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

The Palestinian Authority’s main daily newspaper launched a vitriolic attack on the United States this week, following the opening on Monday of the new American Embassy in the Israeli capital, Jerusalem.

In language reminiscent of Palestinian propaganda targeting the legitimacy of Zionism and Israel, an official editorial in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on May 15 portrayed the US as a nation bereft of moral principles, and a creature of colonialism.

“None of the American administrations were noted for nobility of spirit or for human traits such as compassion, tolerance and understanding of the other,” the editorial — translated by analysts at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — stated.  “America has always employed brutal policies towards small and poor nations. That is how it behaved toward the Native Americans, whom it called ‘Indians,’ during the violent and blood-soaked period of its birth.”

The editorial went on to strongly recommend the writings of Munir Akash — a Syrian-born American academic who has previously accused the US of promoting the mass sterilization of women in the developing world.

The editorial brandished “The Ugly American” — a factually-based political novel about US diplomacy in Southeast Asia that caused a sensation in the late 1950s when it was first published, but is a less-familiar cultural reference today — as the main evidence of US malign intent throughout its 242-year history.

“It would be difficult to continue relating all the stories that appear in The Ugly American, which are full of bloodshed, systematic violence, a culture of brutality and attacks on small nations,” the editorial asserted — listing alleged traits of the US that are routinely associated with Israel and Jews in the Palestinian media.

“All of these traits are manifest today, in all their hideousness, in America’s brutality towards our nation, which possesses none of the tools in America’s military and economic arsenal,” the editorial continued. Warning that the Palestinians would not accept a peace that was not “just, true and honorable,” the editorial concluded: “We leave the depraved plague deal to the Ugly American.”

The US remains the largest single donor of foreign humanitarian and development aid to the Palestinians, contributing $367 million to UNRWA — the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants — in 2017 alone.