Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas delivered a rambling, bitter, self-pitying and hate-filled soliloquy on Thursday in his address to the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
Even before offering the traditional courteous greeting to the President of the General Assembly, heads of delegations, and other diplomats in the chamber, Abbas brusquely stated to the hall, “Jerusalem is not for sale.”
He then invoked the Creator’s blessings upon himself and his people, noting that He is not with those whom Abbas considers their enemies.
Only then, apparently, did he feel safe enough to begin with greetings in the traditional manner.
Abbas spoke of his people who, he said, have been “suffocating under the yoke of Israeli occupation for 51 years.” He demanded Israel’s recognition of the “State of Palestine” on the “4 June 1967 borders,” saying the Palestine Liberation Organization decided this year to withdraw its own recognition of the State of Israel until such recognition is forthcoming.
(The fact that no State of Palestine ever existed along the so-called ‘4 June 1067’ borders — which also never existed — doesn’t seem to have occurred to the octogenarian, who rambled through much of his address.)
He slammed Israel’s new ‘Nation State’ Law, saying it “proves Israel is a racist state” which he said discriminates against “Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel” — an oxymoron — and prohibits “non Jews who have immigrated to Israel” from becoming citizens — including, he said, “Muslims and Christians from the former Soviet Union.”
That last is a particularly vicious lie, one that lies at the heart of an exceptionally painful issue that has torn apart Israeli society for decades: Israel’s Law of Return specifically allows anyone to make aliyah (immigrate) to Israel and become a citizen if they can document the existence of one Jewish grandparent — in other words, Israel uses the same definition to determine eligibility for its Law of Return as Adolf Hitler, may his name be erased, and the Third Reich did in their definition of a Jew to be murdered during World War II.
In a moment of obvious , Abbas asked those in the hall to define the “Land of Israel” and its borders.
Truly, he was fortunate that those seated in the audience were far more courteous than he.