The Moderate?

Mahmoud Abbas, often lauded as a moderate capable of making peace with Israel is currently responsible for running the affairs of the PLO. He has been tipped by many to take over from Arafat, but I'm not so sure. The Palestinian camp has great rivalries, and Abbas (known as Abu Mazen) is not liked by influential leaders such as Mohammed Dahlan and Hassan Asfour. On more than one occasion, during the peace negotiations of the Barak era, Asfour is on record as saying that Abbas does not really want peace.

I for one won't be disappointed if the "moderate" Abbas is not the decrepit terrorist's successor. I don't trust Holocaust deniers to have a say in the fate of Israel.

In 1983, Abbas wrote The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement, wherein he suggested that the figure of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis was a false one, "peddled" by the Jews. To bolster that thesis, he quotes known Holocaust revisionists as authoritative sources. Abbas also claimed that the Holocaust lie was leveraged as political capital by the evil Zionists.

Read a detailed account of Abbas' conspiratorial and revisionist mind at MEMRI.

So then, why have players like Shaul Mofaz and Ariel Sharon been cautiously supportive of Abbas?

A New York Times profile of Abbas quotes him as saying

When I wrote 'The Other Side,' we were at war with Israel. Today I would not have made such remarks.

Not quite a retraction of his loathsome claims. Brian Carnell at LeftWatch.com makes a good point.

But taken at face value, Mazen's explanation of his Holocaust denial places him in an even worse light -- apparently if one is at war with Israel, it acceptable to spread anti-Semitic lies, whereas if you are trying to negotiate with them it is not. So, either Mazen really never believed the Holocaust denial nonsense but used it anyway as a convenient propaganda tool, or he still believes it but is willing to work with the Zionist cabal that sponsored the Holocaust.

Other Links on Abbas as a Holocasut Denier

NationalReviewOnline
Honest Reporting
FrontPage Magazine
History News Network

Comments

[patrickafir]

Yeah, I remember when he was first being hailed in the American mainstream media as a true moderate and a hopeful figure for peace. I was dismayed that his Holocaust denial was never mentioned.

Mein Kampf still sells quite well in the Arab world, by the way.

I hate to say it, but I don't think Israel is going to see a "moderate" Arab negotiating partner for quite some time. Not after the two generations of terrorists which Arafat--and more recently with the help of Hamas, IJ, Al Aqsa, et al--has raised. Even then, the picture doesn't look at all rosy.

[Steve]

I know, and yet the mainstream fashionable world thinks that snakes like Saeb Erakat are moderates!!!

There are four typical beliefs on the Holocaust in the Arab world.

1. It didn't happen. (Yet Mein Kampf is still a best seller in the Arab world)
2. If it did happen then Israel has exploited it for political capital
3. If it did happn then the the real victims are the Palestinians
4. If it did happen then the Zionist behaviours today are a replication of those terrible Nazi behaviours

[Cynic]

This NYT article by Steven Erlanger
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/international/middleeast/07abbas.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5006&en=404a1294e0eb0759&ex=1100408400&partner=ALTAVISTA1
"Arafat's No. 2 Is Set to Assume Leadership"

seems to be the NYT trying to determine leader and policy in Israel (sort of like they tried recently in the US) with Beilin and Oslo3!

They lump Arafat together with Sharon as the spoilers:
"Mr. Arafat, never a fool when power is at stake, undermined Mr. Abbas from the start, helped by the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and Mr. Abbas quit in disgust four months later."

For the those dependent on the sound bites they will most probably have forgotten those "four months",that is, if they had paid attention, and that Jennings, Rather and co., did not excessively pre-digest the facts.