Thursday, July 24, 2008

There has been a disconnect between the abilities and talents of the Palestinian people and the organizations that speak in its name. (Having said that: the reality remains: the suffering of the Palestinians have been caused first and foremost by Zionism). But I have been distressed and disgusted to what happened to the returning bodies of Palestinians and Lebanese as part of the recent prisoners' exchange. Sources tell me that the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine scrambled to take credit for a large number of the bodies, even when there was no evidence to its claim (in some cases the remains are only teeth). Members of the DFLP rushed to write "Hawatimah" on the boxes, and it is being bizarrely claimed that none of the boxes belong to fighters from Fath, which in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s provided most of the fighters--before the rise of Dahlan. So the DFLP managed to dishonestly claim that most of the boxes belong to its members when the organization did not have much of a record fighting Israel, and the one operation it managed to pull (Ma`alot) was quite lousy (although typically in those cases, the murder of the people is caused by savage and indiscriminate Israeli gunfire and bombings). And the pro-Syrian Ba`th party is also claiming some of the bodies when this organization was known for thuggery but not much more. Even the Hariri gang is taking credit for one of the bodies. Don't ask me how.