Totalitarians
PLO chieftains Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas learned well from the east German and Romanian secret police, which trained them in terror tactics, including Psyops and violence.
This week it was reported that the Palestinian Authority arrested the chairman of a radio station, in Hebron. His “crime”? Criticizing the evil Abbas (who has not stood for re-election in years).
Ayman Qawasmeh, the chairman of the Minbar al-Huriyya radio station, criticized Abbas and was dealt with accordingly.
Not that Qawasmeh is a good guy. According to the Jerusalem Post:
“In a fit of frustration, Qawasmeh on Thursday called on Abbas and Hamdallah to resign after the IDF raided his radio station in Hebron and confiscated equipment, accusing them of failing to protect PA-controlled areas in the West Bank. An IDF spokeswoman said security services raided the radio station because it was inciting violence, a charge that Qawasmeh has denied.
“’I call on PA President Mahmoud Abbas and the prime minister to submit their resignations and not to remain in their positions,’ Qawasmeh said in a video that was widely shared on social media. ‘[To] he who cannot protect his institutions and people, I say to them, sit in your house.’”
This is Thug-Life, Palestinian style. The situation in the Palestinian Authority is hopeless in terms of achieving a stable form of government for the Arabs. Add to the mix the toxic, violent competition between the PA, Hama, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and various other gangs, it is remarkable that the West has propped it all up for a quarter-century.
The pathological hatred for Jews and Israel has infected Europe always. Consider the myriad ways in which they aided the Arabs in their lethal fight against Israel—this from a 2016 article in Commentary:
“Ulrike Meinhof, one of the leaders of West Germany’s most notorious domestic terrorist ring, openly celebrated the PLO’s 1972 slaughter of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics as a great revolutionary deed. Two of those who assisted in a radical Palestinian group’s 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane flying from Tel Aviv—which was forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda, occasioning Israel’s Operation Thunderbolt, the most dramatic hostage rescue in history—were West Germans. Indeed, West German terrorism was a subject of obsessive concern in the country and across Europe throughout the 1970s.”
As the years wore on, cooperation between the Europeans and the PLO intensified:
“During the 1970s, the PLO and the affiliates on its Executive Committee, notably the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), carried out numerous terrorist actions against the cities and towns of northern Israel from bases in southern Lebanon. They included particularly barbaric attacks on civilians in Kiryat Shmona and Ma’alot in 1974 and the Coastal Road Massacre of 1978 between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The attacks received extensive coverage in the global media. The celebrations of attacks on “enemy children” filled press conferences and radio broadcasts of the Palestinian organizations in Beirut and Damascus. American diplomats in those cities sent memos back to Washington describing the celebrations in horrifying detail. Meanwhile, East Germany’s diplomats in the region were in contact not only with Arafat but also with leaders of the PFLP and PDFLP. During these years, East Germany was joining the Soviet bloc in sending these groups weapons of terror, including thousands of Kalashnikovs, hand grenades, and abundant ammunition and in offering them military training and medical care.”
Point being, Arafat and then Abbas learned firsthand how to wage war against Israel on multiple fronts. It also solidified their own thirst for power and explains why, decades later, they resort to Soviet-style tactics in suppressing opposition media.
So long as Abbas and his evil ilk are in charge, there will be no peace in the Middle East. The latest arrest of a formerly friendly radio station chairman is enough evidence of that.