Palestinian President Abbas slams Israel, US during UN speech as critics decry his support for terrorism
The 88-year-old chain-smoking Palestinian leader condemned Israel and the U.S. during his speech to the UN while presenting a 12-point plan for a post-war Gaza that calls for a permanent cease-fire.
JERUSALEM—Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, once again delivered a stridently anti-Israel speech at the U.N. on Thursday, where he also praised the anti-Israel protests across the U.S. and condemned Washington for its support of Israel.
Abbas, who presented a 12-point plan for a post-war Gaza that calls for a permanent cease-fire, accused the Jewish state of committing genocide, while calling for its expulsion from the U.N. and taking aim at the Biden Administration for vetoing Security Council resolutions on the issue, while supplying arms to the Israelis.
He charged the U.S. "furnished Israel with the deadly weapons that it used to kill thousands of innocent civilians, children and women. And this further encouraged Israel to continue with aggression."
Abbas started his speech by questioning Israel's legitimacy: "We will not leave. We will not leave. We will not leave. Palestine is our homeland. It is the land of our fathers, our grandfathers. It will remain ours. And if anyone were to leave, it would be the occupying usurpers."
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"Abbas spoke for 26 minutes and did not say the word ‘Hamas’ once. Since the massacre of October 7, Abbas has failed to condemn Hamas for their crimes against humanity," Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon charged in a statement following the speech.
Yet while leaders from around the world watched his UNGA speech, some critics complain the 88-year-old's rule and domination of Palestinian politics in the West Bank (known in Israel by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria in Israel) has done little for the Palestinian cause.
Abbas was born Safed duing the British mandate period (now in Israel). His family fled to Syria when Arab armies invaded Israel to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state.
Abbas has been accused of rewarding Palestinian terrorism via the infamous "pay for slay" system that supports financial stipends for convicted Palestinian terrorists and their family members.
He has also garnered a reputation over the decades as an anti-American agitator who stokes wild antisemitic conspiracy theories. Just last month, Abbas delivered a speech to the Turkish parliament, where he announced that that "America is the plague, and the plague is America" and "We implement Shari'a law: victory or martyrdom."
Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told Fox News Digital that "Mahmoud Abbas aka Arafat's appointed successor after 20 years has done what Arafat hoped he would, that is maintain a Palestinian stasis while at the same time refusing to root out the corruption within the PA or combat terrorism. Further, as he has shown during his recent speech in the Turkish Parliament, a clear allegiance to Hamas and an endorsement of 10/7, underscoring the consistent antisemitism of his leadership."
Romirowsky added "With no heir apparent, Abbas's legacy, as was Arafat's, is that of self-inflicted victimology while maintaining wealth on the back of his own people in the name of the so-called Palestinian struggle."
Fox News Digital reported shortly after Hamas slaughtered nearly 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, including over 30 Americans, that the Abbas’ PA might compensate convicted Hamas terrorists for their role in the attack.
Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told Fox News Digital the PA and Abbas "duplicate all of the corruption, nepotism, and inefficiency of the Palestine Liberation Organization" that was created by Arafat.
He said "Abbas does not accept the basic right of the Jewish people to self-determination, and therefore he doesn’t recognize the right of the state of Israel to be a nation state of the Jewish people in any borders."
Michael, who is affiliated with the Misgav Institute continued, "He has not educated the young generation and has not educated PA officials for peace. On the contrary, Abbas has led and enabled the indoctrination toward hatred and toward delegitimization of the state of Israel."
In contrast to the U.S.-designated terrorist movement, Hamas, Abbas and the PA are considered to be relatively moderate, according to some Mideast observers.
In 2022, Fox News Digital reported Abbas issued a shocking diatribe against Israel in the German capital of Berlin, where the Holocaust – the mass extermination of European Jewry – was organized, claiming that the Jewish state has carried out "50 Holocausts."
Abbas refused to apologize (or aid in a professional inquiry) in Berlin at the time of the Palestinian Black September massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer during the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Fox News' David Hammelburg contributed to this story.
