Sunday, February 26, 2006

Arafat's Minions

There was a big fuss a while back when an Italian football player gave a fascist salute to the fans after scoring a goal. The Lazio player, Paulo Di Canio, was fined £7,000. There was a lot of media attention focused on it here in the UK. Personally, I know virtually nothing of the man, the team or even the game- football is very low on my list of priorities. I do remember seeing some video clips on the news of Di Canio's "salutes". Most of the time it just looked to me like he was throwing his arm up in jubilation as he ran along by his fans, rather than a specific attempt to do a salute- apparently he has a substantial fan base which is "right wing" (nevermind that the Nazis were a socialist party). The photo in this article is pretty damning though.

Somehow, I don't think the British, or European for that matter, media will focus the same attention on this case of Nazi salutes- members of a PLO terror squad. Somehow I don't think any of them have just scored a goal. And this is not the first time either; the Nazi-collaborator the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, is a long time "hero" of the PLO- and Abbas himself was given the Nazi salute in a January 2005 election rally.

Of course, it's more newsworthy that a footballer makes it onto the evening news for doing this than a Middle Eastern terror group.

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