Whitewashing the Palestinian Leadership

Francisco J. Gil-White "converted" from a pro-Palestinian Arab point of view to a pro-Israel point of view in this interesting article.

Here is what I used to believe about the Middle East (all of these beliefs are quite popular):

1) That the media (at least the American media) has a uniformly pro-Israel bias;
2) That Arafat’s Fatah is a secular nationalist organization trying to combat the fundamentalist influences of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Islamist terrorists;
3) That Palestinian terrorism is not anti-Semitic, but aims at national liberation;
4) That the Palestinian leadership has attempted to implement the Oslo accords in good faith, but the Israelis have sabotaged the process;
5) That Israel is a state overwhelmingly made up of European and American Jews who moved into Palestine and displaced Middle Eastern natives;
6) That historically, Jews were well-treated in the Arab world, and that current Arab hostility therefore stems from the current conflict.

Now, having spent time studying the historical record, I believe I was wrong about all six points.