The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) urges Mahmoud Abbas a/k/a Abu Mazen to heed Pope Francis’ advice to become an angel of peace.   Abbas obtained his PhD in Holocaust denial, financed the brutal massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, co-founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terror group, and has continued to promote terror in his position as illegitimate President of the Fatah-Hamas Palestinian Authority terrorist Unity government.  (Abbas’ elected term of office expired five years ago.)  On Saturday, May 16, Pope Francis gave Mr. Abbas a medallion representing the angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war,” and according to some (albeit conflicting) reports, the Pope urged Abbas: “May you be an angel of peace.”   ZOA National President Morton Klein noted:

“Mahmoud Abbas’ lifelong, continuing instigation of terror against Israelis, Jews and Christians would need to dramatically change in order for Abbas to become an ‘angel of peace,’ but I join the Pope in urging Abbas to do so.”  

ZOA is listing below a few of the many concrete steps that Abbas would need to take to make the colossal transformation from promoter of terrorism to man of peace: 

1.  End the Fatah unity deal with the Hamas and remove all Hamas officials from the Palestinian Authority (PA) government.  (Hamas is a U.S. State Department designated terrorist organization, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of every Jew.)

2.  Remove the PFLP (another U.S. State Department designated terrorist organization) from the Palestinian Authority government.  

3.  Stop rewarding Arab murderers of Jews, and the murderers’ families, with lifetime pension payments.

4. Stop honoring and calling vicious Arab Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish civilians “martyrs” and “heroic brothers.”  

5.  Rescind the PA’s highest award, the “Star of Honor” recently given by Abbas to PLO terrorist Khalid Al-Wazir a/k/a Abu Jihad, who planned numerous terrorist attacks in which at least 125 Israelis were murdered, including the 1975 terrorist assault on Tel Aviv’s Savoy Hotel, and the 1978 coastal road massacre in which Fatah terrorists hijacked an Israeli civilian bus and slaughtered 37 passengers, including a dozen children.  (Abbas should also rescind the numerous honors he bestowed upon this barbarous massacre’s leader, Dalal Al-Mughrabi, and upon other perpetrators of heinous terrorist acts.)

6.  Recognize Israel as the Jewish State.

7.  Stop deliberately hiring previously convicted terrorists as members of the PA “security” forces.

8.  Stop inciting Palestinian Arabs to murder innocent Jews (including babies) by ploughing their vehicles into Jewish civilians; such incitement has included statements and even PLO/Fatah cartoons urging Arabs to “step on the gas” and  commit car intifada.

9.  Repeal the PA law that makes selling land to Jews punishable by death.

10.  Stop naming schools, streets, sports teams, sports tournaments, children’s camps and public squares after Jew killers – and change the names of these institutions to names that promote peaceful co-existence.

11.   Stop publicly urging Palestinian Arabs to “prevent Jews from entering the Temple Mount (the holiest Jewish site) ‘by all means necessary,’ an unambiguous call for violence.”

12.  Rescind Abbas’s racist anti-Semitic statements (and the similar statements by other Fatah/PA officials including Saeb Ereqat, Ahmed Qurei and Maen Arekat) that no Jews will be allowed to step foot into a “Palestinian State.”  Abbas stated: “We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it … when a Palestinian state is established, it would have no Israeli presence in it” (Khaled Abu Toameh, ‘Abbas vows: No room for Israelis in Palestinian state,’ Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2010).

13.  Stop the continuing harassment of and violence against Christians, which has caused thousands of Christians to flee from PA-controlled areas.

14.  Stop using school curricula and textbooks that teach Arab Palestinian children to hate and murder Jews and Americans, and to destroy Israel.  For instance, these textbooks and schools promote false anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”), promote terrorism and martyrdom, falsify history by claiming that Jews never lived in Israel, literally wipe Israel off every map and substitute “Palestine,” for it, and falsely claim that Jews attacked Arab holy sites.   Instead, teach accurate history and peaceful co-existence.

15.  Renounce Abbas’s tracts and repeated statements denying the Holocaust, falsely claiming that Zionist Jews worked with Nazis to murder several hundred thousand Jews, to create sympathy for the establishment of a Jewish State.   These outrageous assertions were the basis of Abbas’s doctoral thesis from the “People’s Friendship University of Russia,” and Abbas’s book, and were reiterated in Abbas’s recent public statements.

16.  End economic warfare against Jews and Israel – the boycott, divestment sanctions (BDS) movement.  Abbas and the PA leadership instigated BDS, in violation of the PA’s written agreements (in the Oslo accords) in which they pledged to economically cooperate with Israel.  BDS harms peaceful co-existence, and has caused hundreds of Arabs to lose well-paid jobs in Jewish-owned businesses.

17.  Comply with PA’s written obligation (in the Oslo accords) to arrest terrorists, outlaw terrorist groups, extradite terrorists to Israel, confiscate terrorists’ weapons, and end continuing incitement against Jews and Israel in schools, speeches and media.

18.  Change the Fatah charter which repeatedly calls for Israel’s destruction and “armed struggle” (meaning terrorism) against Jews and Israel, and eliminate the official emblem that Abbas commissioned and adopted for his Fatah party (the PA’s ruling party – with Hamas), which depicts all of Israel as “Palestine” covered by a keffiyeh (Palestinian scarf), and places in the center of the map a picture of the terrorist Yasser Arafat and a Kalashnikov rifle.  Instead of continuing to use an official emblem that represents violently wiping Israel off the map, substitute an emblem representing peaceful co-existence – an emblem that would befit a recipient of a peace medal.