Hoenlein: Washington must demand curb to violence; ADL says PA leader’s UN speech was incitement.
By SAM SOKOLUpdated: OCTOBER 9, 2015 07:24Palestinian rock-throwers attack Israeli troops near Bethlehem(photo credit: REUTERS)
Several large and influential Jewish organizations have blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for inciting the terrorist attacks currently plaguing Israel, linking the violence to Palestinian Authority incitement and calling on the world to pressure Ramallah into calming things down.On Wednesday evening, World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder urged the PA to condemn the attacks, saying Palestinian leaders must “do everything in their power to rein in these extremists who are bent on wreaking havoc on the peace process.“Each and every one of us has a responsibility to stop the vicious cycle which has brought so much pain and suffering to the people of the region over the last decades,” Lauder added, calling on the international community to intercede with Ramallah to ensure the cessation of violence.Stephen Greenberg, chairman, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman/CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said, “The leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and in particular, President Abbas, must be held to account for their direct and indirect roles in inciting the populace, especially the frequent references to al-Aksa being ‘under siege’ when they know that not to be the case.This week in 60 seconds: Terror hits Israel“Urging Palestinians to rise up to protect the Aksa Mosque leads to the inevitable consequence of confrontation and violence,” they said.Speaking on PA television last month, Abbas said that “we bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing.“The al-Aksa [Mosque] is ours, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is ours, and they have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem.”Greenberg and Hoenlein called upon Washington, “which provides hundreds of millions of dollars of funding each year to the Palestinian Authority, to demand that Palestinian officials act decisively to curb the violence.“We know that President Abbas can impact the ‘Palestinian street’ when he wants to. His failure to do so should bring a cut in funding and the isolation of Abbas until he takes concrete steps,” they said.The leadership of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center asked, “When will the international community begin to hold Mr. Abbas accountable for his racist incitement which sanctions murderous attacks taken in the name of the Palestinian cause.
“The Palestinians have used a phony crisis of their own making surrounding al-Aksa to turn the House of Israel into a house of mourning as they incited a murderous terror spree that has seen a nine-year-old boy bury his parents and a new wave of Jewish orphans. And we are once again witness to the despicable spectacles of jubilant celebrations among the Palestinians,” they said.The Anti-Defamation League expressed similar sentiments, with its national director saying Abbas’s September 30 speech before the United Nations General Assembly “seems to have implicitly given the green light to renewed violence with a wink and a nod.“The attacks by Palestinian terrorist groups in the West Bank and Jerusalem come just days after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s highly inflammatory speech at the United Nations, where he called the Oslo Accords defunct and denied the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, among other spurious claims,” the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt said.“Such rhetoric, combined with the broader Palestinian media and political culture of incitement and slandering of Israel and Jews, promotes and advances a culture of violence.This needs to stop if Palestinians and Israelis ever have a hope for a real shot at peace. In the wake of these attacks Palestinian leaders should send a strong and clear message that violence and terrorism are morally unconscionable and completely unacceptable... Leaders in the international community have a moral responsibility to call out President Abbas’s dangerous incitement.”Both the Wiesenthal Center and the ADL criticized reporting on the Palestinian attacks, with Greenblatt saying he was “especially troubled by the international media’s dehumanizing and irresponsible coverage of the violence.”The National Council of Young Israel also endorsed American pressure on the Palestinians, saying that Washington should “institute severe consequences for the ongoing provocation and encouragement of deadly terrorist attacks” by the PA.“We urge the United States to immediately downgrade the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic offices in Washington, DC, and to cut the level of foreign aid that it provides to the Palestinian Authority. The prior absence of any substantive penalties in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks in the past has encouraged more terrorism and enabled Chairman Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to openly and unabashedly lionize terrorists and provide them with safe havens. The previous US diplomatic policies toward President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have been a failure and need to be changed now,” the Orthodox group asserted.