Jan 14, 2005 – Whenever Pinocchio told a lie, his nose grew. If people in public office who tell lies grew noses like Pinocchio’s, we might all be better off. Or would we?
Not really. If we see what public officials do and listen to what they say, but ignore them in favor of our own predispositions, then none of our listening and watching makes a difference. We shouldn’t have to watch a nose growing to recognize what is and what isn’t truth, but maybe that’s what we need.
On the lawn on the White House for example, in 1993, people swooned over every word Yassir Arafat said, and they believed in his promises. But that very same evening, when he talked to his people in a radio broadcast in Arabic, he told them what he really thought and then proceeded to act on that during the next 11 years, at the tragic price of thousands of killed and maimed. He said what he was going to do, and he did it. We just didn’t listen hard enough.
There’s no more monumental example of this hear-no-evil see-no-evil attitude than the free world’s behavior in the 1930s, when we ignored what Adolph Hitler told us he’d do and didn’t act until it was almost too late. The price: more than 60 million dead and worldwide misery. Hitler had even written it all down in his 1923 book, “Mein Kampf,” but a conflict-ridden world didn’t want to believe and confront so it dreamt on instead.
Today, Mahmoud Abbas, the Arab’s new-old leader, is not mincing words. He says he’s Arafat’s heir and will follow his programs, but we only hear what admirers, wishful thinkers and friends say about their vision for a new era and a current window of opportunity for peace. Meanwhile, he’s clearly promised his people that he will eliminate Israel, and his platform plank about not compromising on the “right to return” is out there for all to see. The media is less interested in his stated positions than they are with the story they can create.
The New York Times is busy projecting good intentions on Abbas’ Fatah organization, the terrorist group that Arafat and Abbas founded and Abbas is using as his political base for this exercise in democracy. (credit Little Green Footballs [LGF] for this.) The Times says Fatah “has [a] nationalist rather than Islamist foundation, with the stated goal of an end to Israel occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, leading to Israelis and Palestinian states side by side.” Sounds good, but it is not what the organization’s Constitution says.
“Article (12): Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of the Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.” And that’s just the title. LGF is puzzled by Times reporter Steven Erlanger’s deduction about Ö.”Israeli and Palestinian states side by sideÖ” and we are, too.
But now that there’s been an election, isn’t it all going to be better?
“Free elections can only occur in a society where people are free to express their opinions without fear of being punished for them,” says one of Israel’s most respected leaders, Natan Sharansky. “When there is no protection of the right to dissent, when a regime controls the press, when voters and potential opponents are intimidated, what happens in the voting booth matters little.”
Long time Israel watcher Jay Bushinsky reported on two summary executions that took place the week before the election in Ramallah. The victims were accused of informing on Fatah, and were dragged into the street and shot. Again, Fatah is the “political party” from which Abbas ran. Bushinsky notes “the arrogance and short-sightedness of the world’s self-styled diplomats and statesmen who advocate dubious solution to the problems of the nations other than their own – -solutions that fail the test of time and generateÖ crises for generations to come.” Summary executions are not part of the democratic process as we know it and President Bush’s first inclinations about Arab statehood were more right than wrong when he said what is necessary for an operating democracy in the Middle East is “new leaders…not compromised by terror.”
The Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby chimes in saying that Abbas’ electionÖ”..[is] not a step toward peace.” We should have learned by now, he goes on to say, that regime change is the first essential ingredient for peace. Regime change is not what this election was about.
But how do we bridge the wide gap between what Abbas and leaders like him say to us and what they tell their own people?
It certainly would be easier if their noses grew every time a lie was told, but absent that, we must watch, listen, and use our good sense. That’s something we don’t do very well right now.

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