He's here with his moderation again

I'd begun to think I needed to take a voluntary vow to lay off posting about Mohammed Al-Zahar, the disarmingly frank and locquacious Gaza Hamas leader. His pronouncements have provided me with three out of my last four posts, and, however good he is, you can go too far in posting about one man.

But here's one more I just can't resist. And about a subject I was going to lay off, too. The posting of the Danish cartoons and the more extreme Islamist responses to it. But it's been handled so much better by others than me.

Here's Mr Al-Zahar commenting to the Italian paper Il Giornale on demonstrations in Gaza protesting about the cartoons. Well, I say protesting about the cartoons. What they were actually doing was this:

About two dozen protesters stormed the German government cultural center there, smashing windows, breaking doors and burning the German flag. Down the street, about 30 Palestinians threw stones at the European Commission building, and replaced the EU flag with a Palestinian flag, before police brought them under control.

About 50 schoolchildren and teenagers gathered at one corner of the street shortly after to try to resume the attacks on the two buildings, but Palestinian riot police, armed with batons, pushed them back. The youths threw stones at the police, then fled.

Later in the day, about 400 protesters marched to the European Commission building, accompanied by a loudspeaker car that blared, "Insulting the prophet means insulting every Muslim," and urged merchants to boycott Danish products. Protesters also set fire to a Danish flag.

So Mr Al-Zahar's comment was this (with my emphasis):

We should have killed all those who offend the Prophet and instead here we are, protesting peacefully

Gosh, thanks, Mr Al-Zahar. That's so gracious of you. Er, sorry to look a gift horse in the mouth, but is that your idea of peaceful protest?

Meanwhile, Hamas' defeated rival Fatah has got its knickers in a twist in its attempts at double opportunism: joining in the protests, whilst showing solidarity with threatened Christians:

And armed men with links to the Fatah Party handed out red carnations at a Roman Catholic school in the city to apologize for other Fatah gunmen who threatened earlier to target churches as part of their protests.

"We came to show that we are united, Muslims and Christians, and that we oppose assaulting our Christian brothers," said one gunman, flowers in hand.

I expect the teachers and schoolchildren were so touched by that.

Hint to Fatah: next time you want to do gesture politics, leave the guns at home.

Comments

[Jack]

We can only hope that this helps to wake up the Europeans from their slumber.

[Erika]

They burned the German flag? Of course they can't tell the difference between a German and a Dane.