How Common

This sentence appeared in the New York Times of today:

"It won't happen by itself, or because someone likes Abu Mazen," he said, using a common name for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader.

Common? Ah, com'on.

Abu Mazen is the nom de guerre of Mahmoud Abbas from his days as a terrorist, a leading member of Fatah.

It is "common" only in that it is common for terrorists to take assumed identities and that is how his fellow terrorists referred to him.

But this is a common NYT error, or, shall we say, bias. Palestinians are never really terrorists, as is commonly known.