Hamas Chief: Oy! Such Tsoris We Have — And Now This?
By Daniel Treiman
Okay, so I took some liberties with that title. Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal doesn’t really pepper his speech with Yiddishisms. I do think, however, that the title is a fair summation of the sentiment behind this funny phrasing (reported by the AP):
In an interview broadcast Wednesday on Hamas TV in Gaza, Khaled Mashaal, the Syria-based leader of the Islamic group, rejected an Abbas proposal to post an international peace force in Gaza. “It’s (bad) enough to have Zionist forces, for us to have international forces as well?” he said.
For some reason, it brought to mind a similarly amusing anti-Israel quote I saw awhile back in The New York Times (and reported here as well). Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s ousted vice president, had accused his tormentors in Malaysia’s government of using tactics reminiscent of Gestapo or East German (it was reported differently in different places) and Israeli secret police methods. This was simply too much for Malaysia’s police inspector general, Abdul Rahim Noor:
”We can no longer tolerate it when he accuses us of being similar to Israel,” Abdul told local reporters. ”If he had accused us of being similar to pirates, then we could accept that. But not that he equates us with Israel, because Israel is a sensitive word in this country.”
It’s not bad enough that Hamas has a pathological hatred of Israel, that Malaysia should hate Israel, too, as if Israel ever did anything to them? Oy, such tsoris!
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