Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Chair Mark Levenson, Esq. released the following statement regarding the death of Saeb Erekat:

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat was an unrepentant PLO propagandist and inciter of terror and murder against the Jewish people throughout his life.  Erekat also thwarted peace at every turn, rejected Israel’s extraordinarily generous peace offers with no counteroffers, demanded absurd concessions that were tantamount to Israel’s destruction, and openly opposed peace agreements between Israel and Arab nations.  

It is thus sickening to read left wing media’s glowing obituaries and left wing groups’ condolence tweets describing Erekat as a “peace negotiator.”  Erekat’s apologists did not even bother to mention that Israel’s top medical providers at Hadassah Hospital made heroic efforts to save Erekat’s life from a complicated case of COVID – despite the fact that Erekat was a vicious enemy of the Jewish state and people, and a supporter of boycotting Israel (BDS).

Here are some examples of how Erekat consistently and hatefully promoted anti-Jewish terror and opposed peace:

• Erekat promoted and defended the Palestinian Authority’s heinous policy of paying Arabs lifelong pensions to pay and reward and incentivize Arabs to murder Jews and Americans. And the more Jews or Americans they murdered the larger their pensions.  Erekat called these horrific “pay to slay” payments to murderers a “social responsibility,” that helps “reinsert released prisoners back into society” (to kill innocent Israelis again).  

• In a tweet on September 27, 2020, Erekat condemned the UAE and Bahrain peace agreements with Israel and said that recognizing Jerusalem “as the capital of Israel is the highest stage of corruption and political decay.”  Erekat also repeatedly condemned the peace agreements and the parties to the peace agreements as “traitors” and “immoral.”  

• In tweets on September 29, 2020, Erekat demanded the immediate resignation of the Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Abu Al Gheit because Al Gheit defended the UAE normalization peace agreement with Israel.  And on September 20, Erekat praised Algeria’s president for condemning normalization agreements with “Israel.”  (Erekat put the word Israel in quotes.)

• This past summer, Saeb Erekat repeatedly falsely tweeted that “the occupation” (Erekat’s demonizing term for Israel) “executed” Ahmad Moustafa Erekat “in cold blood,” and called Ahmad a “martyr.”  In fact, as the video demonstrated, Ahmad was killed while carrying out a car ramming and terror attack.  Ahmad first slowed down, and then sped up and changed direction to deliberately drive his car into an Israeli border policewoman, who was injured.  

• In 2002, Erekat initiated, publicized, and repeatedly spread the blood libel that Jews “massacred” “over 500 Palestinians” at Jenin.  In repeated CNN interviews (on April 10, 12, and 15), Erekat also falsely claimed that Israel was burying over 300 Palestinians in mass graves, and said that he stood by his “massacre” claims.  Erekat also falsely told CNN that he had a list of 1,600 Palestinians who were missing relatives (including children) in Jenin.  Erekat never retracted these vile lies.  

In fact, Jenin was a pitched battle in which 23 Israeli soldiers and a confirmed total of only 52 Palestinians (almost all terrorists) were killed.  The IDF was attempting to stop Jenin-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PLO, and Hamas terrorists, who led dozens of horrific bombings against innocent Israelis in 2002, including the Netanya Seder attack in which 30 innocent Jews were murdered and 140 Jews were injured.  The 23 Israeli soldiers died in Jenin because they, at their increased risk, went house to house to avoid any possibility of harming Palestinian civilians.  The Arab terrorists booby-trapped the houses to blow up the Israeli soldiers who were trying to protect Arab civilians.  If the IDF had simply blown up the terrorists’ buildings, those 23 murdered Israeli boys would have lived.

Erekat’s vicious Jenin blood libel incited Arab terrorists to murder and maim thousands more innocent Jews in the Second Intifada.  

• During a 2014 Al Jazeera interview, Erekat stated that Palestinians “absolutely” have the “right” to “resistance.” (“Resistance” means perpetrating violence and murder.)

• Also during his 2014 Al Jazeera interview, Erekat announced, “I will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”  Erekat also falsely claimed that Netanyahu “killed 36 Palestinians in cold blood” since negotiations began (referring to the 2014 pro-Palestinian negotiations efforts led by Secretary of State John Kerry, which Erekat refused to extend).  Erekat also insisted that he was the “Chief Negotiator” for (an absurdly inflated) “11 million Palestinians,” and “No force on Earth will change, will make me change my narrative” that they all have a so-called “right to return” to Israel with compensation.  (A U.S. State Department report revealed that there are only about 20,000 Palestinian refugees in the world.)  

• On September 20, 2020, Erekat tweeted praises for former Saudi King Abdulaziz Al Saud (d. 1953) for “contact[ing] several countries to provide weapons to the mujahideen who were defending Palestine against Zionist ambitions,” (meaning, helping to arm the six Arab armies who invaded Israel in 1948-1949) and telling FDR that “Since the Germans had killed three million Polish Jews, thus there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many displaced Jews.”  (In other words, send the Jews to Poland.)

• In a recorded 2014 meeting, Erekat said that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was a “war criminal” who was “not worth the bullet” to shoot him.  

• At a 2017 pro-Palestinian United Nations event, Erekat stated that, “Hamas and the PFLP are not terrorist organizations,” and called Hamas simply a “Palestinian political party.”  In fact, the U.S. State Department and other nations designate both Hamas and the PFLP (the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) as foreign terrorist organizations.  

• After Israeli security services arrested PFLP terror chief Ahmad Sa’adat for ordering the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi, and four PFLP terrorists who carried out the assassination, Erekat demanded that Israel return “the abducted men” back to the Palestinian Authority and demanded that Israel should not put these murderers on trial.  

• During a 2009 interview with a Jordanian newspaper, Erekat stated that no Jews should be permitted to stay in a Palestinian state, and that Palestinians have an “absolute right” to the eastern portion of Jerusalem (which includes the Jewish people’s holiest sites). 

• A New York Post editorial, entitled “Bribing Harvard to Hire a Terror Apologist — With Your Tax Dollars” (Sept. 13, 2020), blasted Harvard for hiring Erekat – “a failed, dishonest Palestinian diplomat to teach . . . diplomacy” after Harvard “got nearly $2 million in donations from the Palestinian Authority, which rakes in billions in foreign aid, including from America.”  The NY Post noted Erekat’s lies about Jenin and that “in 2015, [Erekat] justified random stabbing attacks by Palestinians as “self-defense”.”   

In response, Erekat accused the “New York Post and extremists” of lying, and threatened: “every extremist hater, anti-Palestinian racist, will be brought to justice.”  

Fortunately, the world will be spared more of Erekat’s perverted, racist, antisemitic, Israelophobic, deadly “justice.”