at the US Mission to the UN and a very well-informed observer, tweeted yesterday that Power was instructed to stay away.
Think of how petty that instruction, which can only have come from the White House, really is. To sit in the seat and listen to Netanyahu isn’t endorsing his remarks, it is the politeness we owe an ally. Deliberate absence recalls the years in which dozens of delegations, Arab and “Third World,” would leave the chamber when any Israeli rose to speak. This administration is still griping about diplomatic errors Netanyahu has made, but a refusal to have the US ambassador listen to his speech is petty and damaging, hinting to anti-Israel delegations that the United States may be willing to let all sorts of anti-Israel measures go without opposition or criticism.

Bibi Calls Out the U.N. for Discriminating Against Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called out the United Nations on Friday for its repeated resolutions criticizing Israel, noting that it often gives terrorist sponsors like Iran a free pass.
“It’s not living up to its great universal role of being a force for promoting peace because it’s bashing Israel,” Netanyahu told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren.
“Sixty percent of the resolutions of the U.N. Human Rights Council are directed not against Iran, not against Syria, and not against all the other places where this horrible carnage is taking place and where millions are being displaced and murdered—where hundreds of thousands are being murdered—,but against the one true democracy in the Middle East, Israel.”
Despite its role in the creation of the Jewish state following World War II, the U.N. has historically been an antagonist of Israel, passing resolutions like the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution in 1975 that was opposed and ultimately repealed by the United States.
Netanyahu noted that the U.N. should be applauding Israel’s consistent opposition to terrorism.
“Israel is standing in the breach there, protecting civilization, fighting the forces that ravage people,” Netanyahu said.
“Who’s standing there? Israel first. And who gets bashed in the U.N.? Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Colonel Richard Kemp: 'Russia is bombing Syria to advance Moscow's interests not to fight ISIS'

This Russian intervention makes the Middle East much more dangerous for the long term.
Putin’s empowerment of Iran and its Syrian allies will terrify countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states and makes a large-scale war more likely.
There are also more immediate dangers.
British and American advisers and special forces as well as humanitarian aid workers are on the ground in the areas that Russian planes are now attacking.
Russia launches fresh wave of air strikes in Syria
For the first time since the Second World War American and Russian planes are bombing the same country at the same time.
Then they were on the same side.
Today they are not.
The consequences of one side shooting down the other sides’s planes - most likely by accident - are incalculable.

Mondoweiss' sickening equivalence

A Mondoweiss writer named Avram Meitner, who pretends to be struggling with the question of whether his oh-so-moral anti-Israel friends should condemn the murder of parents of six young children, thinks he is being evenhanded when he describes how he thinks people should react to the murders:

An error made by the vast majority of people from all parts of the political compass – we are more accepting of killings perpetrated by those wearing uniforms or flying an F16 than by those not wearing such uniforms. The doctrinal systems tell us that for violence to be legitimate, it must be carried out by agents of state. In other words, state terror ceases to be terror simply by virtue of it having been perpetrated under the auspices of a government and its so-called armed forces. It’s important to note this – from a moral perspective, whether you kill a child’s parents at point blank range, or from a few thousand feet in the air, the acts are equivalent.

The slaughter of Eitan and Naama Henkin is terrorism in the same way that the slaughter of hundreds of innocent men, women and children in Gaza is terrorism. Either oppose both equally, or accept that you are led by primitive tribalism rather than principles.

Meitner is a sickening piece of trash. He cannot find it in himself to condemn the murders without a caveat.

Meitner claims that evil Zionists support murdering civilians as long as the murderers are wearing uniforms. But no sane Israeli supports murder, whether the perpetrator is a soldier or not.

There is a world of a difference - legally, morally and logically - between cold-blooded, targeted murder and the tragic deaths of people who are killed when the terrorists hiding among them are being targeted. (There is a reason that every legal system on the planet distinguishes between murder, manslaughter and accidental death.)

If the IDF wanted to target civilians, Gaza would be a smoldering crater and there would be hundreds of thousands killed in 50 days.

No military expert on the planet says Israel targeted civilians. They know what Israel could do.

On the flip side, if an IDF soldier would shoot a Palestinian family at point blank range for no reason except a sense of dignity and revenge, Israeli society would rightly condemn him.

Meitner wants to politicize this murder of Jews and turn it into an anti-Israel screed. What a disgusting excuse for a human.

Here is the real equivalence: the murder of the Henkins is like the murders of Mohammed Abu Khdeir or of the Dawabashe family. In those cases the victims were targeted.

And when you compare apples to apples, the difference between the morality of those Zionists h despises and the Palestinians he loves becomes crystal clear.

Because Israeli society, from the Prime Minister to the people on the street, rose as one to condemn the murder of Abu Khdeir.

Because Israelis raised cash to pay the victims of the Dawabashe arson/murder.

Because the vast majority of Israelis are naturally disgusted and ashamed at the thought that one of their own could be responsible for such depravity.

And how did Palestinians react to the murder of the Henkins? They celebrated. They shot off fireworks. The expressed uniform happiness on Facebook.

I could not find a single Arabic voice in any message board or social media. As of this moment, a single article from Al Quds about the attack - showing the faces of the victims - has 4,500 Likes and 650 Facebook comments, every one uniformly happy that they were murdered. (UPDATE: There are very few fortunate exceptions, h/t DH).

What does it say about Palestinian society that seemingly no one, from Abbas down to the streets of Nablus, can condemn the murders of the Henkins? What does it say about Palestinian society that the Khaled Abu Toamehs and the Bassam Eids and the Muhammad Zoabis and the Mohammed Dajanis, people who actually think of Jews as human beings, are so rare - and roundly hated?

This is the difference between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors.

This is the difference between a moral society and one that is perverted.

That is the difference between a society that deserves respect and one that demands it.

That is the huge moral difference between the people Mondoweiss despises and those it supports. And if you want to see that difference in detail, read the comments of anti-Israel bigots who are applauding the murders.

But credit where credit is due. I have to thank Avram Meitner for helping me crystallize the difference between him and me.

10/02 Links Pt2: Israel’s risk aversion problem; The truth about J Street; A Succot scorecard

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel’s risk aversion problem

This delusional thinking is what caused the IDF’s General Staff to convene immediately after Operation Protective Edge ended and try to figure out how to rebuild Gaza.
Ever since the cease-fire came into force, Hamas has diverted all the assistance it has received from Israel and the international community not to rebuild Gaza, but to rebuild its military capacity to harm Israel. And yet, from the IDF’s perspective, ever since the war ended our most urgent task has been to save Hamas and the Palestinians alike from reckoning with the price of their aggression.
Likewise, Israel continues to insist that we have a strategic interest in peace with the PLO. Even if this is true in theory, chances are greater that unicorns will fall from the sky and prance through Jerusalem’s Old City than that the PLO will agree to make peace with Israel.
Our continued defense of the PLO as a legitimate actor harms our ability to secure other strategic interests that are achievable and can improve Israel’s regional position. These interests include securing transportation arteries in Judea and Samaria and strengthening Israel's military and political control over the areas. These interests have only grown more acute in recent years with the rise of jihadist forces throughout the region and among the Palestinians themselves.
This brings us back to McCain and his strategic wisdom.
Israel must not allow the risks of action to lure us into strategic paralysis that imperils our future.
The more Israel allows other actors to determine the nature of the emerging regional order, the less secure Israel will be. The more willing we are to take calculated risks today the greater our ability will be to influence the future architecture of regional power relations and so minimize threats to our survival in the decades to come.

Sarah Honig: That level of hatefulness

In all, during her inglorious State Department stint, Hillary functioned as an authentic representative of her boss, President Obama.
And now as a presidential candidate herself, she pretends to be far friendlier to Israel than she was. She is understandably after money and votes. Electioneering begets lots of affable blarney but the devil is in the details. As only expected, Hillary never mentions her chumminess with Suha Arafat and her failure to take Mrs. Arafat to task for odious propaganda that (in the words of Hillary’s own censure of trump) “not only was it out of bounds, it was untrue.”
There are no extenuating excuses for the fact that Hillary kept mum during her Gaza visit and especially afterwards. She didn’t object to outright lies about non-existent contaminants with which Suha insisted Israel literally polluted actual Palestinian wells.
Not to so much as intimate a suggestion of criticism lent a measure of legitimacy to Suha’s outlandish and ultra-false charges. It also subliminally lent the impression that somehow Israel is the figurative poison in the Mideastern well – an impression later wellhoned by Obama whose bias-laden diplomacy Hillary Clinton unflinchingly furthered and helped implement.
Clearly, owning up to even a faint trace of such skewed statecraft now would be politically super-stupid for her with elections in the offing. Besides, Hillary was anyhow never a remarkable stickler for the truth. That, though, doesn’t mean that we should forget her double standards.
Paraphrasing Hillary’s own sanctimonious admonition, she “should have from the beginning corrected that kind of rhetoric, that level of hatefulness.”

The truth about J Street (h/t Bob Knot)

Video: Molotov cocktail attack in Old City of Jerusalem (update)

Displayed At Proudly Al Quds Newspaper:

# Akadds_ alquds: # instant video targeting soldiers and settlers Molotov cocktails near the door of the chain in the Old City of Jerusalem # morning were lying bottles arrest at the age of 25 years from the Shuafat refugee camp
Posted by Jerusalem - Alquds On Friday, October 2, 2015

At commenters Of Hundreds That Facebook Site Happily Cheered The Murders Of The Henkins.

With not one person I could find disagreeing.

UPDATE: The terrorist was arrested. (H / t Bob K)

10/02 Links Pt1: Listen to the Deafening Silence; Win $1 Million If You Can Prove PLO Accepted Israel

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Grandnephew of ‘father of human rights law’ killed for being Jewish

Eitam and Naama Henkin, two Israeli civilians, were gunned down in a drive-by shooting on a road in the West Bank yesterday. Four of their children were in the backseat of their car at the time.
The name Henkin will be immediately familiar to those interested in international law, because of Louis Henkin. Prof. Henkin was one of the defining figures in post-World War II international law. In a five-decade career at Columbia University School of Law, he pioneered the modern field of international law and has been called “the father of human rights law.”
Eitam’s grandfather was Louis Henkin’s brother; his parents are prominent Orthodox figures, associated with liberal approaches to Judaism. Eitam himself was a graduate fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem think tank I am also associated with. My colleagues there describe Eitam as “an extremely impressive scholar and human being.” The Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has apparently admitted organizing the attack. I assume Eitam was a U.S. citizen (his parents both are).

Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas's Trap: The Big Bluff

Those who rushed to declare the death of the Oslo Accords fell into Abbas's trap.
Abbas's threats are mainly designed to scare the international community into pressuring Israel to offer Abbas more concessions. He is hoping that inaccurate headlines concerning the purported abrogation of the Oslo Accords will cause panic in Washington and European capitals, prompting world leaders to demand that Israel give Abbas everything he asks for.
Abbas knows that cancelling the agreements with Israel would mean dissolving his Palestinian Authority, and the end of his political career.
The tens of thousands of Arab refugees now seeking asylum in Europe could not care less about the "occupation" and settlements.
Ironically, Abbas declared that, "We are working on spreading the culture of peace and coexistence between our people and in our region." But his harsh words against Israel, in addition to continued anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian media, prove that he is moving in the opposite direction. This form of incitement destroys any chance of peace.

Jpost Editorial: Abbas’s speech

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas intended to escalate the tension with Israel when he declared on Wednesday that Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would no longer be bound by the Oslo Accords.
Perhaps his speech was a desperate attempt to gain the attention of a United Nations General Assembly rightly preoccupied with much bigger and more important issues, namely the sectarian bloodbath in Syria that has metastasized throughout the region and has created a major humanitarian crisis for Europe.
Whatever Abbas’s motivation, it is too early to know the operative ramifications of what he said. On the one hand, the Palestinian president was calling on the nations of the world to take punitive actions against Israel as a country that is supposedly illegally occupying another nation.
But, in what can be seen as a positive non-declaration, Abbas stopped short of calling for an end to security and economic cooperation between the PA and Israel. That’s because he understands that an end to such cooperation would lead to the collapse of the PA. And this would be a disaster for the Palestinians, as well as for Israel.
Tens of thousands of PA employees would stop getting paid. Everything from garbage collection to law enforcement would cease to function properly and Hamas and Islamic Jihad would take advantage of the situation.

Win $1 Million If You Can Prove PLO Accepted Israel

New York businessman William Langfan has offered an unprecedented $1 million prize to anyone who shows that the Palestinian National Council (PNC) has ever changed the PLO charter to accept Israel's existence, as is widely believed.
The offer is particularly timely, less than 24 hours after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced that he no longer sees himself as bound by the Oslo Accords.
Probably the most important obligation in the “Peace Process” was a promise to annul the onerous clauses of their 1964 Palestinian National Charter. “The importance of the charter to the Palestinians can not be exaggerated,” according to Langfan. “To the Palestinians, it is virtually their 'Junior Koran.' These clauses in the charter declared the establishment of Israel illegal and void and called for armed resistance until Palestine is liberated.”
In an exclusive interview with Arutz Sheva's Baruch Gordon, Langfan explained that in 1993, when Israel and the PLO were about to sign the Oslo Accords, then-PLO chairman Yasser Arafat sent a letter to then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, in which he agreed to cancel the clauses in the charter that called for an armed struggle against Israel, and promised to submit the matter to the PNC for approval.
That letter was then used for years as supposed proof that the PLO had recognized Israel.
However, Langfan noted that according to the charter itself, a two-thirds majority vote would be necessary to make changes in the charter.