Here is the much-vaunted Mahmoud Abbas condemnation of rocket fire into civilian areas of Israel by terrorists in Gaza:
“These rockets that are being fired at Israel must stop. It’s pointless,” he said at a news conference with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik. “At the same time, Israel should not use these rockets as a pretext for collective punishment on Palestinians in Gaza. Israel must always allow humanitarian supplies and other needs to be provided to Gaza.”
Show me where he has ever condemned the murder of Israelis because it is wrong. You won’t be able to, because he never has. Mahmoud Abbas is Arafat in a three-piece suit, and a less ugly face. Less power and appeal to the Palis, to be sure, but he is still the man who wrote his thesis denying that six million died in the Holocaust, and he is the man to whom Fatah—and its “loosely-connected” branch, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade—report. He is the man to whom the EU and UN are giving billions more, and yet, we’re not seeing an end to terrorism of any kind, not in the West Bank, where he putatively rules, and not in Gaza, where the rulers are terrorists who have said time and again that they intend to destroy Israel.
“Pretext.” Firing rockets at your civilians, wounding and murdering them, is a “pretext” for collective punishment of the people who are sheltering the terrorists and who have, in fact, elected their masters as their government.
Shyeah. “Pretext.”
Try “casus belli.”