The Palestinian Authority today expressed condolences to Venezuela over the death of its election-rigging, terror-promoting, Iran-boosting president Hugo Chavez. Palestinian officials described Chavez — whom observers have blasted for pushing “staggering and undeniable” hatred of Jews, and who oversaw an “unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism throughout Venezuela” — as a “loyal friend”:
A Wednesday report carried by the Palestinian news agency Maan, quoted senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath as saying that “Palestine says goodbye to a loyal friend who passionately defended our right to freedom and self determination… President Chavez expressed his solidarity with tangible political steps in order to advance Palestinian rights. Particularly, his determination to take a strong position during the 2008/09 aggression against Gaza as well as during 2011 as well as strongly supporting Palestine’s UN recognition.
The statement cites Chavez’s support for the PA campaign to gain non-member statehood status in the United Nations. The PA was ultimately successful in securing that status, in the process defying President Obama, violating decades of signed agreements with Israel, and badly undermining the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The Pyrrhic diplomatic victory heightened the expectations of Palestinian civilians, and the subsequent realization that the campaign had been largely symbolic was linked by analysts to outbreaks of violence in the West Bank.
Pretensions toward Palestinian statehood continue to be undermined by the persistent inability of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah to bring the West Bank and Gaza Strip — ostensibly the territories of a re-branded State of Palestine — under a single government. As countless experts in international law have noted, the Palestinian Authority fails the basic tests for statehood under international law.
The Palestinian statement praising the dead tyrant also cites Chavez’s opposition to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, a full-scale defensive military operation launched by Israeli forces after eight years of continuing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by Islamic terrorist organizations. Top military analysts and even philosophers of ethics praised Israel’s conduct during the war, calling the IDF the most moral force in the history of modern war, but Chavez’s opposition nonetheless made him a Palestinian hero
[Photo: AFP / YouTube]