Palestinian leader lies to United Nations

Palestinian leader lies to United Nations

By Alan Stein

Published in the Waterbury Republican-American October 2, 2024

An expanded version is available on the Times of Israel blog as The Mendacity of Mahmoud Abbas in His UN Speech.

When a person or an organization points to Israel and proclaims "j'accuse," the accusation is almost invariably false but, almost as invariably, would be true if it was directed at the Palestinian Arabs. This has occurred with increasing frequency since the horrendous, barbaric terror attack perpetrated last Oct. 7, primarily by Hamas but with the assistance of other terror groups in Gaza and thousands of ordinary Gaza "civilians," with weapons, expertise and financing largely provided by Iran and Qatar.

A graphic example is provided each year when Mahmoud Abbas, in the 20th year of his four-year term as head of the Palestinian Authority, addresses the United Nations General Assembly as "His Excellency, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the (non-existent) State of Palestine."

Here's just a small sample of the lies and cultural appropriation which permeated Abbas' speech Sept. 26.

He began by proclaiming "Palestine is our homeland, it is the land of our fathers, our grandfathers, it will remain ours" and closed by proclaiming "Our people will live on the land of their fathers and grandfathers as they have done for more than 6,000 years."

It was not 6,000 years, but merely 1,400 years ago when Arabs first began arriving, as settler colonialists, in the Land of Israel, fully half a millennium after an earlier groups of settler colonialists, the Romans, ethnically cleansed what was then called Judea of most of its indigenous Jewish residents and renamed the area Syria Palaestina. Most of those now calling themselves Palestinians come from families that migrated to the Land of Israel far more recently and only adopted the identity of Palestinian in the 1960s.

Abbas appropriated the historical connection of the Jewish people to their holiest site, the Temple Mount, and falsely accused Israel of changing its status quo when it has been the Palestinians who have repeatedly done so.

He said "the al Aqsa mosque and its surroundings, ladies and gentlemen, is the exclusive property of Muslims." The al Aqsa mosque was deliberately built on the ruins of the Jewish Temple 1,600 years after King Solomon built the First Temple there. It is, by far, the holiest site in the world for the Jewish people. For Sunni Muslims, it is a distant third to Mecca and Medina and has no religious significance for Shiite Muslims.

Related to Abbas' lies about the Temple Mount is his assertion that Israel does not deserve to be a member of the U.N., claiming it has violated a commitment to adhere to UN Resolutions 181 and 194.

UN Resolution 181 was the Partition Plan, which called for giving the Arabs nearly 90% of Palestine. While the Zionists accepted the proposal, the Arabs not only rejected it, but launched a genocidal war aimed at destroying Israel the day after David Ben Gurion declared the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in a small portion of the Land of Israel.

Resolution 194 did have a provision calling for the repatriation of "refugees wishing to return to their homes." But that was contingent on their willingness to "live in peace." Not only were the actual refugees never willing to meet that condition, but on Oct. 7 their descendants barbarically demonstrated their continued rejection of that requirement.

Resolution 194 also insisted that "religious buildings and sites in Palestine should be protected and free access to them assured."

Jordan allowed Jews absolutely no access to the Temple Mount during the nineteen years it occupied the eastern portion of Jerusalem.

Israel has also violated the free access provision since it reconquered the Old City after Jordan attacked again in 1967. Subject to unavoidable security precautions, it provides free access to the Temple Mount for Arabs, but severely and increasingly restricts access for Jews. When I first visited Jerusalem in 1980, I was able to enter both the al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. That is no longer allowed. While Muslims have unfettered, 24/7 access to the entire Temple Mount through ten gates, Jews have access only a few hours a day, a few days a week, through just one gate, are greatly restricted as to where on the Temple Mount they may go and are prohibited from praying.

Meanwhile, whereas in 1967 there was just one mosque on the Temple Mount, since then the Muslim Waqf has, illegally, built four more.

Mahmoud Abbas inverted that truth by referring to Jerusalem as "our eternal capital al-Quds" and saying it "is being subjected to entrenched campaigns to change its nature, to Judaize it, and to agress it and its holy sites and landmarks, to change its historic and legal status."

Disturbingly sobering is the way the mendacious Mahmoud Abbas received a standing ovation when he finished his litany of lies, while the next day many diplomats made a show of walking out of the chamber when the prime minister of Israel came and did something rarely done in the United Nations, speaking truthfully.

Alan Stein, Ph.D., is a former longtime resident of Waterbury. He and his wife Marsha currently split their time between Netanya in Israel and Natick, Mass. He is president emeritus of PRIMER-Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) and the founder of PRIMER-Massachusetts and PRIMER-Israel.