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Pro-Israel Groups Slam Abbas for "Anti-Semitic" Speech
(Ha'aretz) Allison Kaplan Sommer - After Sunday's speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said: "The intemperate and extreme language used by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will not better the situation of Palestinians or promote meaningful negotiations. Quite the contrary, with Abbas alleging that the Trump administration committed 'the crime of the century' for recognizing the simple fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel....The true 'crime of the past century' has been the refusal by Arab and Palestinian leaders to engage in serious negotiations that could have brought about a permanent resolution and meet the aspirations of the Palestinian people." The Israel Policy Forum said the speech contained "vitriolic rhetoric" and expressed "disgust over President Abbas' remarks before the Fatah council delegitimizing Zionism, denying the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, and peddling conspiracy theories about the plight of European Jewry." It was "impossible to view Abbas as a viable negotiating partner when he continues to deny the right of the Jewish people to their own national movement and when he continues to insist that the basic recognition of a Jewish homeland is the original sin of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." The Anti-Defamation League said Abbas' "anti-Israel diatribe was a sober reminder that the core of the conflict was the Palestinian leadership's long-standing refusal to recognize the historic Jewish connection to the Land of Israel. Abbas' argument that Israel was founded as 'a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism' is rooted in an anti-Semitic rejection of the undeniable Jewish connection to Israel."