Photo Credit: Matty Stern / US Embassy in Tel Aviv / Twitter
{Originally posted to the PMW website}
In an unprecedented personal attack, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, a regular columnist for official PA daily and once the advisor to former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on national affairs called US President Trump’s Special Representative for International Negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, a “mongoloid.”
In an op-ed rejecting the as yet unpublished US Middle East peace initiative, Trump’s “deal of the century,” Al-Ghoul compared Greenblatt’s appearance and conduct to that of someone suffering from Down Syndrome:
“Anyone who follows the prattle of Jason Greenblatt, President Trump’s envoy in the matter of the deal of the century, sees that his condition is very similar to Down Syndrome… Anyone who looks at the American envoy [Greenblatt] discovers that he has external and inner characteristics similar to those suffering from Down Syndrome: He is short, his eyes are similar to Mongoloid eyes, he prattles unrestrainedly, and is politically retarded.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 3, 2019]
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Al-Ghoul added, that it is not only Greenblatt who suffers from Down Syndrome but the entire Trump administration:
“The ill Greenblatt is not the only one who has Down Syndrome, for it strikes all the components of the American administration. Anyone who examines the general genes of the components of the Trump administration sees that it is a politically crippled creature.”
Al-Ghoul ended by saying that Trump, Greenblatt, and the rest of the US team can “prattle on as much as they wish” about their “ominous” peace plan, but that PA Chairman Abbas is the one who decides:
“Mongoloid Greenblatt, together with President Trump, his son-in-law [Senior Advisor to the President of the United States] Jared Kushner, and Zionist [US] Ambassador [to Israel David] Friedman – can prattle on as much as they wish about the ominous deal. However, they should know for certain that without the signature of PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas no deal will pass, and their foolish steps and policy will continue to be pointless.”
While personal attacks on representatives of the US administration by PA officials are not uncommon as documented by Palestinian Media Watch, this latest attack sets a new low, even for the PA, its representatives, and its mouthpieces.
The following is a longer excerpt of the op-ed in the official PA daily:
Op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “The American prattle syndrome”
“Anyone who follows the prattle of [US Special Representative for International Negotiations] Jason Greenblatt, [US] President [Donald] Trump’s envoy in the matter of the deal of the century (i.e., referring to Trump’s as yet unpublished Middle East peace plan), sees that his condition is very similar to Down Syndrome, which strikes children with mental limitations. This syndrome was classified in 1862 by British doctor John Langdon Down who published a detailed report on the matter in 1866 and at first called it Mongolism or Mongoloid Imbecility. Among other things, it causes Alzheimer, a short life expectancy, speech difficulty, and aspects connected to the shape of the eyes, chin, [and] the round high facial structure. Anyone who looks at the American envoy [Greenblatt] discovers that he has external and inner characteristics similar to those suffering from Down Syndrome: He is short, his eyes are similar to Mongoloid eyes, he prattles unrestrainedly, and is politically retarded even though he is the heir of American administrations that established an empire by Yankee standards.
The ill Greenblatt is not the only one who has Down Syndrome, for it strikes all the components of the American administration. Anyone who examines the general genes of the components of the Trump administration sees that it is a politically crippled creature, which since the beginning of 2017 has placed it in a whirlpool of crises coming one after the other on the internal, regional, and international levels. Until now it has not succeeded in overcoming any of the crises in which it has become entangled…
If we take as an example what is called ‘the deal of the century’ for solving the Palestinian-Israeli problem, we will see that [the Trump administration] is captive to its ignorance in everything related to dealing with the historical crisis. It has ignored all of the foundations on which the US depended in the past and the decisions of the international institutions, and has begun to implement its real estate deal on the ground, even before its announcement and before conferring with those whose cause it is [the Palestinians]…
Mongoloid Greenblatt, together with President Trump, his son-in-law [Senior Advisor to the President of the United States] Jared Kushner, and Zionist [US] Ambassador [to Israel David] Friedman – can prattle on as much as they wish about the ominous deal. However, they should know for certain that without the signature of PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas no deal will pass, and their foolish steps and policy will continue to be pointless. However, if they want to recover from Down Syndrome and the meaningless prattle, they must return to the decisions of the international institutions and to the sources of authority of the peace process, including the Arab Peace Initiative, and force Israel to fully retreat from the territory of the State of Palestine that was occupied in June 1967, and primarily from East Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 3, 2019]
(Written by Maurice Hirsch and Nan Jacques Zilberdik)
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