Saturday, April 7, 2007

Palestinian Authority President Abbas urges end to "useless Qassem launchings"

Palestinian Authority President Mahmound Abbas called for an end to the launching of "useless Qassam rockets."

The meaning of his statement became the focus of an internal debate. Apparently, the Abbas quote was reported by YnetNews, which lifted the quote from Haaretz, which took the quote from the Palestinian Wire Service WAFA, which was given the quote by an aide to Abbas who was not at the speech where the statement was reportedly made to graduates of Fatah's security services.

MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute (www.MEMRI.org), led the debate arguing that what Abbas was actually saying was that he opposed useless firings and thereby supported those firing of Qassam rockets that were not useless, or, in MEMRI's report, reached a Jew target across Israel Gaza Strip border.

"Clearly, the terrorist prime minister Abbas is saying that he wants the Hamas to stop firing Qassam rockets that end up being useless by not hitting Jews. Abbas is an anti-Semitic schmuck piece of garbage and we are clear on our translations of translated translations," an official of MEMRI opined.

WAFA then quoted Haaretz which quoted YnetNews which quoted MEMRI as saying that "All Arabs are anti-Semitic and we prove it everyday on our web site, which is funded by the government of Israel."

Asked about the controversy, Abbas said, "I urge an end to useless media reporting." Upon which his comment was quickly analyzed by YnetNews, Haaretz and double checked for typos by WAFA. MEMRI declared even before seeing the source quote, "Clearly, all Arabs are anti-Semitic bastards and that's all we have to say on the topic. We stand by our glory."

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