Sparks were flying on the radio airwaves Sunday night.
What started off as a routine interview quickly devolved into a heated exchange when a Palestinian Fatah official accused talk show host and Jewish Press columnist Aaron Klein of “incitement.”
Klein fired back that such an allegation was “interesting” coming from a Fatah official, since, Klein said, members of the Palestinian Fatah party reportedly routinely incite violence against Israel.
Dmitri Diliani, a spokesperson for Fatah in Jerusalem and a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, had taken issue with Klein’s characterization of recent violence in Jerusalem as being instigated by the Palestinians.
“Your show is an inciting one,” Diliani exclaimed. “Your focus on one side that is related to the settler ideology is inciting.”
The Fatah official blamed the Jerusalem violence on a “trigger-happy, bloodthirsty government” led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Diliani described the recent spate of Palestinian attacks in Jerusalem as an “outbreak that comes out of personal pressure and due to a lot of pressures that Jerusalemites have as a result of the occupation and its policies that deprives them of their national rights and rights related to their every day life.”
Fatah is the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The exchange took place on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s AM 970 The Answer. Klein himself is based in Tel Aviv.
Klein read to Diliani recent comments made by Fatah officials that seem to support violent attacks against Israelis.
In one example, Klein said Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein used his Facebook page to encourage Jerusalem violence by praising the terrorist murderers who carried out recent deadly attacks targeting Jews as “heroic martyrs.”
Einein also mentioned by name the terrorist who attempted to murder Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick earlier this month, as documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
Diliani, however, countered: “If you consider people expressing their anger over the injustice they live under the foreign rule of Israel in occupied east Jerusalem, if you want to call that incitement you can all it incitement.”
Klein went on to ask Diliani to explain why Abbas said Jews cannot live in a future Palestinian state.
The radio host asked the Fatah official to name one Arab country in the world where citizens have more democratic rights than Israeli Arab living in Israel.
Diliani replied, “Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon. Do you want more?”
To which Klein retorted; “I didn’t see any popular elections in Palestine. Jordan hasn’t had an election in dozens of years. There is no Supreme Court in Jordan.”