[{"tags":[],"content":"

The Australian reports on PMW report
\nexposing PA Olympic official's terror support
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\nHeadline: In politics of grievance, peace is just a dirty word
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\nBy Nick Cater, Aug. 2, 2016

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\nWith hindsight the organisers of the soccer peace tournament between Jewish and Arabic children should have heeded George Orwell’s warning: football is merely war without the shooting.
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\nThe kids at least behaved. “I love it when we play together like this,” Qusai, an 11-year-old Palestinian, told journalists. “I hope that one day there will be peace between Arabs and Jews and that there will be no more wars and death.”
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\nQusai’s dream of a normal life is not shared by local sports administrators, who shudder at the very thought of normality.
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\nPalestinian Olympic Committee chairman Jibril Rajoub demanded “that all individuals and institutions distance themselves from such activities”. Their recurrence would arouse “disgust and aversion” since “any activity of normalisation in sports with the Zionist enemy is a crime against humanity”.
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\nThe anti-normalisation movement is the latest pernicious force in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians, no matter how peaceful or helpful, is denounced as a sellout. The strides towards Palestinian independence that began with the 1993 Oslo Accord have stopped. Today the Palestinian elite and their friends on the international Left forbid even baby steps…
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\nTo the anti-normalisation movement any improvement in the lives of the “oppressed subjects” is anathema. Why? Because it would destroy the argument that everything bad is the fault of the “occupation”. The huge gap in income — gross domestic product per capita is $36,000 in Israel compared with $1600 in the Palestinian territories — is evidence of what they call apartheid and they want to keep it that way.
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\nPalestinians receive the highest per capita development assistance in the world but there is little to show for it… A project allowing Palestinian farmers to learn Israeli desert farming techniques was censured. “These initiatives could be seen as teaching Palestinians to adapt to Israeli occupation instead of challenging these illegal measures,” the [Palestinian BDS National] committee says.
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\nPalestine’s acceptance into the Olympic Movement 20 years ago offered a chance to break this deadlock. The Olympic Charter seeks “to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace”. There is no chance for peace, however, so long as obdurate haters such as Rajoub are in charge of the Palestine Olympic Committee. Less than a year ago Rajoub congratulated the organisers of a table tennis tournament for naming it after terrorist Muhannad Halabi, who murdered a rabbi and a father in Jerusalem last October and stabbed the man’s wife and their two-year-old son before being shot by police.
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\nIn January, Rajoub told Palestinian television such terrorists were martyrs and heroes. “We bless you and strengthen your families, and say to you: You are a crown on our heads.”
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\nAustralian fellow travellers cannot plead ignorance of the motives of appalling men such as Rajoub, a member of the Fatah Central Committee. True, Palestinian leaders seldom make such statements in English. Yet the glorification of terrorists and the anti-Semitism that feature daily in official Palestinian media is readily available in English, online, thanks to the diligence of Palestinian Media Watch.
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\nLast week the IOC rejected a call for Rajoub to be removed from all Olympic activities. IOC ethics and compliance officer Paquerette Girard Zappelli said the POC was working to “improve relations between the two countries through sport”. Is that the same committee that wants Israel expelled from FIFA and threatens to strip any Palestinian who takes part in a peace match of their Palestinian Football Federation accreditation?
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\n“This state (Israel) is a state of bullies,” Rajoub fumed in Arabic on Palestinian television.
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\n“Fascists can learn a lesson from this state. We’ll suspend their membership and this way we’ll screw them … I won’t allow and won’t agree to any joint game between Arabs and Israel.”
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[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/nick-cater/in-politics-of-grievance-peace-is-just-a-dirty-word/news-story/1a0c5ff19e7edbe6603893e7cb8a8e15]

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