On October 10, Mahmoud Abbas moved the November 28 legislative elections to September 11, 2027, beside a presidential vote. On October 13, Australia, Canada, France and the UK said they “deeply regret” it and urged a reversal. The headline’s subject is a people. One man signed the decree on October 10: Mahmoud Abbas, who has governed by decree since his mandate ran out in 2009. In the Telegraph’s text, as syndicated by Yahoo, “the Palestinians” did it, “the Palestinian leadership” first appears in the fourth paragraph, and Abbas is never named. Reuters and Haaretz put his name first; CBC names the governments that object. The tell is the group named where a person acted. The verb finishes the job. “Played” turns a postponement into a con, and a con has one mind behind it. Palestinians have held no legislative or presidential election since 2005-2006, so the people written as the deceivers are the ones who have not voted for 20 years. The sentence rides an old habit of the mind: the other group’s one member stands for all of them, while our side’s leader is only ever himself. Then “here’s the awful proof” ends the thinking before it starts, a cliché that announces the verdict as settled. The page also says both elections were “due to be held at the end of November” and were “called off”; Reuters and AFP report that only the legislative vote had a date and that it moved to September 11, 2027. The sentence leaves the man who signed out of the blame, and leaves the reader distrusting the voters instead.
