Plagues, War Criminals, and Palestinian Authority Views of the United States

Last month, I noted in a blog post that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), had called the United States “a plague.”

He said the following to the Turkish parliament on August 15:

The U.S. has used its veto power in the Security Council three times, against the world's demand to stop the Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip. Three times, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. stood up in the Security Council, and used the veto power, all by herself, while the other 14 members demanded to stop the fighting. This is America. America is the plague, and the plague is America.

This denunciation came after the latest U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority. As the State Department said on June 11, “The United States will provide an additional $404 million in lifesaving humanitarian aid to support Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and the region, bringing the total U.S. assistance to more than $674 million over the past eight months.”

Abbas’s denunciation is not idiosyncratic or isolated. Public contempt for the United States seems to be a PA pattern these days, as the invaluable Palestine Media Watch informs us.

Mahmoud al-Habbash is President Abbas's adviser on religious and Islamic affairs. He is also the Palestinian Authority's top Sharia judge. Al-Habbash was previously minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs between 2009 and 2014. So he is a top Palestinian official, and has been for about 15 years. On July 27, on his Facebook page Al-Habbash said this about the war in Gaza:

 The US is a partner in committing this crime, a partner to a war crime... Even Biden himself must stand trial as a war criminal.

On September 3 he added that “The US is the true criminal in this [Gaza] war.”

I have been unable to find any Biden administration reaction to seeing top PA officials call the United States a “plague” and call President Biden a “war criminal.”

Remember, we are paying for this. The United States has given over $5 billion in aid to the Palestinian people.

Your tax dollars at work, I guess. But this is not something to treat as a joke. When public contempt for the United States is rewarded, there will be more of it. When aid recipients call this country a plague and call the president a war criminal, our reaction should be clear: first demand an apology and an end to such rhetoric. If that doesn’t work, cut off the aid. Nations, like individuals, should show some self-respect or they will lose the respect of others.