Latest Fatah/P.A. anti-U.S. statements
The Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas is continuing in recent weeks to propagate the libel that Israel and the U.S. murdered Yasser Arafat by poisoning through statements of PA officials, clerics academics and publicists. Last week, Khaled Mismar, member of the PLO’s Palestinian National Council claimed in the official PA newspaper: “[In 2003] Israel, with the support of the new American administration of President Bush, laid oppressive siege to our late symbol, Yasser Arafat, until they got him with poison, since they weren’t able to kill him using their tanks, which besieged his home in Ramallah. The details of the story are known to everyone, young and old, among our Palestinian people and throughout the world” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 10, 2010).
Only weeks earlier, Nashat Al-Aqtash, a lecturer at Bir-Zeit University, said on PA TV that “In the past [Israel claimed] no Palestinian partner existed, and they [Israel] killed the late Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat” (PA TV (Fatah), July 27, 2010). And in June, in a dramatic performance at a PLO cultural festival attended by the PA Minister of Culture, two young Palestinian boys lamented Arafat’s death, and compared his death at the hands of the Jews to the death of Jesus:
Boy 1 [addressing Arafat]: “Father, father the Elder [Arafat]. Why did it happen this way? Why did it happen this way? Death chose you, and you did not complete the path.”
Boy 2: “Do not ask why it happened this way. Yesterday they crucified Jesus; today they poisoned the father, the Elder [Arafat]” (PA TV (Fatah), June 4, 2010, translations courtesy of
Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, ‘PA Libel: Israel and the US poisoned Yasser Arafat,’ Palestinian Media Watch bulletin, August 16, 2010).
Though the senior leadership of Fatah are careful not to make explicitly anti-American statements, several Fatah/PA officials, figures and pundits have done so in Arabic in PA organs:
· October 2007: A cartoon published in the Palestinian Authority (PA) newspaper, Al Hayat al-Jadida, controlled by PA president Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah, shows a Muslim kneeling at prayer while looking towards an American Stealth bomber, praying as follows: “Allah, scatter them! And turn their wives into widows! And turn their children into orphans! And give us victory over them!” (Al Hayat Al-Jadida, October 9, 2007 translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch , October 9, 2007).
· April 2007: In a sermon broadcast on PA TV, Dr. Ismail Radwan said, “O Allah, strengthen Islam and Muslims, and bring victory to your Jihad-fighting worshipers, in Palestine and everywhere… Allah take the oppressor Jews and Americans and their supporters!” (PA TV, March 7, 2007, translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch, April 30, 2007).
· January 2007: Abu Ali Shahin a former Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister from Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party wished Al Qaeda success in its attacks against the U.S., and in its targeting of President George W. Bush: “Do to Bush whatever you want, and we wish you success… We are fighting the Americans and hate the Americans more than you!” (PA TV, January 1, 2007).
· October 2006: Cartoons in Al Hayat Al Jadida celebrated the losses of American servicemen and women in Iraq in a cartoon showing the stripes of the American flag replaced by skulls, with Uncle Sam looking on and weeping. The caption for the cartoon read, “More than 100 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq this past month!” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, October 30, 2006, translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch, November 2, 2006).
· March 2006: Hafez Barghouti, editor of the PA-controlled Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily newspaper, a mouthpiece of the Abbas regime, said “The extremism in Arab societies is an outcome of American policy … Washington has its own agenda, distinct domineering and imperialistic aspirations. The service of democracy is not among them …” (March 8, 2006, quoted in Jerusalem Newswire, March 10, 2006).
· April 2003: Sheikh Ibrahim Mudayris, broadcasting from the Ijlin Mosque in Gaza on PA TV said that “America organizes the systematic destruction of Iraq. America organizes the looting, plundering, and destruction operations.” He concluded with a prayer for Allah to give victory to the Iraqis and the Palestinian Arabs “against the Jews, Britain, and the United States, and their allies” (PA TV, April 18, 2003).
ZOA National Chairman of the Board Dr. Michael Goldblatt said, “The record is clear – the PA and its official organs, all of which remain under the control of the allegedly moderate, peace-seeking Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah terror organization that he co-founded with Yasser Arafat – broadcast blatant hatred of America and incitement to murder Americans. As the examples provided show, this has been happening repeatedly for years.
“It is truly astonishing that the Obama Administration thinks it owes Mahmoud Abbas and the PA any sort of political support over the unprecedented level of $1.4 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded aid that it has lavished on this undeserving, extremist, terrorist-sponsoring and violence-advocating regime.
“Rather than pursuing the futile and counter-productive path of praising and funding a terror regime, the Obama Administration should be making it clear that it will neither deal with nor fund the PA until and unless it finally fulfills its 17-year-old signed commitments under the Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan to jail terrorists, confiscate their weaponry, and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools, and youth camps that feed terror.”