Caroline Glick: Mahmoud Abbas Should Be Barred from Entering the U.S.
The U.S. government should bar Palestinian Authority Chairman and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Mahmoud Abbas from entering the United States on Wednesday for the opening of the United Nations.Report: PA leader aims to undercut US peace plan at UN
In the days that have passed since Queens, New York, native and dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Ari Fuld was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist, we have learned several things about how his murder came about.
Together, they make a compelling case to take action against Abbas when he arrives at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. (Abbas is scheduled to arrive in New York to address the UN General Assembly meeting on Thursday.)
Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old father of four, was stabbed in the back by Palestinian terrorist Khalil Jabarin last Sunday morning outside a shopping center at Gush Etzion Junction in Judea, south of Jerusalem.
On Tuesday, Palestinian journalist Bassem Tawil provided significant evidence that recent statements by Abbas may have encouraged 16-year-old Jabarin to murder Fuld – or any other Jewish person. Jabarin is from Dura, a village about a half hour south of the shopping center – a convenient site for his attack.
Tawil reported that Saturday, the day before the murder, Abbas gave a speech to the PLO’s Executive Committee in Ramallah. In his address, Abbas reportedly “repeated the old libel that Israel was planning to establish special Jewish prayer zones inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” which is on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, the site of the Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is planning to host a conference of world leaders and high-ranking diplomats on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week with the expressed intention of undermining U.S. President Donald Trump's regional peace plan, Channel 10 News reported Monday.Former envoy: Israel-Russia crisis artificial, driven by anti-Semitism
Relations between Washington and Ramallah have been particularly strained since U.S. President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December and subsequently moved the U.S. Embassy there in May. The move outraged Palestinians, who envision east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Abbas has since refused to engage with any of Trump's Middle East envoys, saying that the U.S. bias in favor of Israel proves it cannot act as an impartial mediator in regional peace talks.
The Trump administration has taken several other steps against the Palestinian Authority, including suspending the large U.S. contribution to the U.N. aid agency assisting Palestinian refugees and shuttering the Palestine Liberation Organization's mission in Washington.
The United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany, as well as diplomats from 40 nations and international organizations, have been invited to the conference scheduled for Wednesday, the report said.
Titled "Salvaging the Two-State Solution, Defending the International Rules-Based System," the conference is set to take place at the Grand Hyatt hotel in New York.
The crisis between Israel and Russia resulting from a Russian military aircraft being shot down over Syria last week is "calculated and artificial, unrelated to reality or the facts, because the Russians want payment," former Israeli Ambassador to Russia Zvi Magen told Israel Hayom in an interview.Anti-Semitism rears its head
Now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, Magen underscored that "it doesn't matter what Israel does. From the moment the other side wants a crisis, there's no way of preventing one.
"The media blamed Israel on the day of crisis in a well-timed orchestrated manner, filled with anti-Semitic elements. This wasn't random."
According to Magen's analysis, the Russian defense establishment never changed its stance, even after Israeli Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin visited Moscow to present Israel's findings on the incident.
A Russian Defense Ministry statement repeating gross accusations about Israel being responsible for shooting down a Russian military plane over Syria last week is a signal that, at least outwardly, Russia is unwilling to turn over a new page and move on from the past.
The inaccurate, unfounded, and even false claims in the ministry's findings should not come as a surprise to anyone. After announcing that Israel was at fault, the Russians have not been able to back down, not even after an Israeli Air Force delegation showed them clear proof that Israel had operated within both nations' coordination guidelines. It goes against the Russian culture of power to publicly admit to a mistake. The Russian government will never let facts confuse its citizens' belief that Russia is always right.
The false accusation against Israel has awakened the ghosts of anti-Semitism that always existed in Russian society and which the ruling powers have made an effort to hide these past few decades. Russian television stations permit themselves to make harsh statements about Israel and a number of speakers, including senior delegates in the Russian parliament, have demanded that military air bases in the Jewish state be bombed in retribution. Until last week's incident, such remarks were effectively prohibited in public in Russia, because officials were certain that the person at the top – President Vladimir Putin – objected to them.
But the new situation in which a major government entity in the form of the Russian Defense Ministry talks about Israel in language reminiscent of the Cold War has unleashed anti-Semitic language in Russia in general.