Despite US Pressure, Mahmoud Abbas Deletes Condemnation of Hamas Atrocities
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by Itamar Marcus
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visiting the West Bank city of Jenin. Photo: Reuters/Mohamad Torokman
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has been informing the world about the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s terror support, salaries to terrorists, and religious based Jew-hatred for years.
Given that history, it came as no surprise that the PA and Fatah have been expressing support for Hamas’ atrocities.
The Western world — as part of its refusal to accept the truth about the PA/Fatah — has been trying to pressure PA President Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the massacre. Senior Fatah official Abbas Zaki told Lebanese TV:
There were large pressures [on Abbas], and Blinken even demanded before he met with him that there be a condemnation.
[Al-Mayadeen TV (Lebanon), YouTube channel, Oct. 14, 2023]
On Sunday, Mahmoud Abbas had a statement put on the website of the official PA news agency, WAFA, in which he distanced the PA from Hamas’ atrocities — but it was not even close to a condemnation.
A few hours later, even that mild distancing was too much for the PA and it was removed. The text highlighted in yellow below was repeated in both statements. The green highlight shows what was changed:
In Abbas’ current wording — “[the policy] of the PLO are what represents the Palestinian people … and not the policy of any other organization” — the PA does not distance itself from Hamas or from its “actions.”
Instead, Abbas merely repeats the common PLO/Fatah mantra that only the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people, and not “any other organization.”
The PA had to decide whether to be true to its ideology of supporting and rewarding the murder of Israelis, or to give into international pressure and condemn the worst atrocities against the Jews since the Holocaust.
In similar situations in the past, Abbas at times has given into international pressure to assure that international funding will continue. This time Abbas wavered but, in the end, remained true to PA ideology: the murder of Israelis by Palestinians is not to be condemned.
The author is the founder and executive director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
