Peres/Rabin/Arafat = Netanyahu/Abbas?

If Peres and Rabin could accept the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize and stand alongside Yasser Arafat, then there is no reason that France should not insist on Abbas being present at the anti-terror demonstration in Paris yesterday. It’s only fair; after all, Netanyahu insisted on coming even though he apparently was kindly requested not to attend. Such a disgraceful request of a national leader was perhaps made in order to preclude the dilemma regarding what to with Abbas.

It was very inconsiderate of the terrorists to kill a number of Jews in a Jewish establishment so soon after the murder of French journalists, thus hitching the Jewish wagon up to the French car. It made it so the French stage had to be shared with us and, hence, Netanyahu rightfully insisting that his place was at the demonstration and later at the synagogue with our fellow Jews. In any case, Netanyahu should be present at any international anti-terror demonstration whether or not Jews were specifically targeted.

Did Abbas have to be there? Could the French have purposefully not invited him or even insisted that he stay at home? If he had the temerity to crash the demonstration, could guards have been sent to keep him off the streets? Do the French really believe the anti-terror words coming out of Hamas and Fatah when they generally hand out sweets and celebrate the many successful terror attacks around the world?

Why did the Palestinian Arabs not express jubilation at the assassination of the journalists at Charlie Hebdo? Could it have anything to do with their bid to open a criminal case against Israel at the International Criminal Court? One could make the case that if the timing had been different, there would have been celebration in the West Bank and Gaza for the killing of 12 journalists and 4 Jews one day after the next.

In the fight against terror, you need to name it and you need to get off the high horse of balance and political correctness. This is extreme Islamic terror aimed at the entire world and, therefore, there can be no balance and no political side-stepping in the attempt not to insult someone’s sensitivities.

Peres and Rabin should have declined to receive the far-too-premature Nobel Peace Prize and even more importantly, they should have declined to accept it with Arafat who had not yet delivered on one single word of his promises. And the gullible world should not have thought of offering such a prize when there was no evidence of success to any peace plan. I think everyone just wanted to foreclose on war and put a check-mark beside the words “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and proceed to “solving” the next pressing problem somewhere on the globe.

Similarly, Abbas, who promotes and encourages terror attacks in our part of the world, should not have been allowed to walk alongside Netanyahu in the Paris demonstration. I, for one, could not bear the hypocrisy and had to stop watching the news. Balance will regain its meaning when behaviours and words are indeed weighed up and found to be equivalent to each other; political correctness will have meaning when truly just decisions are made and supported. Instead, the demonstration for me turned out to be a farce and the supposed exhibition of the will of world leaders to stamp out extremist Islamic terrorism will prove to have been merely be another check on a to-do list before moving on to the next item.