Foreign Leaders are Wrong to Believe Abbas

Dear Editor:

Recently Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed that there “is an opportunity to deliver self-determination for the people of Palestine in a way that isolates Hamas, disarms it and drives it out of the region once and for all” but in reality there is no such “opportunity.” How do we know this? Fatah, the dominant faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority, reached an agreement with Hamas in Beijing in July 2024, committing to form a unity government following the Israel-Hamas war. The two groups issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to future cooperation.

This unity pact, publicly acknowledged by both Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, makes their true intentions undeniably clear. Since the Beijing meeting, Abbas has not distanced himself from this agreement, and there is no official indication he will abandon the pledge to work with Hamas “the day after the war.” What’s more the Palestinian National Charter to this day openly contains the phrase “liberation through armed struggle.” Finally, it must be noted that the PA’s policy of “pay-for-slay” continues and this is why on July 31, 2025, U. S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against the PA and the PLO, which included denying visas to officials from those terrorist supporting entities.

Sincerely,
Moshe Phillips
National Chairman
Americans For A Safe Israel
New York, NY
afsi.Org

A Wink-And-Nod “Condemnation”

Dear Editor:

The statement issued by the Palestinian Authority in response to today’s massacre of Jewish bus passengers in Jerusalem has significant implications for the possibility of peace.

The brief statement begins by announcing that “the Palestinian Presidency” has “denounced all forms of violence and terrorism, regardless of their source.” Neither PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas nor any other PA official is cited by name. Also not mentioned: the very reason for issuing the statement. For even a hint of that, the reader has to scroll down to the very final sentence, which explains that the statement “came in the wake of today’s events in occupied Jerusalem.” What “events”? Who knows? The statement doesn’t mention them.

What does the phrase “all forms of violence and terrorism” mean? Well, the PA does not consider the murder of Jewish bus passengers in Jerusalem to be “violence” or “terrorism.” So what the PA is really “denouncing” here is (alleged) Israeli violence against Arabs. It makes that clear in the second paragraph, which demands an end to “the occupation,” the “genocide in the Gaza Strip,” and the “colonist terrorism.” No call for ending attacks on Jews.

The third paragraph contains a threat: only the creation of an “independent and sovereign” Palestinian Arab state “will end the cycle of violence in the region.” Thus until such a state is created, violence is inevitable and justified.

All of which means that the PA’s response to the massacre is a wink-and-nod “condemnation” that is not really a condemnation at all. It’s a piece of propaganda which enables the international news media to claim the PA condemned the attack, while quietly assuring Palestinian Arabs that the attack was fully justified.

The most dramatic demonstration of the PA’s support for the terrorists is its pay-for-slay policy. The families of the two terrorists who carried out the slaughter in Jerusalem today will immediately be rewarded with a one-time grant of $1,511, followed by payments of $353 monthly for life. If either of the terrorists was married, there’s an additional $100 monthly for their family, plus a bonus of $50 per child.

The PA currently pays out more than $300-million annually to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists. That includes more than $2.8-million monthly to the perpetrators of the October 7 atrocities and their families. (Thanks to Palestinian Media Watch for the statistics.)

Until the Palestinian Arab leadership changes its basic attitude toward anti-Jewish terrorism—as expressed in the pay-for-slay system—Israelis will have good reason to doubt the prospects for peace.

Sincerely
Prof. Rafael Medoff

Anti-Semitic Poster Girl

Dear Editor:

When Palestinian Arab teenager Ahed Tamimi slapped an Israeli soldier in 2017, she was hailed as a “superstar” by the Associated Press and given a book deal with a major American publisher. Now Tamimi has announced that she is waging war against “Jews and Judaism, not Zionism.” Interestingly, none of her past cheerleaders have yet criticized her latest ugly tirade.

The president of Turkey gave Tamimi an award for striking that soldier eight years ago, CNN hailed her as “a fearless teen,” and she was featured in the Arabic-language edition of the fashion magazine Vogue, with a banner headline hailing her as “a lioness.”

Tamimi was quick to monetize the Vogue article. When Penguin Random House offered her a book deal, she (or her p. r. team) quickly produced an anti-Israel screed titled “They Called Me a Lioness.”

In interviews over the years, Tamimi has praised Adolf Hitler and vowed to “drink the blood” of Israeli Jews. But those remarks were not reported by the international news media.

They aren’t reporting her latest antisemitic diatribe, either.

“Judaism means occupation,” Tamimi announced on the Enlightenment Podcast on August 8, according to a transcript from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

She continued: “Today, tomorrow, and a million years from now, I will continue to say that Judaism [should] be presented to the children of Palestine—children of my age and younger—as occupation, and that we are fighting the Jews, not Zionism.”

“The whole world needs to shut up when a Palestinian is talking,” Tamimi asserted. “We are superior to the entire world, because we are the only ones in the world fighting injustice, at the expense of our lives, and the expense of our humanity.”

Tamimi was not born antisemitic. She is part of a generation of Palestinian Arabs who have been educated by their schools, mosques, and parents to hate Jews and glorify violence—and who bask in the sympathy of biased journalists.

Sincerely
Prof. Rafael Medoff