Hang onto your seats, folks. The mentally deranged Left is about to erupt yet once more in one of their echolaliac fits they call reporting. Donald Trump has called Mahmoud Abbas a liar, so here it inevitably comes: What? Unheard of! Disgraceful! Unpresidential. He’s not fit to be President! IMPEACH HIM!
Trump not only called Abbas a liar, he reportedly “screamed” at him: “You lied to me in Washington when you talked about commitment to peace, but the Israelis showed me you were personally responsible for incitement.”
Oh, my! Are we to understand that Palestinian youths are not raised in a “culture of peace” as Abbas had assured him? Trump had been willing to take Abbas at his word, but Bibi marshaled weighty evidence to the contrary: The Palestinian Authority names schools after the mass murderers of Israeli civilians. It pays a monthly pension to the families of dead and imprisoned terrorists commensurate with the amount of death and destruction they were able to inflict, calling these payments a form of social security.
As recently as March, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Supreme Council for Youth and Sports named a youth center in the city of Jericho “Brothers of Dalal” to honor Dalal Mughrabi, a woman who participated in what came to be known as the “Coastal Massacre.” One Sabbath afternoon in 1978 she and some of her fellows hijacked a bus and took it on a killing spree, murdering 37 civilians, including 12 children, and injuring 71. Time magazine called it “the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history.”
She was also fingered by her companions for having murdered, in cold blood, a young photographer they happened to run into that day, after first asking her for directions. The photographer, Gail Rubin, turned out to be the niece of then U.S. Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff.
Not wanting to overlook the sisters of Dalal, the PLO then named a women’s center in the village of Burqa in her honor. The center will present to Palestinian youth groups “the history of the struggle of [this] Martyr …. constitut[ing] the beginning of the launch of enrichment activities regarding the history of the Palestinian struggle.” Enrichment activities?
Undoubtedly, spurred by Trump’s unambiguous stance against terrorism, including the Palestinian variety, the Norwegians finally awoke to the fact that they’ve been sponsoring the spread of terrorism: They asked the aforementioned women’s center to return the money Norway had contributed, and also that the center remove its logo from the building. “We will not enter into any new agreements with either the Palestinian Election Commission or UN Women in Palestinian areas until satisfactory procedures are in place to ensure that nothing of this nature happens again,” announced the newly-enlightened Norwegians.
So, has Trump been good for the fight against Palestinian terrorism? Depends on whom you ask. In the past six weeks, the New York Times has published five outrageous and virulently anti-Israel op-eds in a non-stop effort to delegitimize the Jewish state and to feed the embers of anti-Semitism in America. Don’t believe me? Read the comments that follow the articles.
Not to be outdone, the Washington Post published an insert as Section H of its Sunday newspaper devoted to the hardships imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, especially the checkpoints intended to stop folks like Dalal Mughrabi from entering. It was like the inserts that the Russians and the Chinese pay the Post to publish about the virtues of their respective countries, except those are clearly marked as advertisements. The Palestinian insert was not so marked and was evidently a gift to them from the very wealthy Mr. Bezos.
Undoubtedly, Abbas could have been knocked over with a feather when Trump screamed at him and called him a liar. Elected in January 2005, Abbas’ term expired in January 09, yet he is still the so-called “democratically elected” President of the Palestinian National Authority. During his 12-year tenure, he’s met with a lot of American Presidents and Secretaries of State, and not a one amongst them has had the temerity to call him a liar, much less yell at him.
Oh, and when the anti-Semitic trash published by the Times and the Post bear fruit, when Jewish cemeteries are desecrated and Jewish schools and community centers threatened, it will undoubtedly be blamed on Trump, with that signature liberal logic to which we’ve become accustomed: If Donald Trump weren’t being mean to the Palestinians, we wouldn’t have to be mean to the Israelis. He makes us do it!
I haven’t seen anyone blame Trump for the Manchester massacre yet. But it’s just a matter of time.
But here’s the point: Trump is putting himself on the line as the honest broker for a peace deal. That’s not going to happen unless the Palestinian leadership abandons terrorism. Trump told it as it is. He’s doing what no one else is doing—holding Abbas accountable, and if that’s not done it’s best to walk away fast. Those who have problems with this need to explain why terrorism against Israelis doesn’t bother them.
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