Of Rabbits and Hats

Did you know that the Hamas TV station broadcasting in Gaza has a children’s show that features a rabbit named Assud? Cute, right?

Did you also know that the Hamas TV rabbit, which regularly incites Palestinian children, in the vilest terms, to hate Israelis, promised the children in 2008 that he would kill and eat the Danes because of Muhammad cartoons?

It’s available on YouTube, complete with an English transcript.

When Hamas, an organization known for, well, de-fenestrating opposing journalists, condemned the recent Charlie Hebdo murders in France, it struck me as more than a little hypocritical, so I checked the record. It didn’t take long for my search to find the rabbit, and then the hat as well. Let me explain the hat part.

It seems that Ahmet Davutoglu, Prime Minister of Turkey, right hand man of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a chief patron of Hamas and someone who has imprisoned dozens of journalists in his country, has announced that he intends to be at the rally in Paris. It didn’t take much additional checking to find that in 2008, Erdogan attempted to block the appointment of the Danish prime minister to an important position in NATO because of, guess what, the cartoons.

And Abu Mazen has announced he will attend the rally as well.

Wow, let me check the record again. In 2006 there were violent demonstrations in the West Bank protesting the Danish cartoons, after which the official Palestinian news agency reported that the Danish foreign minister “called Palestinian Authority Chairman Mohammed Abbas and apologized for the insult to Muslims caused by the publication of cartoons mocking Prophet Mohammed in several European papers.” Abbas apparently accepted the apology and in response, according to the agency “ he called on Palestinians not to hurt European nationals not involved with the cartoons publication.”  Apparently, those that were involved with the cartoons were considered by Mr. Abbas as fair game to be “hurt.”

As my grandfather used to say, “oifen goniff, brent dos hittle.”  In case you are not familiar with Yiddish, I will help you.  It means that “on the head of the thief, the hat is burning.”  In other words, a thief always has a guilty conscience.

So what is happening here? Hamas, Erdogan and Abbas are suddenly trying to disassociate themselves from the rest of radical Islam. Now.   After Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher. As if by their hypocrisy they can show that Netanyahu’s U.N. warnings do not apply to them.  But the record says otherwise.

It seems fair to ask, where were the solidarity rallies in Paris and Brussels for Jews afraid to walk the streets because of many murdered there in the past few years by radical Muslims? Where were the solidarity rallies in Europe for the Jews recently run down on the streets of Jerusalem or slaughtered in the Har Nof Synagogue as a result of incitement from Gaza and Ramallah? Are murderous Muslims who have enjoyed the full support of Hamas, Turkey and Abbas radical, but with some kind of an asterisk? The record cries out otherwise.

And so, the air at the solidarity rally in Paris will be rife with the stench of burning hats.