Abbas is no ‘world leader’ – opinion

Abbas has also long been given a free pass from the UN and others regarding the PA harboring and protecting terrorists.

By Moshe Phillips

Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a single four-year term as chairman of the Palestinian Authority well over 20 years ago.

Several journalists at ABC News, in their reports on Abbas’s speech (given via video to the UN General Assembly on September 25), referred to him as a “world leader” and otherwise skewed their coverage of the man who has been chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since Yasser Arafat died in 2004.

This is significant, since the official emblem of Abbas’s PLO still features a map of “Palestine” that leaves no room for any State of Israel—”from the river to the sea.”

When Abbas looks around him, he must be astonished at how news outlets and the international community have acquiesced to his brutal dictatorship and unwillingness to hold elections.

Here are some direct quotes from the ABC News staffers:

Shannon Kingston breathlessly reported that it was “remarkable to see Abbas … say that… he would work with him (Trump) and that’s because the two leaders have a lot of bad blood in the past.”

It is disturbing that Kingston would draw any such comparison between an elected U.S. president and the leader of the murderous PLO.

Kyra Phillips (no relation) called Abbas the “leader of the war-torn region.” What’s worse, she said, “(Abbas) also called for the release of all hostages on both sides.”

Israel does not hold any hostages; it has prisoners and detainees.

Kayna Whitworth said, “among the long list of world leaders taking the podium today: the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.”

“World leader”? Abbas leads no sovereign country. This is simply false reporting.

Abbas’s four-year PA term expired in 2009. He’s still in office because he refuses to hold elections. The Palestinian Authority Legislative Council has not functioned since 2007. The PA dissolved its Constitutional Court in 2018.

So, where are the protests from pro-democracy groups around the world?

Abbas has also long been given a free pass from the UN and others regarding the PA harboring and protecting terrorists.

The PA has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world (over 60,000 men) and it has largely been armed and trained by the United States.

Yet instead of using those forces to arrest and extradite terrorists—as the Oslo Accords require—Abbas and his PA pay salaries to terrorists and their families, and shelter fugitive terrorists so Israel can’t capture them.

Every once in a while, the PA and Hamas have a brief clash—not over policy toward Israel, but as a result of their own internal power struggles.

The PA will briefly detain a few Hamas members, and Western media will claim that the PA is “cracking down” on the terrorists.

In fact, that “crackdown” was just “a big show,” as Lt. Col. Dr. Shaul Bartal, of the Begin-Sadat Center, pointed out.

The most glaring proof this year that it’s just “a big show” is that the PA’s “crackdown” was not even mentioned by the PA’s own news agency, Wafa.

If the PA had really turned against the terrorists, they would have broadcast the news as loudly as possible so that average Palestinian Arabs would turn against Hamas, too.

But Wafa did not say a word, even as the New York Times and others were claiming that the PA had gone to war against Hamas.

Abbas for two decades has made a mockery of the Oslo Accords—and the UN couldn’t care less. All the governments and journalists and advocates who hailed Oslo as the dawn of peace choose to ignore his daily, constant, wanton violations of his Oslo obligations.

And this was while Israel refrained from removing Abbas from office, hoping that such restraint would encourage him and the PA to make peace.

It didn’t work—all Israel received in return from Abbas and his PA henchmen was murder and incitement. The PA agreed to “abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda” against Israel.

Obviously, Abbas hasn’t done that. The PA’s controlled media and schools are filled with anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate.

So, Mahmoud Abbas must be very happy that news reporters and UN bureaucrats are treating him like a world leader. What more could a dictator ask for?

[Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI: www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.]