Why does the US criticize its ally while supporting those who demonize it?
Official PA daily:
- “We always emphasize that our main problem is with the US”
- Washington is the mind behind the conspiracy against the Palestinian people
Why are Hamas’ allies, who are terrorizing and threatening supporters of Jews and Israel on campuses around the US, also in the same breath screaming “death to Israel” and “death to America”?
The answer is that while the US is the driving force pressuring Israel to accept PA rule in Gaza and while the PA welcomes US aid and quietly thanks it for life-saving support, the PA simultaneously demonizes the US incessantly. The PA goes so far as to claim that Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza is actually an anti-Arab and anti-Islamic US war in which Israel is merely the American tool. And now, PA-driven anti-US hate has reached the US in full force.
We are witnessing a recurring pattern. For years, Palestinian Media Watch has been warning about the PA’s Islamist Antisemitism, but the West has been ignoring the issue and on the contrary, it continued funding the PA’s Nazi-like demonization of Jews. That Islamist Antisemitism has now established itself among the mainstream of Palestinian supporters in the US and is echoed by Palestinian supporters worldwide.
One of the PA’s prominent mouthpieces, the PA’s official daily columnist Muwaffaq Matar, regularly accuses America of colonialism and of making Israel its pawn in the Middle East.
“We always emphasize that our main problem is with the US and the colonialist states that planned and actively contributed to establishing Israel, and they established it on the Palestinian people’s homeland (Palestine) [parentheses in source] with the rank of their main worker in the region! As long as this is the situation, [Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben Gvir will continue as he does to knead [US President Joe] Biden’s flour with the blood of the Palestinian people in general, and of the hundreds of thousands of hungry in the Gaza Strip in particular.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 3, 2024]
Matar was particularly triggered of late by the US veto of a UN Security Council resolution calling to provide the PA with full UN membership. In response, he lashed out at the US, labeling it “the mind behind the conspiracy against the Palestinian people”:
“The American veto did not surprise those who are knowledgeable about the details of the colonialist world powers’ decisions on establishing the colonialist settler occupation system (Israel) [parentheses in source], ever since the approval of the Campbell[-Bannerman] document in 1905 (sic., see note below regarding PA conspiracy theory on "the Campbell-Bannerman plan"), on through the Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration) (which is American in its essence and content, and British for the sake of appearance) [parentheses in source] in 1917, and up until the American pressure on the UN to accept Israel as a member, even though it has not obeyed the international institutions’ conditions since 1949 and to this day, and foremost among them to recognize an Arab-Palestinian state according to [UN] partition resolution 181 of 1947 (see note below - Ed)...
In this context, we think that [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas has for a long time been directing the attention of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian National Liberation Movement [‘Fatah’] leadership to the historical fact that the Zionist organization is the pawn of the US, in order to take control of the most important strategic location in the Middle East (Palestine) [parentheses in source], so as to ensure the American interests.
Since Washington is the one that makes decisions for ‘Israel,’ and the one that determines the clauses of its foundational missions in the region, and the one that determines how its future will look and what its nature will be, the peaceful popular national struggle (i.e., refers to the use of violence and terror) on the land of the homeland Palestine is not an alternative for a political, legal, and diplomatic struggle meant to extricate the Palestinian right from the mind behind the conspiracy against the Palestinian people (the US) [parentheses in source].”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 21, 2024]
Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor on Islam and top PA religious leader has also demonized the US as the current Pharaoh who will be punished by the Palestinians or by Allah himself, asserting “[America] the oppressor will not last”:
“The Pharaoh of this period, America thinks it can do anything without any draw back, and without any consequences... America used its veto for the third time, to prevent the cessation of the war against our people in the Gaza Strip... Just as He [Allah] punished the oppressors in the past, so He will punish the oppressors of this period. He will punish the Pharaohs of this age [America], the criminals of this age, sooner or later, by our hands or by His punishment. By our hands, or in pain from Him. The oppressor will not last.”
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, top advisor to Mahmoud Abbas and Supreme Shari'ah Judge, Official PA TV Live, Feb. 23, 2024]
The PA makes no secret of its contempt for the United States, yet the US has not changed its favorable view of the PA, and continues to promote it as the alternative administrator of the Gaza Strip. If the US wants the trust of its allies and those to whom it has pledged support, such as Taiwan, it would be wise to give unequivocal support to Israel, which is its close ally of mutual benefit, and to publicly censure the source of growing worldwide anti-American hate.
"The Campbell-Bannerman plan" - PA leaders have often promoted a conspiracy theory denying Israel's legitimacy, claiming that Israel's establishment was the result of a British-led colonialist plot termed "the Campbell-Bannerman plan," which was recorded in a similarly named document. This alleged plan's goal was to create a "pawn" in the form of Israel that would keep the Arab peoples divided and backwards, in order to ensure European domination over the Middle East. The conspiracy theory apparently refers to the 1907 Imperial Conference led by former British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the minutes of which disprove the PA's claims of a conspiracy to undermine the Middle East. In 2017 the conspiracy theory was investigated by Prof Dr. Mohsen Mohammad Saleh, head of the Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, a Lebanese pro-Palestinian research institute. Saleh reported that he traveled to Britain to investigate the alleged document but "found no trace or source of it!" [Website of Al-Zaytouna, Political Analysis: Is the “Campbell-Bannerman Document”: Real or Fake?, Sept. 29, 2017] Saleh noted that former head of the PLO Research Center Dr. Anis Sayegh learned an Egyptian named Antoun Canaan was the first to write about the alleged document, and Sayegh learned in talking with Canaan that his source was an unidentified Indian man: "When [Canaan] travelled from Palestine to London to study law in the mid-1940s, he met in the plane an Indian man sitting next him. The man told him he remembers reading about a colonial conference held in London attended by delegates from several colonial powers to discuss the partition of the Arab nations, prevent their reunification, and the establishment of a Jewish state, but the Indian man did not give Canaan any documented academic material regarding the document." Nevertheless, PA leaders continue to cite the conspiracy theory in their attacks against Israel.
The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that "His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." In 1922, the League of Nations adopted this and made the British Mandate "responsible for putting into effect the declaration," which led to the UN vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947. In response, Britain ended its mandate on May 15, 1948, and the Palestinian Jews, who accepted the Partition Plan, declared the independent State of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and together with 7 Arab states attacked Israel, in what is now known as Israel's War of Independence.