Mohammed Rashid (Khalid Salam) Speaks

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Our brother Dr. Fayez Abu Shammala wrote, after Mohammed Rashid opened a window onto the corruption he knows about within the Palestinian Authority, that Mohammed Rashid was “a stick in a bundle” — meaning that Mohammed Rashid is corrupt among a large group of the corrupt, and that all of them, in the end, must be wanted by the Palestinian people.

I disagree slightly with Dr. Fayez, because Mohammed Rashid is not merely corrupt or a thief, and he may not even be a thief in the ordinary sense. Mohammed Rashid is a fundamental pillar of the conspiracy against the Palestinian people, and has been since his presence in Beirut. He is a member of the very narrow gang that knew exactly which policies had to be adopted in order to liquidate the Palestinian cause and turn the Palestinian people into a people who beg and plead for pleasures at the expense of their homeland and their sacred sites. He perfected his role with precision, and played it in a way that struck the Palestinian people hard, tore apart their cohesion, and wrecked their social and moral fabric.

Mohammed Rashid cannot be compared to some vile, corrupt figure among those youths whom the Zionists and Americans have empowered over the necks of people in the West Bank. Those are merely individuals of little worth and base souls, whose mouths water with meanness and pettiness over the cheapest of pleasures. Mohammed Rashid, by contrast, was a great and conscious master who knew exactly what he was doing and toward what goal he wanted to arrive. Those youths, on the other hand, are skilled at nothing but empty bluster over matters whose true nature they do not understand and whose outcome they cannot foresee, their only task being to toy with the Palestinian people while leaving the decision to Israel and America.

…let him say how he became a powerful figure within the PLO, how his influence grew, and why he became the custodian of the Palestinian people’s treasuries. Let him tell us about the role the PLO leadership played in elevating his standing and strengthening his influence, and the role Israel and America played in that, and how he became the guardian over people’s money and over the Palestinian cause.

The opinion of the corrupt about you does not concern us, because we know that they used to grovel at your feet when you were in the territory occupied in ‘67, and used to humble themselves before your shoes to obtain gifts and favors. Those who attack you fiercely now were merely rabbits chasing the carrot you dangled before them from on high, gathering around you to pour into your ears words of glorification and immortality. What concerns us is that we come to know how you became Palestine’s hidden emperor.

Perhaps you are not a thief, in the sense that the master used to hand you the money himself, and Palestine’s financial account was in your name and the names of a small few around you. Perhaps you did not steal — you simply walked off with the account numbers — and perhaps we will never be able to prove anything against you. But it is important that a long chapter of lying to the Palestinian people not be left unrecorded. You possess a great deal of information; try to do some good for the people after all the calamities you have inflicted on them, and speak candidly, so that we might learn the lesson and not fall again into the snares of conspiracy and deception.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “محمد رشيد (خالد سلام) يتكلم” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.