- AT'S
OFor
years, America, Britain and the EU have insisted that Mahmoud Abbas is a
moderate and a statesman-in-waiting who deserves to be rewarded with a
state of Palestine. For years, they have insisted that he is prepared to
live alongside the state of Israel. For years, they have blamed Israel for
intransigence in not believing this and thus not agreeing to give him land
that they thought he would use to threaten the lives of its citizens.
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For years some of us have argued that Abbas should be considered instead
a political and diplomatic pariah. We have said he is a deep-dyed antisemite,
having written his “doctoral” thesis on denying the Holocaust. We have drawn
attention to his regime teaching its children about seizing the whole of
Israel, and that their greatest goal should be to murder Jews.
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We have circulated the hideous antisemitic caricatures published in his
regime’s media outlets. We have pointed out that he and his henchmen have
repeatedly said not one Jew would remain in such a state of Palestine. We have
referred to his repeated attempts to write the Jews out of their own history by
denying their historic connection to the land of Israel, a central feature of
the Jewish religion. To all this, successive American, British and European
governments remained indifferent and continued to treat this antisemitic
fanatic as a rational interlocutor.
·
Than along came President Donald J Trump, who recognised Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital. Although he left open the possibility of a separate
Palestinian state with a presence in Jerusalem, he explicitly acknowledged the
unique historic connection between the Jewish people, he city of Jerusalem and
the land of Israel. He also said the US would cut the funds it provides for
UNWRA’s perpetuation of the fictional Palestinian refugees, whose unique and
false designation is crucial to perpetuating the Arab war against Israel. In
other words, he exploded the Palestinian Arab lie which underpins the whole
conflict: that the Palestinians are the true inheritors of the land and the
Jews have no rights there at all.
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Now Abbas has come out in his true colours in an utterly vile and
deranged speech yesterday to the PLO central council. He ranted and raved that
Israel was a “colonialist project that had nothing to do with Judaism”. In
fact, the land of Israel is absolutely central to Judaism, and the Jews are the
only people for whom Israel was ever their national homeland. Far from the
two-state solution which the west chooses to believe Abbas supports, he was
saying the Jews are not entitled to be in Israel at all.
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That’s why one of his Fatah party’s central committee members said at
the start of this month: “All matters are on the [PLO] Central Council’s
agenda… Indeed, we in Fatah have not recognised Israel, never. This should be
clear. We have never recognised [Israel]. The PLO recognised it. We are part of
the PLO, true. And we, as Fatah, have not recognised Israel.” Even more
tellingly, Holocaust denial was back on Abbas’s agenda as he claimed obscenely
that the Jews of Europe, of whom six million were murdered by the Nazis, chose
to remain in their home countries during the Holocaust rather than emigrate.
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“The Jews did not want to emigrate even with murder and slaughter. Even
during the Holocaust, they did not emigrate. By 1948, Jews in Palestine were no
more than 640,000, most of them from Europe,” he said. Of course, the fact is
that most Jews were trapped in Europe where they were slaughtered. Thousands
could have been saved had they been allowed to come to Palestine, but the British
prevented them from doing so in flagrant contradiction of their legal
obligation under the Mandate to settle the Jews in the land.
·
Having thus tried to nullify the genocide of the Jews , blaming them in
effect for their own annihilation, Abbas then lied further about the ethnic
cleansing of some 850,000 Jews from Arab lands who were driven out after the
State of Israel came into being in 1948. Abbas twisted this to pin
responsibility entirely falsely on Israel’s first prime minister, David
Ben-Gurion: “Ben-Gurion did not want Middle Eastern Jews to come [to
Israel]…but when he saw the vast land, he was forced to bring Middle Eastern
Jews… that didn’t want to come. From Yemen they flew 50,000 Jews…They didn’t
suffice with 50,000 Jews. Then they went to Iraq, which had large reserves of
Jews”.
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He further mendaciously claimed the Israelis cut deals with Iraqi
politicians “to take away the citizenship of Jews and force them to emigrate.”
“They did not suffice with this and gathered all the Jews in Arab countries,
from Morocco to Algeria and Tunis, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon,” Abbas
said. This outrageous speech was almost certainly prompted by the fact that
Abbas and co realise that with Trump the game is now up. The US will no longer
promote the interests of these Palestinian Arabs who have been given a free
pass for their murderous lies all these years.
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But Britain and the EU did not go along with Trump’s recognition of
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. They continue to misrepresent international law
and blame Israel falsely for preventing a peaceful solution to the Middle East
impasse while persistently excusing, justifying and thus conniving at
Palestinian Arab rejectionism. In short, Britain and the EU continue to
support, validate and this connive at an agenda aimed at the extermination of
Israel promoted by hallucinatory lies and libels about the Jewish people along
with gross Holocaust denial.
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Abbas’s speech should be sent to every member of the British parliament,
and the Prime Minister, Theresa May, should be asked how Britain can continue
to give any money at all to such open antisemites and Holocaust deniers. She
should be asked how the British government can continue to support giving such
people a state of their own. She should be asked why the British government has
ignored this horrifying reality, and the constant mortal danger it poses for
the Israelis, for so long. But then, many British people will be unaware of the
appalling nature of Abbas’s speech since the BBC chose to bowdlerise it,
as BBC Watch observes
here. Abbas clearly felt he had nothing to lose by making this speech. America
has made clear it will no longer give the time of day to such an unconscionable
agenda. Only Britain and the EU continue to keep it alive, to their undying
shame.
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