Fisking Mahmoud Abbas' speech in Ramallah, part 1

Yesterday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas gave a long and bizarre speech castigating the United States and Israel and acting as if the Palestinians are in a position to dictate the parameters of peace.

Sometimes Abbas goes off script and says things that are even more bizarre, but the official transcript is nutty enough to show how little the Palestinians care about facts. (His curse to Trump, "May your house be demolished," was not mentioned in the transcript, for example.)

Jerusalem is the bride of our Arabness, Jerusalem is the crown of the crown, Jerusalem is the flower of the cities, Jerusalem and the Aqsa is what the Prophet said is one of the cities of pilgrimage after Mecca and Madinah.

Nowhere in the Quran does Mohammed mention Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was removed from the table with a Twitter tweet from Mr. Trump. 

Trump made a speech about Jerusalem that in no way removed it from negotiations. ( I wish it would have.) For those who bothered to read it. In this case, Abbas isn't alone - most US critics of Trump didn't read his speech either.

 We are sitting here and we will not commit the mistakes of the past in 1948.....

The mistake of 1948 was not accepting compromise that would have resulted in a Palestinian state - which is the exact same mistake that Abbas is making nowadays.

This country is our country, and this is our country from the days of Canaanites, Incidentally we are the descendants of the Canaanites, and the Bible says that from the days of the Canaanites to this day they did not leave this country, and here we are before our master Abraham, we will not leave this  country ...

Note that Abbas is not referring to the territories, but to all of British Mandate Palestine.

And, no, the Palestinians are not descendants of the Canaanites. (Some Lebanese are, though.) Most Palestinian Arabs are quite proudly Arab, as they say in their own founding documents, and Arabs come from Arabia. Most Palestinian families trace their lineage back to Arabia.

We will not accept [Trump's] project, and we told him the deal of the century is a slap in the face, but we will slap back.

Will the people who have interpreted Israeli settlement activities over the years as a slap in the face of America criticize Abbas for literally saying he will slap America in the face? Amusingly, Saeb Erekat has repeatedly used the phrase "slap in the face" when talking to American leaders about Israeli actions - one wonders if he suddenly approves of face slapping America.

[Zionism is] a colonial project has nothing to do with Judaism, but the Jews used [Judaism] as a tool.... They were under the slogan of the Promised Land and the land of love and they came here. The issue did not start a hundred years ago. It started much earlier in 1653 when Cromwell ruled Britain.

The idea of Jews returning to Zion is as old as the Jewish disapora. Do I need to quote prayers that were composed before Mohammed was born? Do I really need to mention the rabbis who moved back to Eretz Yisrael over the past 2000 years?

Zionism did not start with Cromwell.

This post will be continued - the number of lies is pretty astounding.

Yet the world never seems to be upset at a supposed world leader who lies so easily.

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