Since the secession of Hamas in the Gaza strip in 2007, the Palestinians have been gradually turning from suicide attacks to suicidal policies, surrendering their cause on a silver platter to Israel. When Israel commits a crime, the Palestinian leaders do not try to focus on the crime and turn the world opinion against Israel; instead, voices from both the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas begin to accuse one another of aiding Israel in the misdeed, to the extent that a sex scandal becomes an issue that involves the entire Palestinian Authority and the entire nation behind it. If the assassination of the Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is a clear sample of what I am saying, then the Goldstone report was another indication. In truth, the entire Palestinian situation is an example of political disease, as Hamas has been accused of being an Iranian proxy – or a foothold for Iran on the border with Egypt -, while the Palestinian Authority (i.e. Fatah) has been accused of collaboration with Israel and the United States. Meanwhile, I suggest that the Palestinians were not the ones who invented sex scandals, and their record in ‘treason' or ‘collaboration' is less significant than that of even the finest peoples in the world. Sexually speaking, no one can beat the Americans in scandals. Yet, the United States remains the most powerful country in the world both in terms of its military might and its economy, even when the country is bankrupt. In our own lifetimes, we saw Bill Clinton, who is said to have the highest IQ among U.S presidents, marred in a scandal involving all forms of sexual intercourse with Monica Lewinsky, an intern in the White House. There was also Gary Hart, who was a few steps away from the presidency, when he lost as a result of a sex scandal. Then a few months ago, Mark Sanford resigned from his post as the governor of New York, after he was caught with prostitutes in a hotel. On a different front, Wilbur Mills was stopped by the traffic police; he was intoxicated, and his face was cut from a scuffle with a stripper he had an affair with. He leaped from the car and jumped into the nearby river in an attempt to escape the police. He was subsequently arrested, and yet, he was re-elected. As such, sex scandals are nothing new in American politics. In fact, the third U.S President Thomas Jefferson, one of the geniuses of the American Revolution and Independence, had a relation with an African-American slave who was his wife's half-sister (they had the same father) and with whom he had six children. There are many books about this subject. This type of scandals requires an encyclopedia and not just books. In truth, Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt both had known mistresses, even when the first was a war hero against the Nazis and the second was the only president to be elected four times, and was the president credited with saving his country from the great depression in the thirties. Then there was John Kennedy, the known playboy both when he was single and when he was married. He shared Marilyn Monroe with his brother Robert, while their brother Ted outdid them both in terms of scandals, with the known story of the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne in Lake Chappaquiddick, while he was the one driving the car. The incident prevented him from becoming president. When I was living in Washington D.C in the eighties, there was also a strange scandal, when some members of Congress molested children who were interning in their offices. Since Israel is an American ‘invention', it too witnessed many sex scandals, including, for example, the one surrounding President Moshe Katsaf who is on trial on charges of raping a female soldier and harassing other women. In fact, the Arab reader may be surprised if I told him that the only news story that competed with the assassination of al-Mabhouh in the Israeli newspapers last week was about the Rabbi Mordechai Elon. He had caused a rift within the Jewish religious establishment, as the police was investigating charges of child molestation against him, similar to what has been committed by the Catholic priests against children in the United States, Ireland and elsewhere. Sex scandals are rampant all over the world. But when a Palestinian official harasses a woman, and not a child, the Palestinian Authority and the people find themselves being condemned, as though each Palestinian had harassed that woman along with the official. The irony here is that this condemnation is not coming from Israel and international Zionism; rather, it is being voiced by other Palestinians, as though Palestinians should have the integrity and piousness of the Virgin Mary. From sex scandals, we move to the other kind of disloyalty, i.e. treason, where the assassination of al-Mabhouh is almost becoming a Palestinian crime. There were those who collaborated with the occupying enemy and many traitors were put on trial in several Arab countries for collaboration with the enemy. However, this happens all around the world and perhaps the French collaborators with the Nazis during the Second World War outdid everyone else in this regard. Also, the Vichy government facilitated the deportation of the French Jews to the Nazi gas chambers and the number agreed upon is 76 thousand, of which only 2500 survived. And in Norway, a Scandinavian country that is a benchmark for progress in the world, its minister-president Vidkun Quisling was such a staunch collaborator with the Nazis, that the name Quisling is now synonymous with "traitor" in any English language dictionary. There were thousands of collaborators with the Nazis in every European country. Sexual infidelity and political treason are present all over the world. However, it only affects its perpetrators in their homes (or hotel rooms); but when it comes to the Palestinians, this becomes an indictment of the leadership, whether in Gaza or Ramallah, and of the entire people, according to the accusations between the rival Palestinians themselves…Go figure!
