Abbas again proves he’s no peace partner

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah on May 25, 2021. Photo: Flash90

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has sorely embarrassed many supporters of the Palestinian cause by spewing one of his most antisemitic screeds ever. The French, Germans and Israelis, especially, leapt to refute the hate speech Abbas delivered to his Fatah Revolutionary Council last month.

The Biden administration, which has showered the Palestinians with more than $1 billion, and despite its much-publicized National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism, has never punished Abbas for his Jew-hatred. Above all, Abbas’s unhinged tirade destroyed any remaining fantasy that his Palestinian dictatorship is or ever was a partner for peace.

In his speech, Abbas denied that European Jews were really Jewish, asserting that therefore Jews have no claim to the Land of Israel. He also claimed that Hitler didn’t murder the Jews in the Holocaust because they were Jewish, but rather due to their money-grubbing culture. Abbas added, no doubt for Biden’s benefit, that both Britain and the United States were parties to the Balfour Declaration, which ordained the formation of the Jewish state, “so that we know who we should accuse of being our enemy.”

Abbas’s recent remarks about Jews and the Holocaust reflect his long history of antisemitism. In 1982, Abbas published his bizarre doctoral thesis, which claimed Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to orchestrate the Holocaust, with the aim of advancing the creation of a Jewish state. He also claimed that the trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann—the man Hitler put in charge of exterminating the Jews—was held to cover up the Zionists’ collusion with the Nazis.

As leader of the PA, Abbas has infamously promoted antisemitism more than once. In September 2015, for example, he said that Jews “have no right to defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet.” In August 2022, in response to a journalist who asked him if he would apologize for the Munich Massacre in which Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics, Abbas accused Israel of carrying out “50 Holocausts” against his own people. Abbas was later shamed into retracting that epic lie.

In response to Abbas’s most recent antisemitic remarks, Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, called on the Palestinian leader to apologize. No word from President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris or her husband, Doug Emhoff, the latter of whom is charged with leading the administration’s “fight” against antisemitism.

What incentive does Abbas have to apologize? He knows money from the Biden administration will keep flowing no matter how much Jew-hatred—or anti-American bile—he utters. In fact, by continuing to subsidize the Palestinians, the Biden administration is effectively promoting antisemitism itself, especially since the bulk of Biden’s aid to the Palestinians goes to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose schools indoctrinate Palestinian children with a steady diet of antisemitism, courtesy of the curriculum provided by the PA.

A documentary film about UNRWA revealed that children in the agency’s schools are encouraged to become terrorists. “Right now, I am prepared to be a suicide bomber,” says one boy in the film. Another student says, “I am ready to stab a Jew and drive [a car] over them.” The Biden administration is well aware of the Jew-hatred taught in the agency’s schools, but keeps the money flowing to UNRWA nevertheless.

Biden’s aid to the Palestinians also subsidizes Abbas’s notorious “pay-for-slay” policy—paying Palestinians and their families generous monthly salaries for killing Jews. The more Jews a terrorist kills, the higher the salary. A Palestinian terrorist can get up to $4,000 per month—three times the average Palestinian wage—for the murder of innocent Israelis.

In 2021, the year Biden took office, the PA spent $270 million on pay-for-slay. One has to ask: Why is the Biden administration supporting a regime that, instead of trying to create jobs for its people, makes murdering Jews one of its citizens’ most lucrative economic opportunities?

Abbas’s dictatorship makes frequent use of its own media to spew its antisemitism and encourage Palestinians to murder Jews. Last July, for example, the PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida published a cartoon depicting Jewish Israel as a crocodile. According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), “The crocodile with an Israeli flag on its snout—is opening its jaws to reveal rows of houses with red roofs, characteristic of Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria.” In fact, according to PMW, the PA commonly uses cartoons depicting Jews and Israelis as animals.

This past spring, PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh used Facebook to glorify the deaths of terrorists who brutally murdered three members of an Israeli family as they drove through the Jordan Valley. His post featured the headline, “Glory and eternity to our righteous Martyrs, and shame on the occupation.” Glorification of terrorists as martyrs is ubiquitous in PA media.

Naturally, Abbas’s recent antisemitic speech to the Fatah Revolutionary Council was broadcast on official PA TV for all to see. Given the flood of antisemitism flowing from Abbas’s dictatorship, it’s no wonder that, according to a 2014 survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 93% of the Palestinian public hold antisemitic views—the highest percentage of any group in the world.

President Abbas’s appalling antisemitism clearly indicates that while he pays lip-service to the two-state solution, he is no partner for peace. Surely the Biden administration’s continued policy of subsidizing Abbas’s dictatorship—with no demands that the PA reverse its belligerent, racist behavior—does not help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also makes a mockery of Biden’s much-vaunted National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.

Moreover, Abbas makes it abundantly clear he doesn’t appreciate America’s help. No wonder he was quoted on the YouTube channel of Cairo-based Al-Aghad TV saying, “We don’t trust America…. We don’t trust them and don’t rely on them.” More than $1 billion dollars from the Biden administration says otherwise.

The Biden administration should punish Abbas for his regime’s continued antisemitism—and disdain for American aid—by cutting funding to his dictatorship. In fact, no more funding should go to Abbas and his cronies unless they start promoting coexistence with Israel and the Jewish people instead of encouraging Palestinians to hate and destroy them.

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Abbas again proves he’s no peace partner

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