Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:

At the joint President Trump – Mahmoud Abbas press conference on Wednesday (May 3, 2017), President Trump identified a key impediment to real peace, when President Trump stated: “there cannot be lasting peace unless the Palestinian leaders speak in a unified voice against incitement to violate — and violence and hate.  There’s such hatred.”  Shockingly, in response, Palestinian Authority (PA) dictator Abbas blatantly lied to President Trump:  Abbas made the absurd claim – which everyone knows is false – that “we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace.”

Incitement against Jews and Israel in fact permeates the Palestinian Authority’s media, schools, textbooks, television specials, and government-controlled mosques.  The new PA textbooks and curricula are more radical than ever, envision an Arab Palestine that replaces all of Israel; demonize Jews and Israel, and call the entirety of Israel “1948 Occupied Territories”; brainwash even the youngest children that they must become rage-filled “martyrs” willing to sacrifice their lives and blood to murder Jews and destroy Israel; and even teach math using numbers of dead martyrs.  Palestinian Authority sports teams, clubs, schools, streets, public squares and government buildings are all named after terrorists who murdered Jewish children and other Jewish civilians.  (See “ZOA: Make Key Demands of Abbas at Undeserved Upcoming White House Meeting: ZOA Urges: Demand Abbas Stop Incitement/Paying Families of Jew-Killers; End Hamas Alliance; Rename Schools/Streets Named After Jew-Killers,” Apr. 24, 2017; and “Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016–17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program,” by Eldad J. Pardo, Impact-se.org, April 2017; and “New Study Shows Abbas’ P.A. Still Inciting Hatred & Murder Of Jews,” ZOA, Mar. 2, 2016.) 

Similarly, the PA and Abbas rejected and treated with utter disdain President Trump’s important, request to Abbas to end the PA/PLO’s payments to Palestinian-Arab terrorists for murdering Jews.  At President Trump’s May 3 meeting with Abbas, “President Trump emphasized the importance of [Abbas] making a clear commitment to preventing inflammatory rhetoric and to stopping incitement, and to continue strengthening efforts to combat terrorism. President Trump raised his concerns about payments to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have committed terrorist acts, and to their families, and emphasized the need to resolve this issue.”  (“White House Readout of the Meeting Between President Donald J. Trump and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority,” May 3, 2017.)  Shortly afterwards, during an interview on Israel radio, PA official Nabil Shaath (Abbas’s senior foreign policy adviser) rejected President Trump’s request and insultingly described President Trump’s important request as “mad.”  (See “Palestinian Authority Rejects Trump’s ‘Mad’ Request To End Terrorists’ Payments,” by Jerusalem Post Staff, Yasser Okbi, Maariv Hashavua, May 4, 2017.) 

In addition, Abbas also demonstrated that he is not serious about living peacefully with the Jewish State in even more ways:  Abbas promoted the nonstarter Orwellian-named “Arab Peace Initiative” plan for Israel’s destruction; and sought the antithetical-to-peace release from Israeli prisons of convicted Palestinian-Arab terrorists who murdered innocent Jews and Americans. 

As ZOA and the press predicted would occur (See “ZOA: Abbas Promotes So-Called “Arab Peace Initiative” Which is a Nonstarter,” May 3, 2017), Abbas used his portion of Wednesday’s joint press conference to promote giving “a great impetus to the Arab Peace Initiative” – the misleadingly-named plan for Israel’s destruction.  During his press conference speech, Abbas enumerated all the same old nonstarter elements of the “Arab Peace Initiative”:  Abbas demanded that Israel must retreat to the suicidal 1949 Armistice lines (which Abbas called “1967 borders” although these lines are not legally recognized borders); create a Palestinian Arab state in Israel’s heartland (which would be a terrorist state); dismember the eternal Jewish capital of Jerusalem and make the area containing Judaism’s holiest sites the capital of “Palestine”; and let millions of descendants of non-indigenous, hostile “Palestinian Arab refugees” move into Israel to overrun the Jewish State.  Following the “Arab Peace Initiative” playbook, Abbas indicated that if Israel makes all these one-sided suicidal concessions of tangible lands and rights, this might “lead to” “normalization” of relations – a vague, meaningless notion.

In addition, Abbas spoke during the press conference of resolving “the issue of the prisoners” – a euphemistic way of demanding that Israel must release Palestinian Arab terrorists convicted of murdering innocent Jewish and American citizens. 

In a worthwhile op-ed yesterday, the mayor of Efrat, Israel explained that Abbas’s Palestinian Authority arrests Palestinian Arabs for the “crime” of drinking coffee with their Jewish neighbors in Judea/Samaria.  In sum, in Abbas’s PA, daring to try to peacefully co-exist with Jews is a crime, and murdering Jews is rewarded.  And sadly, nothing has changed.  (See “Why Opening the White House Doors to Mahmoud Abbas is a Losing Proposition for Mideast Peace,” by Oded Revivi, Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2017.)