While the world remains silent, the PA continues to spew antisemitism
Let there be no mistake. The silence of the international community provides support for and reinforces the Antisemitism of the Palestinian Authority. When American celebrities make antisemitic comments, the international community rightly vilifies them. But when the PA and its representatives make much worse comments and promulgate antisemitic imagery, suddenly the international community - including politicians and journalists - are silent.
The silence of the international community is translated by the PA into a carte blanche to further entrench its deep-seated Antisemitism and continue attacking and dehumanizing Israelis.
So when Jews exercise their elementary right to visit Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount, or the burial site of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Judaism in the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron, the PA allows itself to let loose with vitriolic hatred. For the PA, Jews exercising their basic right to freedom of religion and worship is not seen as an innocent act guaranteed to all religions, but rather an act of “defilement” by “criminal infidels.” For the PA all Jews are criminals, who “defile” the Muslim holy sites:
PA Minister of Religious Affairs Hatem Al-Bakri: “Allah, purify the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the mosque of Abraham (i.e., Cave of the Patriarchs) from the defilement of the criminal infidels, O Master of the Universe.”
[Official PA TV, Nov. 4, 2022]
Embellishing and expanding on the antisemitism and dehumanization of Jews, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily Muwaffaq Matar claims that Israeli soldiers - “whose brains are filled with orders and instructions to spill blood and murder” - and all Israeli civilians – to whom he refers to as “invading settlers” – are nothing but “human robots.” According to Matar, even though Jews may have the external appearance of being “normal humans” in reality they have been stripped of human traits:
“What is happening on the land of Palestine is a crime against humanity in the full sense of the word. The victim is the Palestinian people, while the criminal is the settler and racist colonialist Zionist system. The soldiers in its army, whose brains are filled with orders and instructions to spill blood and murder, and also the invading settlers, are nothing but human robots… even if they appear to our eyes like normal humans, and this is the reality, but they have been stripped of the traits, nature, feelings, and desires of normal humans.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 1, 2022]
Inverting reality, the PA and Matar claim that the Jews dehumanized themselves through a process of “brainwashing” and the mixing of “the blood cells of racist tendency… with their red and white blood cells”. These processes, according to the PA and Matar, have brought Jews “to the point that their desire to kill becomes more lethal than what we see in documentary films on predatory animals in nature – and specifically those who rush to bite into the flesh of the victim and suck its blood”:
“This is due to processes of brainwashing, and after the blood cells of racist tendency were mixed with their red and white blood cells, to the point that their desire to kill becomes more lethal than what we see in documentary films on predatory animals in nature – and specifically those who rush to bite into the flesh of the victim and suck its blood, while it is still standing, breathing, and fighting to be saved from the claws and fangs of a flock or group of wild animals.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 1, 2022]
Cartoons shown on official PA TV also feed into the PA narrative to dehumanize Israelis. Here an Israeli soldier with an Israeli flag patch on his shoulder is depicted as what appears to be a werewolf. The soldier is holding a smoking handgun, having shot a man lying on the ground, who has blood pooling around him from a gunshot wound to his heart. The text, clearly referring to Israeli soldiers in general labels them: “Humanoid monsters”
[Official PA TV program, The Content of the News, Dec. 5, 2022]
Last week, Palestinian Media Watch exposed the rampant Antisemitism of Mahmoud Al-Habbash, a special advisor to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas who also holds the position of PA Supreme Shari’ah Judge. Al-Habbash referred to Jews as “grazing herds of humanoids” and equated the Jews who visit the Temple Mount with “those whom Allah has cursed… and made of them apes and pigs.”
Had any other presidential advisor anywhere else made antisemitic comments like these, there would have been a global outcry. But when the racist, antisemitic perpetrator is Palestinian, the international community is silent.
Ignoring Palestinian Antisemitism does not and will not serve the effort to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Vile antisemites are not and cannot be peace partners with the Jews.