A rewriting of history

Editorial

As if engaging in a preemptory celebration of the Israel Apartheid Week festivities happening on Canadian and other university campuses this month, Mahmoud Abbas rewrote history once more in a speech that suggests little has changed on the Palestinian diplomatic front in 40 years.

Two decades after the beginning of a peace process that was supposed to lead to coexistence, the Palestinian president’s speech to a conference in Qatar recharged decades-old bigotries and scare tactics of Israel’s alleged threats to Islam.

In the speech, Abbas equated Israel to the Romans and Crusaders who occupied Jerusalem. He repeated hackneyed tropes dismissing Jewish claims to the land and the existence of the Temple. And, in the most stereotypical and dangerous allegation, Abbas said Israel was planning to harm the al-Aqsa Mosque and he urged Muslims worldwide to travel to Jerusalem.

Abbas’ speech is consistent with decades of propaganda, expertly purveyed by the late great Yasser Arafat, denying any Jewish connection to Jerusalem, on the one hand, and, on the other, claiming that Israel is setting about to destroy Islam’s third-holiest place. Abbas falsely imagines Israel seeking to destroy al-Aqsa, even as he negates the Jewish history on which it was triumphantly constructed. It is especially vicious because Israel vigilantly protects the rights of non-Jewish believers and their holy sites, while, under Jordanian and Palestinian control, desecration of Jewish religious sites and cemeteries in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, was routine.

Abbas’ statements betray more than two decades of presumed progress, in which both sides were expected to acclimate their populations to living in coexistence. They maintain the total rejectionism that has typified Arab opposition to Israel’s existence since the time of Partition. But the speech is especially dangerous now. Inviting Muslims worldwide to march on Jerusalem may sound like more hyped-up figurative propaganda, but a March 30 “Global” March to Jerusalem is intended to amass a million people to march to the borders of “occupied Palestine” in a showdown that could have tragic consequences.

While this is the third time in less than a year, according to Haaretz, “in which various online groups have tried to organize tens of thousands to march in the West Bank and on Israel’s borders,” it doesn’t help that Afghanistan is in chaos over the accidental burning of the Quran in an Allied military compound. (U.S. President Barack Obama has apologized for the incident, though no one has apologized for the more than 40 Afghan and four American lives lost in the rioting and terror it incited.) The Afghan situation may seem remote from the words of Abbas or the latest march on Jerusalem, but they are parallel in their fierce reaction to any affront to Islam, whether real, as in the case of the Quran-burning, or fictional, as in the case of Abbas’ rant.

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rightly condemned Abbas for “trying to erase the Arab, Muslim and Christian nature of Jerusalem.”

“This was a speech of severe incitement coming from the mouth of someone who supposedly claims that he seeks peace,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “The time has come for the Palestinian leadership to stop denying the past and distorting reality. Since thousands of years, Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Under Israeli sovereignty, Jerusalem will continue to be open to members of all faiths. There is complete freedom of worship for everyone and Israel will continue to devotedly protect the holy places of all religions ... Abbas knows well that there is no foundation for his allusions, including the baseless claims regarding the al-Aqsa Mosque. Israel expects that someone who seemingly stands for peace will prepare his people for peace and coexistence and not spread lies and incitement.”

The impolitic remarks of Abbas are possible only because generations of Palestinians and Arabs have been immersed in similar lies from their leaders. A year ago in December, remember, Egyptian authorities claimed that Zionists were behind shark attacks in a tourist area, alleging that the Mossad was trying to undermine the Egyptian tourism trade.

We can laugh off such silly allegations – Zionist sharks are only slightly more ridiculous than the idea that Israel wants to destroy al-Aqsa – but Abbas and others at his level would not utter such nonsense if there were not an audience to willingly believe it. Decades after both sides agreed to prepare their people for peace and coexistence, the president of the Palestinian Authority is no more inclined to speak the truth than his predecessor. If anything, the allegations and conspiracies just grow even more inventive.

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