By Stephen M. Flatow
(JNS) Over the last few weeks, a prominent Middle Eastern leader has been complicit in repeated calls to wipe out the entire State of Israel. Yet the international community has not said a word. How strange…
No threats from the Biden administration to deny him a visa.
No angry Reform rabbis saying he will not be welcome to speak in their synagogues.
No furious op-eds by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times.
You would think that calling for the destruction of an entire country and following that call with multiple murders intended to advance that goal would outrage champions of peace and human rights everywhere.
No such luck.
No snarling comments from the State Department’s spokesman.
No indignant press releases from J Street or Partners for Progressive Israel.
Not a peep from the investigative journalists who are supposed to be so interested in investigating Middle Eastern matters.
I am referring to the ongoing calls and campaign by Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah Party and the Palestinian Authority they rule to wipe out Israel.
The following are just a few samples of what Fatah and the P.A. have been saying in recent weeks (translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch). As leader of both Fatah and the P.A., Abbas bears responsibility for these statements and the fact that he has not disavowed or denounced them demonstrates that he approves of them.
“To war that will smash the oppression and then set the Zionists’ soul on fire!”
This was a line from a poem read aloud by a Palestinian Arab schoolgirl on “Giants of Endurance,” a program on the P.A.’s official television station, on Feb. 2. For good measure, the program’s host added: “Well done.”
“A Message for the Zionist Enemy: Every day that I live, fear will prevail among you and my actions will torment you and send you to a place where your blood will drip.”
This was authored by Hamdi Abu Daya al-Zama’reh, a member of Abbas’s Palestinian Security Forces, posted on the Al-Hadaf website on Jan. 17.
“Let them prepare for the fire of rage and for the storm of the brigades, Fatah is coming to them. … This is a comprehensive and open war. … Tel Aviv will declare mourning.”
This was from an official statement by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is part of Abbas’s Fatah movement. It was posted by Fatah’s Bethlehem Branch on a Telegram channel on Jan. 29.
“The fire ignited and the rifle sang / O homeland, ask for the young people and have hope / The fire ignited from Acre to Tira.”
These are lines from a song broadcast by official P.A. television on Dec. 29, 2022.
Note that Acre and Tira are cities within pre-1967 Israel. The P.A. officials who chose to broadcast those lyrics were not talking about “settlements” or “occupied territories.”
No, they are reminding their viewers of what Abbas’s P.A. regime trumpets every day in its schools, media and movie houses: That all of Israel is “Palestine,” which must be “liberated” by wiping out the entire Jewish state.
How do we know that such declarations are not just rhetoric? How do we know that Palestinian Arab leaders are not just blowing off steam? How do we know that they really mean the things that they teach their children and broadcast across P.A. media?
Because they put it into practice every single day. Palestinian Arab bombs, knives and bullets are used daily in the campaign to wipe out Israel, and the P.A.’s “pay-to-slay” program finances the terrorists who wage that war. Arab terrorists have been committing atrocities for more than a century, going all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s, when there was no State of Israel. Even back then, the Arabs were devoted to wiping out Jewish communities throughout the Holy Land.
Can you remember the last time The Washington Post, Americans for Peace Now or the United Nations ever acknowledged such politically inconvenient facts? I can’t either.
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Stephen M. Flatow is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is author of the book A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.