PA President Mahmoud Abbas, addressing the EU in Brussels. Photo: Screenshot.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who recently spoke to the European Parliament in Brussels, departed from his prepared text to take his public disdain for Jews to a new level.

Abbas began his speech:

“Only a week ago, a number of rabbis in Israel…[demanded] that their government poison the water to kill the Palestinians. Isn’t that clear incitement to commit mass killings against the Palestinian people?”

Even the New York Times characterized Abbas’ comment as “echoing anti-Semitic claims that led to the mass killings of European Jews in medieval times.” The progressive lobbying group J Street, widely regarded as the Palestinian Authority mouthpiece on Capitol Hill, took to twitter to condemn Abbas’ “hoax story about rabbis poisoning Palestinians’ water.”

Here is the so-called “moderate peace partner” offering up a 21st century version of the 14th century libel in which European Jews were accused of poisoning wells to spread the Black Plague. That water libel led to the massacre of many thousands, including the complete destruction of numerous Jewish communities.

After invoking this well-known anti-Semitic trope, which prompted harsh condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Jewish groups, Abbas admitted that the libel was fraudulent, but insisted that his words were not anti-Semitic.

This libel, however, was no slip of the tongue. It had just been aired to Palestinians in Arabic by the PA Foreign Ministry and repeated in the official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, on June 20 under the headline, “Religious rulings by rabbis give the settlers permission to poison Palestinian water.”

Abbas’ use of the medieval “poisoning the water” libel is nothing new. The Palestinians have a long history of accusing Israel of poisoning both children and adults, stretching back to Yasser Arafat. Official PA TV reported in 2014 that Israel was intentionally “injecting poison” into Palestinian water sources as a “war strategy” to destroy agriculture and debilitate Palestinians.

The PA systematically uses medieval Christian antisemitic doctrine, Islamic religious dogma and Nazi iconography and propaganda to indoctrinate its citizens. Conspiracy canards and historical fabrications are an integral part of the PA’s promotion of hate. Jews are called “pigs and apes” and a “cancer on humanity.” Israelis are accused of infecting Palestinians with AIDS, spreading drug addiction and harvesting organs from Palestinians.

The PA has reintroduced The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 19th-century antisemitic forgery, to claim that Israel is part of a global Jewish conspiracy threatening humanity. In 2013, Palestinian news agency Ma’an stated, “The Protocols…are…formulated by the Jews to infiltrate the world and take it over” and, in 2015, Quranic Studies Professor Imad Hamato asserted that the The Protocols is an authentic Jewish plan to “Judaize” the world.

In spring 2015, at the Jerusalem Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Al-Mughrabi preached, “Jews prepare their matzah…with the blood of children…. They were burned in Germany because they kidnapped young children to make matzah…. There is proof and evidence.” This Imam also teaches that Jews were behind the 9-11 attacks and that they slaughter their own relatives as sacrifices to Satan. The PA presents Jews as sub-humans who should be eliminated.

These are just a few examples of the widespread, unremitting antisemitic hatred propagated by the PA to its people on a daily basis – in speeches, in newspapers, on TV, in school textbooks, in summer camps, in mosques. Demonizing Jews and Israelis as diabolical meets the US State Department definition of antisemitism.

Portraying Israel as intrinsically evil hardly promotes peace. According to Daniel Polisar, the 2014 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research revealed that 64 percent of Palestinians support “armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel” and 54 percent applauded the 2014 abduction and murder of three Israeli teenage boys. A majority of Palestinians support virtually every kind of attack against Israeli civilians — including rocket fire, suicide bombings, and stabbings. Knifing, murdering and even suicide bombing of Israeli civilians are seen as self-defense and Allah’s will.

Abbas “outed” himself in Brussels, exposing his cultivated image as the moderate partner for peace as a fraud. It is no wonder that more than 80 percent of Palestinians want only one state in the Middle East — a single, Jew-free Palestinian state.

Abbas’ speech in Brussels was given a 30-second standing ovation by the elitist enablers at the European Parliament. Conspiracy theories against Jews worked in 14th century Christendom, in 19th century Russia and in 20th century Nazi Germany. It seems to be working again in the 21st century.

This article was originally published by IJT.