Palestinian Quislings

Blatant Zionist propaganda in the Sydney Morning Herald from Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC):

"If the international community wants to ensure that any ceasefire agreement prevents yet another bloody Gaza conflict..."

Bloody for whom, Rubes?

"... like the one that ended on August 27, they should be listening to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas."

That's the PA 'president' whose term expired in 2009.

"He has repeatedly criticised Hamas for instigating and then prolonging the war and causing Palestinian suffering, lamenting how 'it was possible for us to avoid all of that, 2000 martyrs, 10,000 injured'. Earlier he had asked of Hamas 'What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?..."

Here we go again.

Zionism's use of Palestinian quislings to counter and undermine Palestinian resistance to Israeli aggression is as old as the Zionist project itself.

Blanche Dugdale, Lord Balfour's niece, was a gentile Zionist groupie and confidante of Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in the 30s and 40s. The following entry in her diary alludes to the conflict between the armed Palestinian resistance to British rule (& Zionist colonisation) from 1936-39, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and the collaborationist opposition led by the Nashashibi clan:

"January 18th [1939] - London... home to tea - then was rung up by Peter Rutenberg, this moment arrived from Palestine. He has been very active there, pinning the moderate Arabs to our side by the usual methods. Fakhri Nashashibi is earning his keep by staying in Jerusalem and shouting aloud that the Mufti and his friends do not represent Palestine." (Baffy: The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale 1936-1947, 1973, p 119)

Sound familiar?

Another reference to Rutenberg and Nashashibi appears in Hillel Cohen's study Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (2008).

Writing on the February 1939 London Conference, convened by the British government to discuss Palestine's future governance and involving both Zionist and Palestinian Arab delegations, the latter drawn from the Mufti's Arab Higher Committee, Cohen notes that "the [Nashashibi] opposition had only token representation in the Palestinian delegation, and even that was achieved only after a tenacious struggle. Fakhri Nashashibi himself traveled to London on Zionist funding; it was his friend Pinhas Rutenberg who gave him 4,000 Palestinian pounds to pay for his trip." (pp 132-33)

And, just as the collaborationist Abbas criticises Hamas over Israel's latest wilding in Gaza, Fakhri Nashashibi "considered the [Palestinian] uprising of 1936-39 a 'counterfeit rebellion'." (ibid, p 265)

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.