The Fatah convention: A litmus test for the sanity of the West

By Mladen Andrijasevic

The Fatah convention which has been taking place n Bethlehem offers renewed proof of their intentions, yet President Obama and much of the West insist Israel compromise with this bunch of fanatics.

There have been reports in AT by Leo Rennert and Rick Moran and by Khaled Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Post, as well as Tom Gross and Melanie Phillips.

Tom Gross writes:

Among its resolutions of recent days, the Fatah assembly on Sunday approved a political platform that emphasized the Palestinians' right "to resist occupation in all forms including armed struggle" (i.e. suicide bombings). A report by Reuters added that President Abbas personally insisted on this.

Another resolution stated that Fatah will not give up the armed struggle until all the descendants of those claiming to be of Palestinian Arab origin can live inside Israel (which would essentially mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state). A further resolution explicitly said Fatah would oppose recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

In other words, in spite of misreports by apologists for Fatah in the Western media, Fatah made it clear it is still not willing to accept the principle of two states for two peoples: a predominantly Jewish state and a predominantly Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace.

Khaled Abu Toameh:

The new resolution says that Fatah considers Jerusalem a "red line" that no one could cross. It defines Jerusalem as the "eternal capital of Palestine, the Arab world and the Islamic and Christian worlds."

The city "is awaiting our sacrifices" and Fatah pledges to continue to make sacrifices "until Jerusalem returns to the Palestinians void of settlers and settlements," according to the resolution.

Melanie Phillips:

To Fatah, Israeli citizens are settlers. Once again, they have taken the opportunity Obama and the west have offered them. With American and British rhetoric in particular reaching in recent months a crescendo of vituperation against the ‘settlements', insisting they are dismantled (Obama) or their produce labelled as illegal (Miliband), the Palestinians are seizing on the word ‘settlements' to label all Israelis the illegitimate inhabitants of Israel's capital.

We have come to the point when it is just simply impossible for the West to ignore what has happened. Of course, there will be those on the Left who will yet again try to move the goalposts and say "what Fatah is now saying is made mainly for internal purposes". But I do not think it will work this time. For if it does, it means that there is no way left to distinguish between truth and lies. There would be no quasi Turing Test with which we could determine whether we are talking to an official from a democracy or a totalitarian regime. They would have become indistinguishable. Orwell's 1984 would have finally arrived in earnest

The Israeli government should buy ads in European and US papers and just publish the Fatah political platform. Let the readers judge by themselves. After all, it is impossible to fool all the people all the time.