PA Exploits George Floyd’s Death for Anti-Israel Incitement

By: TPS Staff

The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah were quick to exploit the recent tragic death of George Floyd in the US to demonize Israel by comparing Israeli soldiers’ actions to those of the policemen who killed Floyd.

The PA’s main theme is that Israel deliberately kills Arabs and it uses every opportunity to disseminate the lie, the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which monitors incitement and anti-Semitism on the PA media, reported Monday.

One cartoon circulated on social media following Floyd’s death in Minneapolis shows a white American policeman kneeling on a black man with an IDF soldier next to him doing the same to an Arab, with the hashtag “Black lives matter.”

The cartoon, drawn by Muhammad Saba’aneh, a regular cartoonist for the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, uses many visuals to promote its slander.

Both officers are kneeling on the necks of their victims, the two officers are hugging each other, one holds a club and the other a gun, and they both have their country’s flags on their shoulders. The cartoon’s message: Israeli soldiers are the mirror image of Derek Chauvin, the policeman who is responsible for Floyd’s death.

“This tragedy was exploited by the PA and Fatah to again launch its libel that Israel intentionally executes Palestinians,” PMW charged.

In another development, TPS reported that the IDF’s military prosecution on Sunday filed an indictment against Salah Hamed, a Palestinian Authority (PA) policeman, charging him with intentionally causing the death of Ben Yosef Livnat at Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem (Nablus) in 2011, attempted murder, and the disrupting of court proceedings.

According to the indictment, in April 2011, the defendant, along with others, was at Joseph’s Tomb, was on patrol for the PA’s regional national security.

During the night, they spotted Israeli vehicles entering the Tomb and Israelis exiting the vehicles. They started shooting in the air to keep the Israelis out of the compound.

As the vehicles exited the complex, the patrol commander, the defendant and another patrolman, fired several bullets at the vehicles.

As a result, Ben Yosef Livnat was killed and three other Israelis were injured.

Livant was the father of four children, and the youngest was a year and a half old.

While Hamed is in Israeli custody, his accomplices have taken refuge in the PA.

Another PA policeman who took part in the shooting was convicted of shooting at a man and disrupting the investigative and legal proceedings but was acquitted of murder.

The military prosecution filed an appeal demanding that he be convicted of murder. A hearing on the appeal took place about two years ago, but the judges have not yet decided on the matter.

(TPS)