Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech on Monday at the United Nations was a double travesty. Not only was the text full of hate and lies; the fact that the international body held special events on May 15 commemorating “Nakba Day” – that is, the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation, in the Palestinian narrative – only compounds the perversion.
Abbas was addressing a special session of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, a committee whose very name is indicative of the UN’s double standard when it comes to the treatment of Israel and the Palestinians.
The Palestinian leader’s hour-long diatribe was striking in its sheer number of venomous lies. There is no proof of Jewish ties to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, Abbas claimed, referring to the ancient Temple Mount, where overwhelming archaeological and textual evidence proves that the First and Second Jewish Temples once stood. “The ownership of al-Buraq Wall (the Western Wall) and al-Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) belongs exclusively and only to the Islamic Wakf alone,” he said, using the Arabic names.
He accused the United States and the UK of being responsible for the displacement of close to a million Palestinians during the 1948 War of Independence – “the Nakba” – and placing Jews in “the historic Palestinian homeland” for “their own colonial goals and objectives.”
The man whose doctorate was infamously based on Holocaust denial also likened Israel’s narrative to the falsehoods disseminated by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. “They lie and lie, just like Goebbels. They lie, lie and lie until people believe,” Abbas declared.
Abbas also repeated his claim that the Palestinians were descendants of the biblical Canaanites. Even if it were somehow possible to place Abbas’s forefathers in Jerusalem at the time King David conquered it from the Jebusites – somehow being Canaanite-Jebusite Muslim Arabs, centuries before the birth of Islam – it raises the question of what they were doing when Jews were praying in the First and Second Temples. They certainly didn’t make Jerusalem their capital; as we celebrate Jerusalem Day later this week, it is worth remembering that only the Jews have ever made Jerusalem their capital.
Abbas’s untruths and distortions went on and on. “The biggest lie is the claim that Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East,” said Abbas, who has just completed the 18th year of his four-year term.
He also repeated his accusation that Israel had “committed 50 massacres” against the Palestinian people. This one was actually something of an improvement: last August, in Berlin of all places, Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 holocausts.”
The Palestinian Authority is not a partner for peace
The absurdity of Abbas’s speech might be funny if it weren’t so serious. None of Abbas’s false claims were new. This is who the Palestinian leader is – and the UN knew what he was going to say even before they granted him a platform to say it.
Abbas’s speech was a reiteration of old lies and libels against Israel and the Jewish people. It was proof of one thing: The 87-year-old head of the PA is not a partner for peace. He is simply not interested in peace with Israel.
Abbas called for a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and insisted that he was open to holding talks with Israel to that end. But at the same time, he continued to claim exclusive Palestinian rights to all the land within sovereign Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip.
He also called for the right of return for Palestinian refugees within the pre-1967 lines, which not only undermines any possibility of a two-state solution but is a transparent attempt to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.
Abbas’s hate speech does nothing to end the conflict. On the contrary. It is a deliberate effort to fuel Palestinian hatred and anti-normalization. This, in turn, promotes terrorism – well-rewarded through the PA “pay-for-slay” policy.
It is unlikely that the octogenarian PA president will change his ways, especially as the UN and the governments that fête him provide no incentive for him to stop spreading his antisemitic hatred. But the time has come for the international community to examine just what false narratives and blood libels it is supporting – and what the consequences might be.