(Part 1 here)
During his speech yesterday, Mahmoud Abbas gave a long review of what he considers history, and he introduced it by saying that it came from Abdelwahab Elmessiri's "Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism and Zionism," an eight-volume work praised by antisemites for its seeming scholarship. (I've looked at Elmessiri before.)
Abbas introduced this section of his speech with a quote from Elmessiri, "The functional nature of Israel means that it was created by the colonialism for a specific purpose. It is thus a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism".
In going through his bizarre history of Zionism, Abbas claims that Theodor Herzl said upon visiting Palestine, "We have to erase the Palestinians from Palestine to make Palestine as a land without people for a people without a land", and this was the basis of the slogan " a land without a people for a people without a land."
This is complete fiction.
Abbas praised the Mufti of Jerusalem in this speech, who colluded with Hitler to help in any way he could to exterminate the Jews. Does anything more need to be said?
(It is reported that Abbas also said that Europeans asked Holland to move Jews to Palestine, and other bizarre ideas. Those parts were not in the official transcript.)
He says that according to UNRWA, there were 950,000 refugees from the 1948 war, not the lower numbers cited by "Zionists." This is also a lie. UNRWA in 1950 said that there were 950,000 who claimed to be refugees, but it admitted that many of them were not refugees or were from families lying to get more rations. The report says that UNRWA accepts that the actual number is about 751,000. And that number is suspect, too. (Efraim Karsh estimates less than 500,000.)
Abbas claims that the UN admitted Israel as a state on condition of its acceptance of UNGA resolutions 194 and 181. This isn't true, as a glance at UN documents at the time shows.
Abbas goes on to say that David Ben Gurion didn't want Jews from Arab countries to immigrate because he hated them and they were just like Arabs. This is sort of insane.
Then in the next sentence Abbas says that Ben Gurion worked with Arab leaders to force the Jews out of Arab countries by taking away their citizenship so they would come to Israel. All of the official Arab antisemitism in the wake of 1948 is now considered to have been started by Israel, according to Abbas.
Abbas repeated what he has said many times over the years: He bragged that the Palestinians have made no concessions since 1988, when they declared independence on the "territories" (without dropping their claim for all of Israel.) He insisted yet again that they are nnever going to compromise further.
Intransigence is his pride, while the world still considers him a moderate.
Abbas went on to say that he is against terrorism, saying that he has signed 83 conventions or assertions against terrorism. Of course, he has never once admitted that Palestinian suicide bombings, bus bombings and rocket fire towards civilians is terrorism to begin with.
Abbas claimed that there are no Palestinians in ISIS. Well, that's another lie.
Abbas said that Palestinians have a "culture of peace." A glance at his own Fatah Facebook page, not to mention the webpages of organizations that he invited to this conference like Islamic Jihad and Hamas, celebrate terror. (He castigated Hamas and Islamic Jihad for not attending.)
After the ludicrous claim that Palestinians have a culture of peace, Abbas strongly defended paying the salaries of terrorists and their families:
There is important is the issue of the salaries of the martyrs and the families of martyrs and prisoners, we refuse to cut these salaries categorically, we will not allow one to touch the salaries of the families of the martyrs and the wounded and prisoners, they are our children and we will continue to pay the money to them.This is Mahmoud Abbas - a liar and terror supporter who the nations of the world regard as a moderate and a peacemaker. His own words damn him. But no one wants to admit that the most moderate Palestinian leader is as untrustworthy as any other.
Here's video of excerpts. It is truly insane.