TEL AVIV – Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon on Monday urged the UN Secretary-General to issue a condemnation of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for his anti-Semitism and denial of any Jewish ties to Israel.
“Among the many vile fabrications in his address … Abbas repeated the lie that the reestablishment of the nation-state of the Jewish people in our historic homeland is ‘a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism,’” Danon wrote in a letter.
“Abbas also accused European powers of ‘moving Jews from Europe to the Middle East’ as part of a plan to further their economic interests. These statements sadly remind us of the racist words of the worst regimes of the previous century,” he said.
“It is unfortunate that, with his latest statements … Abbas has yet again responded negatively to serious initiatives for dialogue by Israel, the United States and other members of the international community,” he added.
“The hateful words of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, which seem to question the very right of a United Nations member-state to exist, are completely unacceptable and must be unequivocally condemned,” Danon said.
In a rewrite of history, Abbas on Sunday also suggested that European Jews during the Holocaust chose to suffer “murder and slaughter” rather than come to British-controlled Palestine, when in fact Britain prevented all Jewish emigration to the Holy Land as per the demands of the Arab world.
“The Jews did not want to emigrate even with murder and slaughter. Even during the Holocaust, they did not emigrate. By 1948, Jews in Palestine were no more than 640,000, most of them from Europe,” Abbas said.
He also falsely claimed that Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion forcibly “flew in” Jews from Yemen and Iraq to the country against their will in order to swell the nascent Jewish state’s population.
Israeli officials slammed Abbas’ remarks. President Reuven Rivlin said, “What we heard yesterday from Mahmoud Abbas was terrible.”
“He returned back to the ideas he expressed decades ago, when they were no less terrible,” he told a group of AIPAC delegates in Jerusalem.
“To say Israel is the result of a Western conspiracy to settle Jews in land belonging to Arab populations? To say that the Jewish people has no connection with the Land of Israel? He forgot many things, and said exactly the things that led him to be accused years ago of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial,” Rivlin said.
“These are precisely the things that block us. In his words he is rejecting our return to our homeland, even though Abu Mazen [Abbas] knows very well that the Quran itself recognizes the Land of Israel as our land. Without this basic recognition we will not be able to build trust and move forward,” the president added.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman slammed Abbas for having “lost his senses.”
Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said Abbas’ speech was “laced with vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”
“His incitement against Israel and the United States is extremely dangerous and should be condemned by anyone interested in peaceful coexistence,” he added.
Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan lambasted Abbas for “destroying any chance for peace.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, said that ironically Abbas was helping the Jewish state by openly dismissing any Jewish connection to Israel.
“He exposed what we have been saying all the time, that the root of the conflict is the basic refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any borders,” Netanyahu said on Monday from New Delhi, India, where he is on an official visit.