What is Fatah celebrating today?

Caroline Glick

 

Today Fatah members in Dehaisheh, outside Bethlehem celebrated the terror group's special day by parading around in paramilitary uniforms, khafiiyehs and ski caps while brandishing rifles, axes, mock-up rockets and other terror paraphernalia.

Still according to the wise men in high places, like Israel's President Shimon Peres, Fatah and its leader Mahmoud Abbas are peaceful moderates. Israel is supposed to surrender its capital city and expel more than a half a million Jews from their homes and land in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria in order to appease these Palestinian peaceniks.

Today's footage of the Fatah marches in places like Dehaisheh sparked some attention from the Israeli media. So too, the Israeli media gave some coverage to the fact that the commemorative posters Fatah released a couple weeks ago to celebrate today's 48th "birthday", included maps with all of Israel labeled as Palestine, (except for the Golan Heights which they always give to Syria).

But what so far has gone unnoticed by the media here -- and of course the media worldwide - is that today is not the anniversary of anything. It is not Fatah's 48^th birthday. Arafat established Fatah in either 1957 or 1959 in Kuwait.

On the night of December 31, 1964-January 1, 1965, Fatah conducted its first terrorist attack against Israel. So today's 48^thbirthday celebrations are not honoring Fatah's birth, but Fatah's first terrorist attack, which took place 48 years ago, yesterday. Incidentally, and rather poetically, the attack was a failed attempt to bomb Israel's national water carrier, (that is, to poison Israel's wells...).

Is it really necessary still to point out that a group that celebrates the anniversary not of its establishment but of its first terrorist attack is not a moderate organization? That is, it isn't moderate except for those who define "moderate" as violent, murderous, intractable, and evil.