Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C) alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, July 26, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Palestinian Presidents’ Office

One of the fundamental messages of Palestinian Authority (PA) antisemitism is that Jews are justifiably hated around the world, because of the danger they pose to all societies where they’ve lived.

Last year, Mahmoud Abbas said on PA TV that the Europeans, and even “Hitler … fought the Jews because they worked based on usury and money. In other words, they caused ruin in his opinion, and therefore he hated them.”

The PA is now also promoting the message that Americans are beginning to hate American Jews because of the damage they are doing to the economy:

Palestinian political commentator Kamal Zakarneh: “The more serious question being posed to the American administration by the American people is: Why do the Jews control the American economy and money in the US?

Why do they receive preferential treatment, are allowed things forbidden to others, and control all the routes of economy in the US? There is a popular American awakening against the Jews’ influence in America and against the transfer of the [American] tax money to the occupation [i.e., Israel], which doesn’t even need it and uses it in ways that are illegitimate from their perspective.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, March 4, 2024]

The PA has been disseminating this classic antisemitic trope for years, and is now extending it to the American setting.

This is not the first time that Palestinian Media Wach has exposed Zakarneh’s viciously antisemitic comments, and how he presents Jews as a danger to the West. He recently explained Western support of Israel as a self-preservation action by the West to prevent the Jews, whom he defined as “human waste,” from moving to Europe and America:

I tell you there is something hidden here, and it is that they are not expressing these [pro-Israel] positions out of love for “Israel” in quotations, but rather, they — Europe and America — succeeded in getting rid of the Jews, whom they themselves view as human waste, and they threw them out into Palestine…

They don’t want reverse migration now and their [the Jews’] return to Europe again … [US President Joe] Biden said this during the events in Israel: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.” He would have invented it to absorb the human waste. [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, Oct. 24, 2023]

On its own, Zakarneh’s insinuation that Jews control the economy represents yet another manifestation of antisemitism, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). It is a mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, stereotypical allegation about Jews, or the power of Jews as a collective.

In March alone, the PA has spread numerous other libels about Jews, such as the idea that Jews poison the water supply, and that contemporary Israeli policy is like Nazism. All such messages, and their coupling in particular with the message that Jews are destroying the American economy, must be categorically condemned.

The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.