by A.J. Caschetta
The US State Department's Palestinian fantasies are on display in its congressionally-mandated annual report on international terrorism released in July.
In spite of recent polls indicating
that ordinary Palestinians increasingly recognize that Israel is here
to stay, the rejectionist Palestinian leadership remains the most
formidable obstacle to a peace agreement with the Jewish state. But
running a close second place is the US State Department, where unfounded
faith in Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) remains
unshaken.
The State Department's Palestinian fantasies are on display in its congressionally-mandated annual report
on international terrorism released in July. Abbas's PA "continued its
counterterrorism efforts in the West Bank where Hamas, Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
remained present," according to the report. Abbas is portrayed as a
benign leader with an expressed "commitment to nonviolence, recognition
of the State of Israel, and pursuit of an independent Palestinian state
through peaceful means."
The
report applauds the PA for taking "significant steps during President
Abbas' tenure (2005 to date) to ensure that official institutions in the
West Bank under its control do not create or disseminate content that
incites violence." And it asserts that "explicit calls for violence
against Israelis, direct exhortations against Jews, and categorical
denials by the PA of the possibility of peace with Israel are rare and
the leadership does not generally tolerate it."
So
much is wrong with this incredible assessment of the PA's 2016
activities that either the judgment or the competence of its authors
must be questioned.
Claims that the PA doesn't tolerate calls for violence overlook the entire Palestinian educational system.
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To begin, claiming that the PA doesn't tolerate calls for violence requires overlooking the entire PA educational system, which exists to incite violence against Israelis. As then-Senator Hillary Clinton observed correctly
in 2007, the PA's textbooks "do not give Palestinian children an
education; they give them an indoctrination...[which] profoundly poisons
the[ir] minds." When the school term ends, PA summer camps keep the children's skills sharp.
Where
formal education ends, cultural inculcation takes over. The State
Department somehow failed to notice that 2016 was a banner year for the
PA's multi-media incitement, beginning in January with a music video
released on the PA's Awdah TV directing Palestinians to "Besiege them
[Israelis] in all their neighborhoods, Drown them in a sea of blood,
Kill them as you wish."
On Facebook, Fatah and the PA began 2016 honoring "martyrs" who die killing Israelis and ended 2016
honoring the "10th anniversary of the death of the Martyr Saddam
Hussein." More of the same occupies the rest of the year's social media
activity.
2016 was a banner year for the PA's multi-media incitement.
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The
State Department dismisses this briskly: "In practice, however, some
instances of incitement took place via official media There were also
some instances of inflammatory rhetoric and the posting of political
cartoons glorifying violence on official Fatah Facebook pages." In
truth, there is little else on those pages.
In
praising Abbas' "commitment to fight terrorism" and believing him when
he "said he was against all forms of terrorist activity," the State
Department falls for what Khaled Abu Toameh calls
the PA's "double game: on the one hand...telling the world that it
wants peace and coexistence with Israel; on the other hand...continuing
to incite Palestinians against Israel, and driving some to take guns and
knives and set out to murder Jews."
Social media is today the primary engine of extremist incitement among Palestinians.
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The
State Department document emphasizes "the perception that the Israeli
government was changing the status quo on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple
Mount" as one of the "[c]ontinued drivers of violence" among
Palestinians. But it fails to recognize that Abbas himself is the author of the lies that Israel is changing the status of the Temple Mount, plotting
to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque, and carrying out "extrajudicial
executions of [Palestinian] youth and children." After whipping up a
frenzy of humiliation and revenge, Abbas reveled in the violence he
fomented, ghoulishly celebrating on Palestinian television: "We welcome every of drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah."
The State Department analysts who laud Abbas' acceptance of a "two-state solution" overlook his September 2016 speech
to the UN where he reached back to the Balfour Declaration, demanding
Britain apologize for giving "the land of Palestine to another people."
Gross
incompetence aside, the only logical explanation for the State
Department's inaccurate and misleading report is that its authors still
believe, as Barack Obama put it in a 2013 speech in Jerusalem, that Israel has "a true partner in President Abbas." He was wrong then. So is the State Department now.
A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Source: http://www.meforum.org/6920/the-state-department-palestinian-fantasies
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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