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January 17, 2018 3:19 pm
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UK Media Airbrushes Abbas’ Anti-Jewish Remarks

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avatar by Adam Levick

Opinion

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Photo: Reuters / Osman Orsal.

In a two-hour speech by Mahmoud Abbas to the PLO’s Central Council on Sunday night in Ramallah, the aging Palestinian president gave a quintessentially Palestinian talk — blaming everyone for his people’s problems but himself.

The low lights of the diatribe against the world by the “president” — who recently began the 14th year of his four year term — included his wish that “God may demolish the house” of Donald Trump. He also criticised Hamas, Islamic Jihad, his critics within his Fatah party and the Europeans — whom he blamed for Palestine’s Jewish problem.

Israel, he insisted“is a colonialist project, which has nothing to do with the Jews.” Abbas also traced the beginning of Zionism to what he called Theodor Herzl’s efforts to “wipe out Palestinians from Palestine.” Abbas also promoted the conspiracy theory that “Israel has imported [a] frightening amounts of drugs in order to destroy our younger generation.”

At the outset, only The Telegraph covered Abbas’ speech. However, its 620-word article, which included every other incendiary remark by the octogenarian leader, completely ignored his ahistorical, antisemitic and conspiratorial claims.

The Telegraph’s omission is but one example within a broader media pattern of obfuscating or ignoring incendiary, pro-terror or antisemitic remarks by the “moderate” Palestinian leader.

Last month, we noted the UK media’s failure to report on an antisemitic accusation by Abbas, during a speech in Istanbul, where he said that Jews are liars by nature. And, last year we posted on the media’s silence following Abbas’ remarks to the EU Parliament evoking a medieval antisemitic libel, by accusing Israeli rabbis of calling for their government to “poison Palestinian wells.”

Update: Shortly after our original post was published, we learned that Sky NewsThe Independent and ITV News all reported on Abbas’ speech, while similarly omitting his comments about Jews.

The writer covers the British media for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

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