Daled Amos asks How long have we been trying to ‘bolster’ Abbas? and answers it showing that bolstering Abbas has been going on for some five years now.One of the actions taken by Israel to bolster Abbas has been to free Palestinian prisoners. Most of those in Israeli prisons now were engaged in terror since the signing of the Oslo Accords. In other words, people who engaged in terror to undermine peace.
So what happens to Palestinians who supposedly did something to fight terror? Well they’re not valued nearly as highly as those who engaged in terror.
The Palestinian military court on Monday sentenced Saad to death for collaborating with Israel, court officials and security sources said.
This isn’t Hamas, this is Fatah. I have no idea if Mr. Saad is guilty of the charge or not. However he was deemed guilty of it by Israel’s “peace partner.”
So freeing terrorists is the same as bolstering Abbas and peace and condemning those who work against terrorists is OK, what sort of message does that send about how much Fatah is committed to peace? The U.S. may say the right things about Hamas, so why is it encouraging prisoner releases and staying silent about the killing of those Palestinians accused of fighting terrorists?
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
A lot of progressives in the US are very much opposed to capital punishment, seeing its use in some American states (and by the federal government) as a serious blot on the national escutheon, a sign of our illiberalism, etc.
Israel has engaged in the practice once, over forty years ago. The Palestinians do it frequently, sometimes with a swipe at due process, sometimes not.
What explains this? It’s yet another application of what Meryl calls the Exception Clause–every declaration of principle by anyone, anywhere, contains the implicit proviso, “except Jews.”