Or more precisely, one thing in English to gullible westerners, Leftist Jews and Pal groupies and something very different in Arabic to the home team.
Abbas' old boss Yasir Arafat used to do exactly the thing. Hey, where do you think 'moderate' Abbas learned it?
Elliot Abrams, in today's Daily News:
"I say in front of you, Mr. President, that we have nothing to do with incitement against Israel, and we're not doing that," claimed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to the White House in June.
It is unfortunate for the prospects of Middle East peace that this denial by Abbas (who is also head of the PLO and Fatah) was just plain untrue. In fact, this two-faced stance of Abbas and his cronies - proclaiming peaceful intentions to the international community while inciting their population to hatred of Israel - is one of the primary impediments to any sort of solution to the longstanding crisis.
And yet there are countless examples of pronouncements or actions by Abbas and other Palestinian leaders that suggest a glorification of violence and terrorism and undermine the belief that they seek peace. This very month, for example, Abbas publicly mourned the death of Mohammed Oudeh, mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre: "The deceased was one of the prominent leaders of the Fatah movement and lived a life filled with the struggle, devoted effort, and the enormous sacrifice of the deceased for the sake of the legitimate problem of his people."
Abbas also told Arab journalists in Amman, Jordan, that "We are unable to confront Israel militarily, and this point was discussed at the Arab League summit in March in [Libya]. There I turned to the Arab states and I said: 'If you want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don't have the ability to do it.' "
Why should Israelis, or Americans for that matter, believe his commitment to peace in English, when in Arabic he treats war as an acceptable option? {...}
Is terrorism defended and glorified by the top officials? Are terrorists who murder children branded as heroes whom schoolchildren should admire? Is war with Israel a tactic that must be set aside only for pragmatic reasons, and even then only as a short-term strategy?
Obama is right to keep raising this subject with Abbas, but Presidents have been raising it for years. As the Palestinian leadership never seems to pay any penalty for its words, America's seriousness about the peace process is in doubt.
If the Obama administration is dedicated to a major peace effort in the coming year, the incitement issue should be at the top of its agenda. Because when direct negotiations do finally begin, the key test of Palestinian commitment to peace will not be what Abbas and his colleagues say to Americans in English, but what they say in Arabic to Palestinians - about Israel, about terrorism and about real peace.
Mr. Abrams, of course is being over polite. Abbas has been making heroes and role models out of terrorists for years.
Abbas not only has no incentive to make peace with Israel right now, he has lots of very good reasons not to.
That's simply the reality.
It's part and parcel of their so-called religion, that lyning to "infidels" should be first-nature. We in the West need to understand this because we don't yet get - that as an islamist breathes, he lies.
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