The real Palestinian narrative
This month, opining on the long failed Arab-Israeli peace process, former Israeli ambassador to the United States Zalman Shuval quoted former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban, stating that "the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Shuval also remarked that Arab leaders "thwart in advance any Israeli or international initiative that would put them on the road to genuinely and ideologically accepting the existence of the State of Israel." The Palestinian Authority (P.A.) predictably deemed these comments racist and inciting violence against Arabs.
The P.A.'s virtue-signaling narrative is a false one. Arab leaders have thwarted multiple attempts at peace (in 1937 [Peel Commission], 1947 [the Partition Plan], 1967 [the Khartoum Resolution], 1967–1968 [the Allon Plan], 2000 [Camp David], 2001 [Taba], 2008 [Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer to P.A. president Mahmoud Abbas], and 2019 [President Trump's Peace to Prosperity economic plan]). Arab leaders are now zipping by their eighth missed opportunity at ludicrous speed. Pointing that out is neither racism nor incitement. It is merely a restatement of the facts.
The P.A.'s perennial misfire raises some questions. Just how qualified is the P.A. to be an arbiter of all things bigoted? Just how woke is the P.A. to racism and incitement to violence? Not even a bit qualified, and not woke at all.
Taking a look just at the past three years alone, the P.A./the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)/Fatah, through its media and officials, has continued to incite the Arab population against Israel and its Jewish population by:
- Spreading libels against Israel, including that Israel: spreads AIDS and drugs through the Arab population, steals organs from Arabs, is desecrating Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, seeks to conquer Arab land from the Nile to the Euphrates, is a cancer, and threatens all of humanity;
- Promoting the "animalization and dehumanization" of Israelis, portraying them as dogs, locusts, rats, sons of apes and pigs, etc.;
- Glorifying homicide bombers and other terrorists who murder Israelis in cold blood, including arch-terrorists Abu Jihad and Dalal Mughrabi, the planner and leader of Israel's most lethal terrorist attack. Just this month, the Palestinian Authority named a summer camp "The Sisters of Dalal Summer Camp" after Dalal Mughrabi. In April, to commemorate the anniversary of Abu Jihad's death, the P.A./Fatah honored him on Facebook, in a rally, and in the news;
- Paying salaries to terrorists and their families. Just this month, the P.A. agreed to double the salary of the Hamas terrorist that was convicted of orchestrating the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in 2014;
- Admitting to orchestrating the First and Second Intifadas;
- Calling on Arab children to carry out terror attacks;
- Praising the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a well known Nazi collaborator, as a "role model";
- Opposing "normalization" of relations with Israel;
- Denying Israel's right to exist; and, last but most certainly not least,
- Calling for the murder of Jews worldwide.
Disinformation that is racist and incites violence is propagated by the P.A. and consumed by its subjects. But given Mahmoud Abbas's libelous dissertation in Moscow on Zionist and Nazi collaboration in perpetrating the Holocaust, and his alleged work as a KGB spy, are we surprised? Peace is elusive, as Abbas and his cronies never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.