Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Bassam al-Salihi, head of the People's Party and PLO Executive Committee member, wrote that Abbas' statement that Israel committed fifty "holocausts" against Palestinians was true. "President Abbas' statements express the position of all the Palestinians, and the unrelenting Israeli incitement against the Palestinian president is totally and completely rejected," he wrote on his Facebook page.
Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement also supported his statement. Fatah spokesman Munther al-Hayek said that Abbas' words were meant "to remind the world of the suffering of the Palestinian people and the massacres committed by Israel." If there is to be any apology, al-Hayek said, it should be to the Palestinian people "whose land was occupied and the most heinous crimes were committed in front of the eyes and ears of the world without the killer being held accountable."
Ma'an News Agency reported Abbas' statements as "bold" and dismissed criticism by Israel as "hysteria."
The editor of Amad strongly defended Abbas' antisemitism, saying that "the patriot must stand without hesitation, conditionality, or thinking in the battle to defend President Abbas’s words, and that they represent what every Palestinian inside and outside the homeland believes… It is a political moment that never accepts neutrality. Silence on the fascist entity's war against the content of President Abbas's words is a partnership in it..there is no consolation for the cowards and the trembling."
Wattan.net even went beyond Abbas' words, with a Jew-hating screed that said that Israel is guilty of far more than 50 "holocausts." By insisting that the Holocaust is a unique event, the editorial says, Jews believe that their lives are worth more than anyone else's. "The Zionist extremist voices that have become addicted to blackmailing the world are nothing but a follow-up to the idea of ethnic or religious discrimination linked to the illusion and myth of 'God’s Chosen People' attributed to a racist god, and a real estate and land dealer who is intolerant of a part of his creation, which does not fit the description of the Creator."
I could not find one condemnation of Abbas' words in Palestinian media.
For his part, Abbas' fake apology was an excuse to insult Israel again. He didn't apologize at all, but merely said that he "condemned the Holocaust in the strongest terms," which is as low a bar as one can imagine.
But Abbas then attacked Israel, and implied that what Israel does is worse than the Holocaust, saying, "the crimes and massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba at the hands of the Israeli forces... have not stopped to this day." Meaning, the Holocaust ended in the 1940s but Palestinian suffering has lasted for over seven decades. (This theme has been used often in Palestinian media.)
Among the anti-Israel activists I follow on social media, I could not find one condemning Abbas' words besides J-Street. This includes the self-described experts on antisemitism who follow he Middle East extensively like Linda Sarsour, Rashida Tlaib, Marc Lamont Hill, and Peter Beinart. Because to them, if antisemitism doesn't come from a white nationalist, it isn't antisemitism.
Their silence condones Abbas.
