This time, he didn't.
And the Palestinian intelligentsia who are the face of Palestinians to the Western world got the memo.
Yesterday, we mentioned how angry Noura Erakat was that a TV producer wanted to interview her and ask her reaction to the attack. She refused, but helpfully explained on Twitter that she feels that celebrating the murder of Jews is normal human behavior, and justified the shooting of Jewish civilians as "resistance to apartheid."
Erakat, a lawyer and academic, is one of the most articulate, videogenic propagandists for the Palestinian cause - and she justified terror.
But she wasn't the only one.
At the BBC, Al-Shabaka's Yara Harawi was asked if she agrees that attacks on innocent Israelis makes peace more difficult. After ducking the question, Harawi said, "I reject the premise of the question." Meaning, she couldn't even admit that maybe murdering Israelis outside a synagogue is a bad idea for peace. Only Israelis are responsible for peace - i.e., by surrendering wholesale to Palestinian demands - while Palestinians should have the right to kill Jews without any consequence.
Even more amazing was the answer of Husam Zomlot, head of Palestinian mission to the UK, on Sky News when asked if he condemns the murder of innocent Israelis.
His answer, after trying to dodge? "No." The interviewer asked him a third time to verify that he really doesn't condemn a terror attack, and he mumbled and then tried to weasel out of saying a negative word about murdering Jews, fighting hard to bring the conversation back to how evil Israel is.
The rest of his answer was telling. He said he won't condemn the attack or even send condolences to the victims' families because Palestinians have been there, done that "all along:" - meaning that Abbas has issued pro forma condemnations for previous terror attacks (after being pressured by Washington) and it didn't help them any, so it is time to end the (obviously) fake condemnations.
This is Palestinian official who is pretty much admitting that all previous condemnations for terror attacks were just meaningless words. More than that, when Palestinian officials used to allow their arms to be twisted to mouth the fake condemnations, that was considered a major political concession that deserve a quid pro quo - not honest abhorrence at the most sickening terror imaginable. Zomlot has retroactively shown that Palestinians never, ever opposed terror.
Which we all know is true. As I've shown before, specific mass murder attacks get consistently an 80% approval rating from Palestinians over the years, far higher than the abstract "do you support armed resistance?" questions. The official Palestinian media lionizes terrorists. School textbooks tell students that martyrdom is their highest calling. The PA has said explicitly and repeatedly that paying salaries to terrorists and their families is the absolute highest priority in their budget.
All three of these are spokespeople for the Palestinians in the West, official or unofficial. They are the articulate and attractive face of Palestinian moderation and modernity. And every one of them condoned Jews being slaughtered, explicitly or implicitly.
Another prominent Palestinian symbol was in the news as well this week, and her story further proves that these examples are not anomalous, but mainstream.
Susan Abulhawa is a much praised Palestinian American writer and feminist and calls herself a human rights activist. She represents the best face of Palestinians in the West - sensitive, articulate, liberal.
She was locked out from Twitter recently causing a minor uproar among her fans. I do not know what she wrote that violated the rules.
However, Adin Haykin noticed that in one of her publicity photos she has an interesting picture on the wall of her office.
One of her icons is a terrorist who murdered 13 Israeli children.
Yet even these progressive, enlightened Palestinians support terrorism against Israelis and consider murdering Jews to be praiseworthy, not something to be condemned.
Outside of brave Palestinians like Khaled Abu Toameh and Bassem Eid, support for terror is unanimous even among the Palestinians who speak the most and loudest about human rights.
Likewise, not one Palestinian "human rights" NGO condemned the Jerusalem attack, and several of them or their leaders praised it on social media.
If the people whose jobs are to whitewash Palestinian extremism to the gullible West are themselves fans of terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi or Khairi Alqam, then it is pretty obvious that Israel isn't the obstacle to peace.
