Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, delivers a speech remotely at the UN General Assembly 76th session General Debate in UN General Assembly Hall at the United Nations Headquarters on Friday, September 24, 2021 in New York City. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI Pool via REUTERS

After Israel killed three terrorists who had already carried out a number of terror attacks and were planning another imminent attack, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas called on Palestinians to “dish out to them twice as much as we’ve received.”

When calling to “dish out to them twice as much as we’ve received,” Abbas is literally calling for the murder of at least six Israelis. But openly calling for the murder of Israelis in response to Israel neutralizing terrorists, is something that Abbas reserves for his Arabic speaking audience.

In a speech broadcast during a memorial event for the three terrorists, Abbas rewrote history, whitewashing the terrorists and their actions, and claiming that the call for revenge was justified because,“We are the ones who were attacked. We didn’t attack anyone”:

PA President Mahmoud Abbas via phone: “This is an act of premeditated murder that the oppressive Zionist occupier committed against our sons, our young people, and our people. These events will not pass by in silence under any circumstances, and we won’t let them repeat themselves, because these are crimes that we can’t be silent about under any circumstances. We’ve been very patient. We’ve been patient for 73 years [i.e., since Israel’s establishment]. We won’t continue to wait patiently any longer. We must dish out to them twice as much as we’ve received, because we are the ones who were attacked. We didn’t attack anyone, and we don’t call on people to carry out acts of murder and the like. They [i.e., Israelis] are the ones who do that.”

[Sawa, independent Palestinian news agency, Feb. 10, 2022]

The three neutralized terrorists, Adham Mabrouka Al-Shishani, Muhammad Al-Dakhil, and Ashraf Mubaslat, were all members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the internationally-designated terror wing of Fatah, headed by Abbas.

Official Fatah Spokesman Hussein Hamayel reiterated that the killing of the terrorists would “not pass in silence,” and called on his people to carry out popular resistance — a term used by Palestinians, which also refers to the use of violence and terror:

 I tell you, for us in the Fatah Movement, this issue will not pass in silence, and I am exhorting and we are exhorting today [Feb. 8, 2022] on behalf of the entire Palestinian people on the need to carry out popular resistance against this occupation, because we are left with no other options but to defend ourselves from this crime…

[Official PA TV, Feb. 8, 2022]

Extolling the terrorists, Hamayel added that the terrorist “heroes” will “be a curse” for Israel:

These young people who ascended to Heaven today will be a curse for this occupation. …These three heroes are lofty in their graves, their pastures, their homes. Their souls are lofty. They will accompany us in liberating the land and the Muslims from this occupation…

[Official PA TV, Feb. 8, 2022]

Turning the terrorists into innocent victims, and turning Israel into the aggressor, simply for neutralizing terrorists, Hamayel added a warning for the US administration:

The American administration or the American Secretary of State spokesperson shouldn’t come to us and say: ‘We hope for restraint.’ Why this crime, this racism, and this filth, when you compare the victim to the criminal, to the gang leader, to the executioner?

[Official PA TV, Feb. 8, 2022]

When Abbas and Hamayel whitewash the terrorists and call for revenge and terror, they seem to conveniently forget that the terrorists had already carried out a number of terror attacks — and that it was Fatah, who, just a day earlier, had encouraged violence against Israelis, or as they refer to them “the settler herds”:

A call for open confrontation with the settler herds

The Fatah Movement’s Nablus branch and the [PA-controlled] Committee to Resist Settlements and the Wall invite you to stand against the settler herds’ attempts and calls to invade the towns and central junctions

…

At the points of friction with the Zionist enemy and its settler herds, in all areas

This land is ours; we will defend it with our blood

[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement – Nablus Branch, Feb. 7, 2022]

Trying to argue that Israeli soldiers are legitimate targets for Palestinian terrorists, and that the fact that the three terrorists fired at Israeli soldiers didn’t warrant their neutralization, Palestinian Democratic Union representative in the PLO faction coordination committee Ali Shaku added:

I think that [the terrorists] were not among the guys who are dangerous to the occupation forces, just because maybe they shot a bullet at an Israeli [military] post, but that doesn’t necessitate killing them in this way, in this way that is of course denounced by all levels of our people.

[Official PA TV, Feb. 8, 2022]

Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, Adv. is the Head of Legal Strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.