Mahmoud Abbas: Blame Hamas for Gaza Casualties

by IPT News • Aug 29, 2014 at 3:05 pm

http://www.investigativeproject.org/4550/mahmoud-abbas-blame-hamas-for-gaza-casualties

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may not be fond of Israel and its political leadership, but he's clear-eyed about one thing: Hamas initiated and prolonged an unnecessary fight with Israel that directly led to Palestinian deaths.
Abbas appeared on Palestine TV Friday, saying "it was possible for us to avoid all of that, 2,000 martyrs, 10,000 injured, 50,000 houses (damaged or destroyed)."
This criticism comes on the heels of his statement that this week's open-ended ceasefire was, in essence, the same Egyptian proposal Hamas rejected weeks ago, before Israel's ground incursion into Gaza which sent casualties dramatically higher and cause massive damage.
Nevertheless, Hamas is trying to spin the war into a victory. That was apparently too much for Mahmoud al-Habbash, a senior Abbas adviser on religious affairs. On Thursday, Habbash likened Israel's Operation Protective Edge to a battle Mohammed fought in 625 A.D. That fight, the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh wrote, "is generally believed to be a defeat for the Muslims, especially because of the heavy casualties they suffered."
In that case, Habbash wrote on Facebook, "The Muslims admitted their defeat," a statement interpreted as a call for Hamas to do the same today.
That same candor has been lacking among American Islamists, including officials at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which apparently now acknowledges that its mission includes being "defenders of the Palestinian cause."

CAIR's Los Angeles director, Hussam Ayloush, has had no comment about Hamas. But after the ceasefire, he wrote in a Twitter post that he conflict was an unprovoked "barbaric assault" by Israel.
Even in the conflict's early stages, however, Abbas wondered what Hamas was "trying to achieve" by firing rockets at Israeli neighborhoods, given that Palestinians "are the losing side, and every minute there are more and more unnecessary deaths. I don't like trading in Palestinian blood."
If he can say that, why can't Ayloush and his colleagues in the United States?

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Catholic, Orthodox Patriarchs Call for Islamic State's Destruction

by John Rossomando • Aug 29, 2014 at 3:50 pm

http://www.investigativeproject.org/4551/catholic-orthodox-patriarchs-call-for-islamic

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Genocide against Christians across the Middle East prompted the region's Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs to call for foreign intervention Wednesday during a meeting at the Maronite patriarchate in Lebanon.
Islamic State forces, along with other jihadist groups, have systematically destroyed ancient Christian communities in both Syria and Iraq since the start of Syria's civil war in 2012.
"The international community cannot keep silent about the existence of the so-called," the patriarchs said in a statement, referring to the Islamic State. "They should put an end to all extremist terrorist groups and criminalize aggression against Christians and their properties."
Pope Francis issued a similar statement earlier this month.
The Christian leaders previously were reluctant to encourage foreign intervention in the Syrian civil war. Melkite Patriarch Gregory III, whose church is based in Damascus, charged in August 2013 that foreign intervention in Syria fueled "hatred, fueling criminality, fueling inhumanity, fueling fundamentalism, terrorism."
A prior statement by three of the Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs in December 2011 similarly opposed foreign intervention.
Developments since then led to the change in posture. Those include the Islamic State's imposition of the Quran-mandated jizyah tax on Christians in Syria and in Iraq. Christians must choose among paying the tax, converting to Islam or facing death. In addition, the slaughter of Christians and the desecration of their churches forced the patriarchs' hands.
"The very existence of Christians is at stake in several Arab countries – notably in Iraq, Syria and Egypt – where they have been exposed to heinous crimes, forcing them to flee," the patriarchs' statement said.
They called on Muslim religious leaders to issue a fatwa forbidding attacks on Christians, describing their silence so far as "painful." The United Nations Security Council must take steps toward "eradicating" the Islamic State or else Christian suffering will continue, they added.
A recent incursion by the Islamic State into Lebanon, which experienced its own bloody 15-year sectarian civil war during the 1970s and 1980s, heightened the patriarchs' distress.
"We reject religious extremism in Lebanon. Lebanon is a country for all and not a country where there are different religious emirates," they said.
Lebanon's constitution requires its president to be a Maronite Catholic, but that office has been vacant since former Lebanese President Michel Suleiman's term ended May 25.
A series of tweets by an Islamic State supporter on Thursday show Lebanon remains squarely in the terrorists' sights and that they plan to force Christians there to pay the jizyah or get them to flee to France.

Related Topics: John Rossomando

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