Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Erekat

Showing posts with label Erekat. Show all posts

Monday, October 05, 2020

Saeb Erakat lies again, falsely claims Abbas wished Trump a full recovery (UPDATE)

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency English website says:

Dr. Saeb Erekat, Secretary-General of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told CNN that President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas wishes US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania a speedy and full recovery.

However, if you look at the "Presidency" section on the Wafa Arabic website where all Abbas' official statements and communications are, there is not a word about wishing Trump a recovery on that page.

Abbas' Facebook page likewise does not say a word about this.

Understand that every public word by Abbas is listed on those pages, like "The President congratulates the King of Lesotho on their Independence Day."

It's almost like Saeb Erakat is making things up to stall the freefall of Abbas' reputation in the US.

UPDATE: Just as I was publishing this, I saw this amazingly hypocritical tweet from Erakat:

Met with China’s 🇨🇳 Ambassador to Palestine 🇵🇸 QWA WEI . Appreciated China’s firm stand with int. Law , end the Israeli occupation. No to annexation and settlements . Two States 1967 borders. Help Palestine to fight COVID 19. pic.twitter.com/pYBED4Wf6Z
— Dr. Saeb Erakat الدكتور صائب عريقات (@ErakatSaeb) October 5, 2020

Yes, the Palestinian leaders are praising the Chinese government - which, as one commenter noted, is "the only regime in the entire world that has a systematic and openly admitted occupation and detention programme targeted at Muslims, Tibetans and Mongolians" - as a paradigm for upholding international law!

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Harvard names serial liar and failed diplomat Saeb Erekat as a Fellow to teach diplomacy!

Remember when Harvard University actually meant something?

The Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has named four senior leaders in diplomacy to be Fisher Family Fellows for the 2020-21 academic year: Julie Bishop, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party; Saeb Erakat, the Chief Palestinian Negotiator and Head of the Negotiations Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); Federica Mogherini, former High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission; and Peter Wittig, former Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United States.

“We are proud to welcome these four respected global leaders to the Harvard Kennedy School for this academic year. They will strengthen our capacity to learn the lessons of effective diplomacy and statecraft,” said Faculty Chair Nicholas Burns.

The Fellows will speak in virtual seminars in the autumn, hold office hours with students to help foster their professional development and networks, and participate in research initiatives. Public health conditions permitting, the Fellows will visit campus in spring 2021 to lead study groups for Harvard students on topics of their expertise, including on transatlantic relations; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and emerging foreign policy and security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region…..

Saeb Erakat has been extensively involved in all negotiations with Israel, including those conducted at Camp David (2000) and in Taba (2001). In 1991, he was the Vice-Chair of the Madrid Peace Delegation and was later the Vice-Chair at the Washington negotiations of 1992. Previously, he served as the Minister of Local Government for the Palestinian National Authority and is also Head of the Palestinian Side of the Steering and Monitoring Committee. He is the author of fourteen books on foreign policy, oil, conflict resolution, and negotiations.

What diplomatic victory has Erakat ever achieved? He has been instrumental in painting the Palestinians into a corner, stopping dealing with Israel even after “annexation” is off the table, which only hurts his own people.

His brilliant diplomacy skills have succeeded in turning much of the Arab world from being pro-Palestinian to lukewarm or hostile.

He has a long history of the most egregious lies, denying Jewish history, and justifying terror attacks. He’s even lied about his own life and his family’s history.

And that is only scratching the surface.

Erakat is not at all a “respected global leader.” He is a failure at everything he has ever done.

Why would Harvard hire a proven, serial liar, a failed negotiator and politician who has never helped his own people in the slightest way, and who is not really even popular among Palestinians, to teach its students?

Saeb Erekat calls archaeology fake and says Jewish history is a lie

From Times of Israel:

A senior Palestinian official Monday condemned the participation of US envoys in the unveiling of an archaeological site in East Jerusalem and scoffed at the “fake” account of Jewish history attributed to the subterranean road.

Saeb Erekat said he believed the tunnel was a project being used by Israeli right-wingers to further Israel’s claim on East Jerusalem and advance settlement growth there.

“It has nothing to do with religion, it is fake,” he told journalists at his office in Ramallah in the West Bank.

He cited reports by two Israeli NGOs questioning the archaeological methods used.

One of the organizations, Peace Now, also says cracks emerged in multiple houses in Silwan after the digging began.

Erekat said: “It’s a settlement project. It’s based on a lie that has nothing to do with history."

This is a person regarded as a "moderate." This is a person that was a lead negotiator for, ahem, "peace."

And this is a person who is actually more reasonable than most other Palestinian leaders!

"Questioning archaeological methods" does not mean that the road discovered that leads up to the Temple Mount is not real. It was clearly used by hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims to visit the Second Temple. No archaeologist in the world denies this.

But Saeb Erekat does.

Which means that (yet again) Erekat is proven to be a liar. You literally cannot believe a word he says.

The Western media, unfortunately, doesn't hold him to the same standards that any Western politician would be held to when they are shown to be knowingly lying. On the contrary, they are eager to interview him. The Forward published an op-ed from this liar just this week (claiming that the US supports "Greater Israel" based on the Bahrain workshop that didn't talk about politics or borders at all.)

A number of years ago, Erekat issued a quote referring to Israel's prime minister, with a saying I never heard and couldn't find anywhere else. Perhaps it is an Arabic saying, but it is clearly Saeb Erakat's personal motto:

“There’s a saying that if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts."

Who can stop Erekat's lies? Only the media and politicians, but they refuse to. He has been proven a liar too many times to count - claiming a "massacre" in Jenin*, claiming that Israel killed nearly 12,000 civilians in Gaza in 2014, claiming his family was in "Palestine" for 9000 years, on and on.

That's how his lies become facts.

______________
*Electronic Intifada published a letter in the Economist in 2002 claiming that Erekat never used the word "massacre" in describing Jenin. Yet the Irish Times quoted him directly:

"How many civilians must be killed to speak of a massacre?" asked Mr Erakat. "The Israeli massacre in Jenin's refugee camp clearly happened and this is a war crime and crimes against humanity also took place".
Mr Erakat had accused Israel during the battle of killing up to 500 people in Jenin, a figure the UN report dismissed, saying 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting.
"The UN should have used the word "massacre" or "war crime", especially because the Jenin's camp is managed by the UN," Erakat said.

He also used that word on CNN.

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01/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes; Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes

Israeli intelligence has thwarted mass terrorist attacks in Europe that “involve civil aviation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, in a possible reference to September 11-type attacks planned against European targets using hijacked aircraft.

Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem to ambassadors of NATO countries, said that the world is threatened by radical Sunni groups, initially led by al-Qaeda, but now by Islamic State, and radical Shi'ites led by Iran.

“When we talk about ISIS, it's important to understand that Israel helps Europe in two fundamental ways,” Netanyahu said.

“The first is that we have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries. Some of these could have been mass attacks, of the worst kind that you have experienced on the soil of Europe and even worse, because they involve civil aviation. Israel has prevented that, and thereby helped save many European lives.”

He did not elaborate. Netanyahu has said numerous times in the past that Israeli intelligence has helped thwart numerous terrorist attacks in Europe.

JPost Editorial: Shut down UNRWA

The US under the leadership of President Donald Trump is rightly reconsidering the logic of funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine – at least as it operates presently.

Some $125 million, which makes up about a third of the United States’ annual support for the organization, has already been frozen.

Judging from a tweet by Trump that preceded the decision to freeze aid, it seems the US president wants to make funding conditional upon Palestinian cooperation in helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s concern is legitimate. UNRWA, which has been around since 1949, was supposed to be a temporary solution, until the “Palestinian refugee problem” was sorted out. But with the Palestinian Authority refusing to cooperate with the US in solving the problem, there is little reason for the US to continue footing the bill for the agency indefinitely.

We can think of a few additional reasons why UNRWA – which employs 11,500 employees in Gaza alone – should be radically revamped, if not disbanded altogether.

The first problem is that UNRWA perpetuates the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. While the original Palestinian refugees from 1948 – both those who left their homes willingly and those who were forced – might legitimately have deserved refugee status, why should their grandchildren or great-grandchildren share that status? Most other refugees are cared for by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, and their status is not passed on to grandchildren or great-grandchildren. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have their own agency.

This leaves millions of Palestinians in a state of limbo. Instead of getting on with their lives, the Palestinians in places like Gaza continue to grasp a false dream of one day returning to Jaffa, Haifa or Jerusalem. This also allows the kind of apartheid that takes place in Lebanon, where more than one million Palestinians live without official status. They do not have Lebanese citizenship and are confined to dismal refugee camps where terrorism and crime thrive. But because they are refugees, the Lebanese government can wash its hands of having to integrate them into society.

All this can change if UNRWA is reformed or shut down. While UNRWA is an organization that nominally is dedicated to transforming refugees into fully self-sufficient individuals, it has allowed the myth of the “right of return” to persist. Within UNRWA it is heretical to say that repatriation to Israel is unrealistic.

Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017

The Palestinian Authority paid terrorists and their families over $347 million last year, according to its own records, the Defense Ministry reported to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday.

The average income of a Palestinian is $580 per month, which is what the PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to three to five years in prison.

The PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to 20 years or more in prison – in other words, those who committed more severe crimes, and likely were involved in killing Israelis – five times that each month for the rest of their lives.

Terrorists who are Israeli citizens receive a $145 bonus, which, when added to the amount PA pays for the most severe crimes, comes to over $2,900, more than the average Israeli income of around $2,700 per month. There are also increases in pay for being married and for each child a terrorist has.

Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said, “The PA pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their families, thus encouraging and perpetuating terror.”

“The minute the amount of the payment is decided according to the severity of the crime and the length of the sentence – in other words, whoever murders and is sentenced to life in prison gets much more – that is funding terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. There is nothing that better illustrates the PA’s support for terror. We must stop this,” Liberman said.

Defense Ministry drafts bill to cut PA funds over terrorist stipends

The Defense Ministry on Tuesday publicized a draft bill that would deduct welfare payments paid out by the Palestinian Authority to Palestinian prisoners and their families from the tax revenues Israel transfers annually to the PA.

“The Palestinian Authority pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their relatives, thereby encouraging and perpetuating terrorism,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a statement. “The moment the payments are set based on the severity of the crime and the prison sentence, namely that those who murder and are sentenced to life receive a lot more, this is [tantamount to] funding terror attacks against Israelis.”

The bill, which targets cash payments by the PA to jailed or injured terrorists and their relatives, will also apply to Palestinians who committed other crimes for which they are being compensated by the PA, the ministry said in a statement.

The Palestine Liberation Organization gives monthly payments to all Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel, no matter the reason for their incarceration, and also to families of so-called “martyrs” — a term used by the PLO to refer to anyone killed by an Israeli, whether the person was killed attacking Israelis or an innocent bystander.

Erekat claims Coptic church bombings aimed at Palestinian cause

There is no news story that Palestinians don't try to twist to be about them.

Saeb Erekat, the secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said that the bombings that targeted churches in the cities of Alexandria, Tanta were "terrible crimes."

Then he said that they were aimed at Egypt and Egypt's principles, including Egypt's support of Palestinians.

This is especially ironic since Palestinian officials, including Erekat, routinely claim that terror attacks like these wouldn't happen if it wasn't for "occupation" and other Israeli policies. In other words, usually they claim that IS terror attacks are in support of Palestinians, albeit misguided; but when it is in their interest they will claim that IS attacks are actually against Palestinians.

The ironies multiply because Erekat has also justified unprovoked attacks on civilians as "self-defense." Furthermore, he has said that the PLO will never consider Hamas, well known for its own bombing attacks against civilians, to be a terrorist organization.

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Saeb Erekat threatens "chaos, lawlessness and extremism"

Saeb Erekat continues to do what he does best - threaten the world with terror if people don't toe the Palestinian line.

On Friday:

A senior Palestinian official warned on Friday that implementation of Donald Trump’s pledge to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would destroy any prospects for peace with Israel, even as a spokesman for the U.S. President-elect said he remained committed to the move.
Erekat said he would like to look Trump and Friedman in the eye and tell them “if you were to take these steps of moving the embassy and annexing settlements in the West Bank, you are sending this region to more chaos, lawlessness and extremism."

Nobody took Erekat's Friday warnings seriously. so, like a child trying to get attention, he upped the ante on Monday:

If the incoming Trump administration moves the US embassy to Jerusalem, the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel, the prospect of a two-state solution will be over, and any hope of Israeli-Palestinian peace in the future will vanish, the top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned on Monday.

Speaking on a conference call organized by the Wilson Center policy forum in Washington, DC regarding expectations from the Trump administration, Erekat reeled off a list of what he said would be the consequences of President-elect Donald Trump honoring his campaign pledge and relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Erekat said he would immediately resign as the chief Palestinian negotiator, and that “the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel” as well as all previously signed agreements with Israel.

Furthermore, said Erekat, all American embassies in the Arab world would be forced to close — not necessarily because Arab leaderships would want to close them, but because the infuriated public in the Arab world would not “allow” for the embassies to continue to operate.

Erekat noted that he held meetings last week in Washington with State Department officials, but failed to secure meetings he had sought with incoming Trump administration officials. “I don’t know any of them,” he said of Trump’s personnel.

I can't wait for the embassy to move - because exactly none of these things will happen. Erekat won't resign, Arabs won't close US embassies, the PLO won't tear up its agreements, and there will be no additional terrorism in the region.

Let's take the threats one by one.

As I've mentioned, I've been looking in Arab media to see if there is any groundswell of anger over the idea of the embassy moving. There is virtually none outside an odd cleric or two in the Palestinian territories themselves. Arabs have real problems to worry about, and this is not on their top hundred issues.

The PLO won't tear up any agreements with Israel, because it stands far more to lose than to gain. After all, it now runs a fairly independent territory in Areas A and B and despots don't give up their power so quickly to make a point.

But notice how Erekat threatens Israel for US actions.

Will Erekat resign? Sure he will - and then he will unresign again, like he's done many times before. From the Matthew Kalman blog, documenting 20 years of Erekat's "resignations:"

Erekat is a joke, and the Arab world knows it.

The incoming Trump administration knows this as well. And this is what terrifies him to make these baseless threats, hoping against hope that the time honored Arab tradition of gaining political leverage by threatening violence still has a little bit of power over stupid Westerners who still believe that these people want peace.

By the way, NATO defines terrorism as "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against individuals or property in an attempt to coerce or intimidate governments or societies to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives."

The United States Department of Defense defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of violence or threat of violence to instill fear and coerce governments or societies."

Saeb Erekat and Mahmoud Abbas, with their threats of terrorism, chaos and riots in order to achieve political aims, are terrorists.

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Saeb Erekat keeps showing his hypocrisy

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat writes in Wafa:

It is time for Israelis to confront reality: when the Zionists came to Palestine, there were another people living here. Over 100 years ago, a Zionist mission was sent to Palestine and their report acknowledged this fact: "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man." And this: soon plans to displace Palestine's population were unveiled.

The "bride is beautiful" quote is fiction.

And where were these supposed plans to forcibly displace Arabs in Zionist writings?

"Palestinians are Arabs who immigrated to Israel. We Jews fended off the attacks by seven Arab armies in self-defense." These declarations deny the very existence of the Palestinian people, continue to justify the atrocities committed against us, and deny Palestinian refugees' legitimate right of return.

Well, they are also true (actually five armies.) I'm not clear how the fact that Arab armies invaded Israel denies the existence of the Palestinian people. But the fact that there was no distinctive Palestinian people before 1948 is tough to deny. I've looked for evidence of distinctive customs, cuisines and other artifacts for years and have found nothing; the closest was some goods like Nablus soap or Bethlehem costumes that were not "Palestinian" but local specialties.

The hypocrisy is that while Erekat says that Israel denies the existence of the Palestinian people today - which is certainly does not - Erekat denies the existence of the Jewish people. The basic anti-Zionist argument is that Jews are not a people, but merely a religion, which flies in the face of thousands of years of history. Yet Erekat and the PLO explicitly deny this fact.

Pot, meet kettle.

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Today's list of lies by Saeb Erekat

Haaretz reported on Sunday:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed Sunday that despite the arson-murder of a Palestinian family and recent reports of growing Jewish extremism, there was no room for comparison between Jewish acts of terrorism and Arab acts of terror.

"There is a difference between Arab terror and Jewish terror," Netanyahu said at the beginning of the government's weekly meeting. "Here we condemn and they [the Palestinians] praise," the prime minister said.

Netanyahu noted that unlike Jewish terror, which is limited in scope, Arab terror "attacks us incessantly and is wide-spread." According to Netanyahu, while in Israel both the government and informal leaders condemn Jewish terror, in the Palestinian Authority they name squares and streets after terrorists.

"There is a difference between Israeli society's healthy attitude, which condemns terror and works against it, and the Palestinian Authority's, which encourages terror and incites," Netanyahu said. "I suggest we remember these distinctions at a time when we are fighting terror and inciters, wherever they may be."

The PLO's top negotiator Saeb Erekat responded to this with yet another torrent of lies:

Mr. Netanyahu is claiming that the killing of any human being by a Jew is not comparable to the killing of a Jew by a non-Jew.

He said no such thing. In fact, he specifically referred to Jewish terror, and you will never hear Erekat or Abbas refer to "Palestinian terror" no matter how heinous the attack. (Today's Al Quds says explicitly that there is no such things as Palestinian terror, only Jewish terror.)

Mr. Netanyahu’s referral to “Palestinian incitement” as an excuse for Israeli terrorism is a further attempt at erasing his political and legal responsibility as the head of a belligerent occupier that violates the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people on daily basis, including its very right to be free.

Netanyahu said no such thing.

The State of Israel honors the memory of terrorists who were responsible for the assassination of thousands of Christians, Muslims and Jews, including those who assassinated the UN Mediator Count Bernardotte in 1948...

I am unaware of any shrine to the memory of Yehoshua Cohen, who killed Bernadotte.

A prominent case is that of the terrorist Baruch Goldstein who killed 29 Palestinians at the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron, and who has a shrine at the illegal Kiryat Arba settlement, across a park named after Meir Kahane, another Israeli terrorist.

The Israeli government bulldozed the shrine in 1999 after Israel's Supreme Court prohibited shrines to terrorists ; now there is only a gravestone in a park because Goldstein was not allowed to be buried in a Jewish cemetery based on another legal ruling. The state never honored Goldstein.

As far as I can tell, Saeb Erekat has a perfect record of lying in every public statement he makes. As I wrote last year, this is his strategy:

He literally lives his life by the saying "if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts."

No one has the guts to tell him that he is a liar to his face and list all his lies, chapter and verse. And it is a very long list.

Erekat knows that once he puts his lies out there, no one will counter him - after all, he is a "moderate" and a "peacemaker," and reporters aren't conditioned to believe that a soft-spoken man in a suit who is considered a "moderate" will lie right to their faces.

There is literally no negative repercussion to Erekat's constant lies. So...why shouldn't he continue them?

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Justifying terror, Saeb Erekat says that stabbing random Jews is considered "self defense"

From the NYT:

“East Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine,” Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization official, said on Voice of Palestine radio. “If they think that they can reach security with these measures, they are wrong. The Palestinian people will continue to defend themselves.”

The bolded sentence is a direct threat - Israeli defensive measures are useless, Erekat is saying, because Palestinians will always be able to break through the defenses and kill Jews.

But his next sentence defines these stabbings as "defend[ing] themselves."

The reason is clear:

Erekat knows that this current unrest is making Palestinian Arabs look bad,

He cannot deny that there have been many stabbings, car rammings, shootings and stonings against innocent Israelis.

So he needs to cast the terror spree as "self defense." Because self defense is justifiable.

Saeb Erekat is saying that Arabs have the fundamental human right to murder random Jews in Israel.

Too bad no reporter ever calls him on statements like these.

Hey, it's been a solid couple of weeks since I last caught him lying. But this time he is accidentally telling the truth - he, and the Palestinian Arab leadership, really support the terror spree as moral even if they don't want to suffer the consequences.

Saeb Erekat lies again, claims he was arrested at 13 for graffiti when he was throwing stones

The PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department recently issued a pamphlet supporting the right to "popular resistance." In that pamphlet, Saeb Erekat writes a short essay that begins this way:

A few days after Israel occupied my hometown of Jericho in 1967, I was arrested by Israeli soldiers while writing graffiti:“down with the occupation, free Palestine.” This act of peaceful resistance sent a 13-years old boy to prison. From the very beginning of Israel’s occupation, a zero tolerance policy was adopted by the new conquerors and the love that an armless teenager had for his country had no place under Israel’s military control. Our message was too much for the occupying army to handle or fathom.

Was Erekat arrested a few days after the Six Day War for writing graffiti saying "Down with the occupation, Free Palestine"?

The story falls apart in pieces.

First of all, he wasn't 13 in the days after the Six Day War - he was 12.

According to an online biography:

Israeli occupation began when he was twelve; first jailed at thirteen; usual childhood offences, stone-throwing, cutting wires, fighting with soldiers, PLO graffiti etc.

So he was doing a bit more than just writing graffiti, it seems.

In fact, he admitted it himself in this interview from 2000:

I was 12 years old when Israeli troops occupied my town, my country. I went to jail for my first time when I was 13 years old. I had no choice but to post flyers and throw stones to stand up for our freedoms and rights that were taken away.

But it is not like this is the first time we have caught Saeb Erekat lying.

And not the last, as his next paragraph indicates:

Since 1967, around 900,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned and confined including a large number of children.

We've disproved this statistic back when it was "only" 750,000.

It is astounding, and very revealing, that Western media has no time for the slightest bit of critical thinking when it comes to the lies spouted daily by the leaders of the Palestinian Authority.

If you accuse Israel of "genocide" and compare it to ISIS, you are welcome to speak at J-Street!

Guess who is speaking at the annual J-Street conference?

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat!

Yes, the same Saeb Erekat who recently compared Israel to ISIS.

The same Saeb Erekat who routinely accuses Israel of "genocide."

The same Saeb Erekat who claimed that 96% of those killed in Gaza were civilians.

The same Saeb Erekat who claimed that his family had been in Palestine for 9000 years (they came from Jordan in the 19th century.)

The same Saeb Erekat who compares Mahmoud Abbas to Mother Teresa and Thomas Jefferson.

The same Saeb Erekat who believes that Jews cannot live in "Palestine."

The same Saeb Erekat who once accused Qatar of investing in Jewish settlements.

The same Saeb Erekat who once said "Everybody should be aware that the only threat in the region is Israel’s occupation and not Iran."

Yup - he's a perfect fit for "pro-Israel, pro-peace" J-Street.

(Eric Fingerhut, the president of Hillel International, withdrew from speaking at J Street’s conference when he found out Erekat was a featured speaker.)

Saeb Erekat under pressure to resign because of Schabas affair

PA officials are blaming PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat for his role in forcing the resignation of William Schabas from the UNHRC's commission of inquiry/kangaroo court on the Gaza war.

There are rumors that Erekat might resign for his role in this affair.

The sources say that since the PLO had paid Schabas for legal work, he was somehow forced to lie to the UNHRC about not having any financial ties to any party under investigation in order to become the head of the commission. They are blaming Erekat for not foreseeing this issue.

Apparently Erekat should have been positioning Schabas to be able to do much more damage against Israel instead of burning his potential influence with a measly $1300 for an unimportant paper that ended up torpedoing his role in the upcoming UNHRC report.

If it wasn't for Erekat's paying Schabas, the notoriously anti-Israel lawyer would have remained in his role to craft the pre-ordained anti-Israel UNHRC document under the pretense of objectivity.

The critics say that Erekat has been boasting about the PLO negotiations unit's ties with Western legal experts such as Schabas rather than keeping them low-key and allowing the sympathetic Westerners to one day take over important anti-Israel roles in international bodies under the pretext of objectivity.

Schabas was already well-known for his anti-Israel positions before this entire affair. Some 65 anti-Israel NGOs signed a letter to the UNHRC supporting Schabas (or Christine Chinkin) to be the "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967" to replace the notoriously anti-Israel Richard Falk.

Given that Erekat had already pretended to resign from his role and yet still remains in it, I somehow doubt that he will resign over this.

(h/t Anne)

Saeb Erekat says "settlements" are just as heinous as beheading people

From Ma'an:

Top PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat has called the ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank "terrorism," even making comparisons between Israel and the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria.

"There is no difference between the terrorism practiced by the group led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Israel's terrorism," he said, referencing the leader of the IS group during a speech at a festival celebrating the Prophet Muhammad's birthday in Jericho on Monday.

He added that "ending settlement activities is a prerequisite for eliminating terrorism."

Funny. I don't think there is any difference between Saeb Erekat and Joseph Goebbels.

There has been nearly zero physical expansion of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria in over 25 years. Moreover, when the argument suits him, Saeb Erekat himself admits that the settlements take up only 1.1% of the areas Palestinians want for a state.

Saeb Erekat gets even nuttier (if that is possible)

From AFP:

A senior Palestinian official on Tuesday likened Benjamin Netanyahu to the leader of the Islamic State group, after the Israeli prime minister compared Hamas to the organization.

"Netanyahu is trying to disseminate fear of the Islamic State led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but Netanyahu forgets that he himself leads the Jewish state," said Saeb Erekat, the PLO's chief negotiator in peace talks with Israel.

"He wants us to call Israel the Jewish state and supports terrorist settlers who kill, destroy and burn mosques and churches... like Baghdadi's men kill and terrorize," Erekat told AFP.

Just as a reminder, the constitution of "Palestine" says "Islam is the official religion in Palestine."

By contrast, Israel has no state religion.

So by Erekat's definition, the PA is far closer in its laws to the Islamic State than Israel is.

(h/t Ronald)

Yesterday, PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat added another to his long list of lies that he spouts to the media, and this one was a doozy:

Escalating the Palestinian leadership’s rhetorical assault on Israel, the chief Palestinian Authority negotiator, Saeb Erekat, on Monday claimed that 96 percent of Gazans killed in the summer’s Israel-Hamas conflict were civilians, reiterated PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s charge of Israeli “genocide,” and accused Israel of seeking to impose apartheid on the Palestinians.

Erekat, in the radio interview, defined genocide as “a direct attempt to eliminate, horrify, relocate, destroy a way of life” and claimed “Israel committed the killing of 12,000 and wounding 12,000 Palestinians; 96 percent of them are civilians.”

Not even the most extreme anti-Israel Gaza NGO claimed that 96% of those killed in Gaza were civilians, or that 12,000 were killed.

The radio interview is in English and these absurd lies can be heard at the 30 second mark here. He also says Israel "demolished" 50,000 homes (according to anti-Israel site Electronic Intifada, 15,670 homes were damaged, not demolished,) and that 500,000 Gazans are homeless (that is the maximum number displaced during the war but only about 50,000 remain in shelters as of a few weeks ago.)

I cannot remember a single interview of his or article he's written that was not filled with lies.

So how can Erekat continue to lie so openly and brazenly in literally every statement he ever makes in public? What is behind it?

It turns out that Erekat explains his strategy perfectly - in his response to Netanyahu's speech at the UN yesterday:

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, “There’s a saying that if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts. That’s what happened to Netanyahu.”

This saying is Erekat's credo!

He lies, not one reporter - even the interviewer from Israel Army Radio here - bothers to counter his lies in any timely fashion, and Erekat wins! His lies turn into facts for his audience, or at the very least they are considered a legitimate part of the "narrative." He literally lives his life by the saying "if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts."

No one has the guts to tell him that he is a liar to his face and list all his lies, chapter and verse. And it is a very long list.

Erekat knows that once he puts his lies out there, no one will counter him - after all, he is a "moderate" and a "peacemaker," and reporters aren't conditioned to believe that a soft-spoken man in a suit who is considered a "moderate" will lie right to their faces.

There is literally no negative repercussion to Erekat's constant lies. So...why shouldn't he continue them?

(By the way, for all the PLO officials who railed against Bibi's "lies," not one of them actually cited any.)

Erekat doubles down on Abbas' "genocide" accusation

Well, it is official: The Palestinian Arab leadership is accusing Israel of genocide.

After Mahmoud Abbas made the accusation and the State Department denounced it, PLO executive committee member Saeb Erekat confirmed that, no, it was not a misstatement - this is what the PLO really thinks.

Erekat said that "genocide was practiced by the Israeli government on the sons of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and we will endeavor to hold accountable those who committed these crimes; we will not allow them to go unpunished."

By the way, Abbas floated the idea of "genocide" back in July, when the war was a whole one day old. At the time I noted that no world leader was likely to censure Abbas for such incitement and, frankly, for being such an obvious liar.

Since the world coddled Abbas then, as it always does, he felt emboldened to say it to the world.

As long as the Western world continues to treat Palestinian Arab leadership like children who cannot be held responsible for their words and actions, they will continue to act like children who are not accountable to anyone. It is very simple psychology, but world leaders are so afraid of causing a temper tantrum (which means, a return to 1970s-type terrorism and oil embargos) that there are no penalties for inciting hate.

And, yes, accusing the Jewish state of "genocide" when it is defending itself is pure antisemitism.

Saeb Erekat's lie of the day, in Time magazine

Saeb Erekat published an anti-Israel screed in Time claiming that Israel is not interested in peace and the PLO, trying to merge with terrorist group Hamas, is.

Among the many lies comes this gem:

Frankly, it is difficult to understand how anyone could expect us to negotiate with such a government. And yet we have, in good faith, offering concession after concession for the sake of peace.

The list of Israeli concessions for peace since Oslo is quite long - giving full autonomy to parts of Judea and Samaria, accepting the idea of two states for two peoples (something even Yitzchak Rabin refused to do,) offering unprecedented concessions of disputed land even in Israel's capital. These concessions are well documented by the Israelis who offered them and the Americans who were there at the time.

But can Saeb Erekat name a single public concession that the PLO has made to Israel since the Oslo accords?

Erekat says they have offered "offering concession after concession for the sake of peace." So it should be simple for him to name, say, one of them.

Saeb Erekat heads the PLO Negotiating Unit. If he offered a concession remotely comparable to what Israel has conceded since 1993 in the possibly reckless pursuit of peace, wouldn't we know what it is by now?

It will be hard for Erekat to specify a single solid concession that he claims he has made - because his boss Mahmoud Abbas has publicly bragged, in Arabic, more than once, that he has not changed the PLO's positions one iota since 1988.

So we have proven for the umpteenth time that Saeb Erekat is a liar.

Too bad the Westerners whom he talks to don't have the guts to call him on his litany of lies that continue to be spouted every time he opens his mouth. .

Saeb Erekat admits he is a Jordanian Bedouin, not a "Canaanite"

On February 2, after Saeb Erekat claimed to be descended from 10,000 year old Canaanites, I was the first to show that his family actually came from the Huwaitat tribe which was on the Arabian peninsula, between what is now Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Apparently, an Israeli columnist at Israel Hayom mentioned this as well a week later, and the Arab media picked up on it. (Here is a case where Arab media was more aggressive than Western media in confronting Erekat on his lies.)

So Erekat responded that, sure, he is a Jordanian and a Bedouin and he is proud of it.

The head of the PLO’s negotiations department, Saeb Erekat said: “It is an honor for me to be a Bedouin and to be a Jordanian.”

This was said in an interview he gave to the Dunya Al-Watan newspaper, answering rumors spread by Hebrew newspapers. He (Erekat) added: ”The Israelis said that my mother was Jewish, and they accused me of having a relationship with Livni."

The top Palestinian negotiator said: “It is an honor for me to be a Bedouin, an Arab and a Jordanian. I have a special feeling that Allah bestowed an honor upon me and gave me a gift for which I thank him, namely that I was born a Palestinian. I was born a Palestinian only as a gift from Allah”.

He added: “We were born Palestinian so we can regain Palestine with Eastern Jerusalem as its capital city.”

Reuven Berko, the political analyst at the “Israel Hayom” newspaper said: “Erekat is a Jordanian Bedouin from the Huweytat tribe, and not a Palestinian.”

He's a Jordanian/Bedouin/Canaanite/Palestinian/Arab, so he can pick and choose whichever self-definition he finds more appropriate at any point in time. There is nothing "Palestinian" about him except an accident of where he was born.

What a liar.

What a "negotiating partner."

(h't Ibn Boutros)

Saeb Erekat spoke at the Oxford Union on Friday night, although for some reason his statements do not seem to have been reported in English.

Arabic media reports that he resorted to his usual threats unless Israel caves to the demands of the people they supposedly oppress. (It is remarkable how the "oppressed" act like they have the upper hand, isn't it?)

This time, Erekat said that at the stroke of midnight on April 29, the PLO "will resort to international courts, and United Nations bodies and we will join calls for an economic boycott" of Israel.

He added that the Palestinian Authority is preparing an "attack" of lawsuits against Israel in The Hague, where the PLO has prepared 50 petitions to be ready in the event of the likely failure of the negotiations.

Then he said that after April 29, "You can not maintain the [PA] government at its current status. If Kerry's negotiations fail, the government will collapse and Netanyahu will be forced to take control of the West Bank, and this will be very ugly."

Of course, if the PA/PLO/"State of Palestine" collapses, then who will bring all of these lawsuits to the Hague?

If Israel is so hell-bent on expansionist policies, then why is threatening to dissolve the PA a threat - wouldn't Israel want to re-occupy the entire Judea and Samaria?

But consistency is not something to expect from a liar like Erekat. The chances that Abbas will willingly give up his power base is exactly as low as it was the many previous times that he threatened to do that.