Reporters Without Borders: At Its Most Hypocritical, When It Charges France With Hypocrisy

Reporters Without Borders acccuses France of being hypocritical in allowing representatives of Egypt, Turkey, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates, countries where press freedom is curtailed, to show up for the Grande Manif in Paris. The story can be found here. But consider the context for two of those states: Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. These are Muslim states, run by enlightened despots (the only hope, anywhere, for Muslim countries, is the enlightened despot, as Ataturk, or Bourguiba, or Al-Sisi), who are doing what they can to systematically constrain the forces of Islam, to isolate, to mock, to prosecute, to imprison, to condemn to death if necessary, the Muslim Brotherhood members, and other True Believers. In Egypt, the noble Al-Sisi is trying to do what he can to limit the power of Islam, and so is Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi (the son of the Zayed (with whom the late J. B. Kelly worked to prevent Saudi territorial expansion), and the current President of the U.A.E., who deserves attention and credit for what he and his associates are attempting to do in the U.A.E. (a place superior in every respect to nasty little Qatar, which is in its immediate neighborhood). 

But what amazes, or should amaze, is that among those who were allowed to appear, was Mahmoud Abbas, who honors Muslim terrorists when they murder Jews (lavishes praise, memorializes them by naming public spaces after them), but promptly shuts down, forbids, any newspaper or reporter in the “Palestinian” camp who dares to do the one thing Mahmoud Abbas fears: discuss his amassing, by stealing aid money, huge sums for him and for his two sons (now in “business” in the Gulf). He has no business being at that march, and he came not because he felt the slightest identification with France and freedom of the press, and certainly not because he wished to express any sympathy or solidarity with yet more Jewish victims of Islam-prompted attacks, but because he wanted to be seen, in the front rank, as a “world leader” walking with world leaders, and to promote, by so doing, the Cause of Palestine, that is the same goals, as part of a world-wide Jihad, that the Muslims who murdered the journalists at Charlie-Hebdo were furthering. And that goal, it has to be stated every day in every way, is this: to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam until everywhere Islam dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere. This “world leader” Abu Mazen, or Mahmoud Abbas (one is his nom de guerre, the other his nom de paix when he is putting on his nobody-here-but-us-accountants act for Western donors, who are so eager to be, so easy to be, fooled) does not rule over Gaza, he does not even rule over any territory beyond the Miqata in Ramallah, and if Israeli troops were to withdraw from the area, he would fall to Hamas in a minute. He’s a minor municipal leader, the bullying corrupt mayor of a town, but also the man through whom Western billions in aid flow, and he and his henchmen all take their cut.

It was amusing to watch Mahmoud Abbas, who started the march not in the front row, but in the third — presumably told to stay there by the French. But he did not; you can see on screen how he pushed and pushed and slithered his way through till, triumphantly, he managed to get not only to the front line, but to place himself just next to the real world leaders, with Merkel just to his right. What a smile of satisfaction he had; he couldn’t believe he’d managed to do it, right there with all those world leaders, right there representing the cause of Jihad in a march that supposedly was an act of defiance against those who, as an essential part of Jihad in the West, wished to shut down any criticism of Muhammad, the Model of Conduct (“uswa hasana”) and the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil). And there was Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Slow Jihad of the “Palestinian Authority,” right there before the world’s cameras, as pleased as punch, with the smile of the cat that swallowed the canary.