The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has urged the Israeli Government, in the wake non-stop, continuing Palestinian Authority (PA) efforts to malign and delegitimize Israel with lies, to start publicly delegitimizing the PA by stating the truth about the PA regime’s pro-terror, racist, anti-peace words and deeds.
The ZOA believes that such an effort must be led by the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – it cannot be led by ministers or individual Knesset Members, valuable as their contribution can be. Imagine the impact of Prime Minister Netanyahu calling a press conference, with posters showing horrific anti-Israel statements made by PA leaders in public or to the Arab media, or with pictures of Palestinian posters glorifying terrorists, or the Fatah emblem showing Israel draped in a Palestinian headdress and labeled Palestine behind him, explaining that the PA must accept Israel’s existence as Jewish state, arrest terrorists and outlaw terrorist groups and end incitement to hatred and murder or else peace is impossible. Individual Israeli politicians can be ignored by the media, but the Israeli Prime Minister has a unique ability to place this vital issue on the international radar screen.
By taking this course of action, Israel would reduce support and sympathy for, and the credibility of, the PA. Moreover, once people better understand the actual nature of the PA and its goals, the PA’s negative campaign on Israel will be much reduced in effectiveness. Such action would enable foreign governments and publics to better understand the nature of the PA regime and the war upon Israel waged by Arab states with which it has to contend. At present, however, the PA works assiduously to demonize Israel internationally and falsely present it as a rogue, oppressive, apartheid regime. Most recently, the PA violated its Oslo II signed agreements (in which they accepted the existence of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria under Israeli control) by working to have Israel condemned in the United Nations Security Council for the presence of these communities by having them falsely declared illegal.
As the ZOA has already documented, just in recent months, Mahmoud Abbas said to an Arab audience that “if the Arabs want war against Israel] – we are with them”; awarded the family of a dead Palestinian terrorist who attempted to attach an Israeli checkpoint with pipe bombs a $2000 presidential grant; a senior P.A. Health Ministry official publicly accused Israel of addicting Palestinian drug users; PA TV broadcast indoctrinated children claiming Jews poisoned Yasser Arafat; the ruling Fatah’s party convention was named after Munich Olympics Jew-killer Al-Hindi; and pro-terror songs and pro-terror bands broadcast in the officially controlled PA media. Also, the PA officially endorsed an absurd study with the preposterous theme that Jews have no claim of any kind to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, while Abbas himself has said that, in a future Palestinian state, “we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it.”
In recent years, the PA ruling party, Fatah, produced an emblem, depicting all of Israel, labeled ‘Palestine’ covered in a Palestinian headdress, with a picture of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat and a Kalashnikov rifle beside it. Streets, schools and sports teams have been named in honor of suicide bombers and other terrorists who have murdered Israelis, while thousands of posters have been produced and displayed in public squares, schools and buildings of these same terrorist figures. Official days have been designated by the PA to honor specific terrorists.
Last week, at a meeting with American Jewish leaders, Israeli Arab Muslim journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh, in response to a question from ZOA National President Morton A. Klein, said that the PA has no interest in peace and that it simply wants to destroy Israel and kill Jews.
Accordingly, the ZOA is urging Israel to cease describing PA president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salaam Fayyad as peace partners and moderates when they are neither. It should cease to talk up the prospects of a peace agreement with the PA when none is possible. As Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann has argued with reference to the application of game theory to Israel’s circumstances, Israel needs to avoid the ‘Blackmailer Paradox,’ whereby it makes concessions in the face of unyielding Palestinian demands in the belief that only thus can it gain anything at all and that the alternative of no agreement is necessarily intolerable. This leads to the false conclusion that Israel can gain something by yielding, even peace, when it is not in fact available and the concessions made merely embolden the Palestinians to move on to their next demand.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It is long past time for the Israeli government to finally speak out fearlessly and publicly about the fraudulence as a peace partner of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which works to delegitimize Israel with lies.
“The failure of the PA to fulfill its commitments to arrest terrorists and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds terror and hostilities, coupled with its international efforts to lie about, demonize and delegitimize Israel, calls for a strong, direct and sustained response from the Israeli government.
“It is unthinkable that the PA should be able to do these things without in any way being penalized by Israel, which continues to offer it legitimacy through negotiations.
“If Israel will not speak the truth about the PA, no one else will. It is high time for Israel to expose the pro-terror, anti-peace words and deeds of Abbas’ PA and begin the process of denying this unreconstructed, terror-sponsoring regime the oxygen of legitimacy and credibility. This should have happened years ago. It should begin now.”