OBAMA – NO INTEREST IN ENDING PALESTINIAN INCITEMENT
By Morton A. Klein, National President
Daniel Mandel, Director
Center for Middle East Policy
Zionist Organization of America
Friday, May 07, 2010
Polls in the last month have shown that Americans, American Jews and
Israelis all disapprove of President Barack Obama’s policies towards Israel.
One reason for the disapproval that emerges in these polls is that the Obama
Administration pressures and criticizes Israel, while giving Mahmoud Abbas’
Palestinian Authority (PA) a free pass.
Such perceptions happen to be well-founded: for example, the Obama
Administration has almost entirely ignored Palestinian incitement. On the
few occasions it has paid it any account at all, it has finessed and
whitewashed it.
On June 4, 2009, President Obama delivered an address in Cairo directed to a
worldwide Muslim audience. While he criticized Holocaust denial and hatred
of Jews in the Muslim world, Obama said nothing about these in relation to
the PA. Indeed, the word “incitement” did not pass his lips.
Criticized for ignoring this issue, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton alluded to by name it in some subsequent statements, but in none did
the Administration indicate that the PA was responsible for the incitement
or if and how the PA might be penalized for its continuation.
On the contrary: when Obama referred to the problem of Palestinian
incitement in his speech at Buchenwald on June 5, 2009, he even praised
Abbas for having made some “progress” in dealing with it – implying that
Abbas and the PA were part of solution rather than the problem.
In August 2009, Fatah held a conference in Bethlehem which reaffirmed Fatah’s
refusal to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, glorified terrorists
living and dead by name, praised the “armed struggle,” insisted on the
so-called ‘right of return,’ and rejected an end of claims in any future
peace agreement with Israel. Abbas himself declared “We maintain the right
to launch an armed resistance.”
How did the Obama Administration react? With silence.
Later, when urged by Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) to take up the issue with
Abbas, Secretary Clinton issued a flat-earth denial, saying that the Fatah
Conference showed “a broad consensus supporting … negotiations with Israel,
and the two-state solution” and that contrary statements by unnamed
“individuals” at the Conference “did not represent Fatah’s official
positions.” This blatant untruth was even more disturbing for coming from
Clinton who, as senator from New York, had once been outspoken about the
imperative to end PA incitement.
In January 2010, when terrorists from Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a
recognized terrorist group, murdered an Israeli, Rabbi Meir Chai in a
drive-by shooting, the PA did not condemn the murder; but it did condemn the
subsequent killing of the terrorists by Israel. Abbas himself sent
condolences to the families of the three terrorists; PA prime minister Salam
Fayyad personally visited the terrorists' families; and Mahmoud Al-Aloul,
member of the Fatah Central Committee, also praised the dead terrorists as
heroes. But the Obama Administration said nothing, even when specifically
informed of these events by the Israeli government.
Similarly, when PA TV broadcast a sermon from Nablus’s Bourin Mosque on
January 29, in which Jews were declared “the enemies of Allah and of His
Messenger … Enemies of humanity in general” and Muslims exhorted to murder
them with the words “The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill
them,” the Administration continued to say nothing.
In March, Obama Administration publicly condemned Israel for announcing a
program of building Jewish homes in eastern Jerusalem during Vice-President
Joseph Biden’s visit. It failed however to condemn – or indeed say anything
at all – about something else that occurred during Biden’s visit: the PA
naming a public square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, the leader of the
1978 coastal road bus hijacking, in which 37 Israelis, including 12
children, were slaughtered.
When at last Secretary Clinton provided the Administration’s first
criticism of the obscene glorification of Mughrabi by Palestinians several
days later, it was only to whitewash and protect Abbas, Fayyad and the PA by
incorrectly suggesting that it was “a Hamas-controlled municipality” that
had initiated the event. Adding insult to injury, Clinton actually praised
Abbas and Fayyad for their strengthening of “law and order.”
At the time of these remarks, the PA was actively instigating violence in
and around Jerusalem. Here, too, Clinton avoided any mention of the PA in
referring to the disorders, speaking only of unidentified “instigators.”
The conclusion is inevitable: the Obama Administration is not interested in
Palestinian incitement and sees it as its brief to protect the PA from
exposure as sponsors of violence and purveyors of hate. Phillip Crowley,
Assistant Secretary of State, said last month that the Administration “will
continue[!] to hold Palestinian leaders accountable for incitement.” Abbas
and Fayyad must be quaking in their boots.
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Morton A. Klein is national president of the Zionist Organization of
America. Daniel Mandel is director of the ZOA’s Center for Middle East
Policy.
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