It is a rare occasion that Israel and Hamas agree on anything, but now both are upset at PA head Mahmoud Abbas – over different reasons – for joining the Paris rally. 

Palestinian Authority (PA) head Mahmoud Abbas joined some 50 world leaders and millions of marchers in Paris on Sunday to protest Islamic violence and defend freedom.

Hamas denounced Abbas’s participation as hypocritical. “This behavior is part of Abbas’s hypocrisy and political acrobatics. He thinks that by doing this he is gaining sympathy from countries,” Mahmoud A-Zahar, a Hamas leader, declared. “He should first tend to his people’s needs.”

“We condemned any action committed against a state, but Abbas should first show solidarity with his own people,” A-Zahar continued. “He steals the paychecks [of PA government officials] and rehabilitation funds and leaves them to starve to death in the winter cold.”

Abbas is neglecting his responsibility towards the Palestinians, whom he should care for before declaring war on terror, the Hamas official charged. Abbas is not the legal leader of the Palestinians, he said, because his party has lost the last elections and his tenure as PA head was up years ago.

Faisal Al-Kasim, a commentator for Al-Jazeera, pointed out that Abbas himself bans freedom of expression within the PA. “Abu-Mazen [Abbas] prevented the Palestinians from demonstrating within the PA…but he went to Paris with his colleague Benjamin Netanyahu to demonstrate against terror,” Al-Kasim wrote on his Facebook page. He wrote “Shame” under the photo of Abbas marching in line with Netanyahu in Paris.

Hamas also delivered mixed messages regarding the wave of Islamic terror in France. The terror organization officially condemned the Charlie Hebdo massacre but expressed support for the perpetrators on its Facebook page. Hamas completely ignored the terror attack on the kosher Hyper Cacher supermarket.

Abbas the Holocaust Denier

A number of Israeli parliamentarians have also noted the hypocrisy of Abbas’s participation, including, for example, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who noted that Abbas is not only a supporter of terror, but also a Holocaust denier.

Deputy Minister of Religious Services Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan wrote on his Facebook Page: “How is it possible that Abbas, who has been involved in planning attacks in the past and is sitting in a government together with the Hamas terrorist organization, whose very aim is to destroy Israel,  and who lends a helping hand to terror attacks against Israeli citizens – how can he be traveling to Paris so as to appear as the President ‘State of Palestine’ and condemn terror in its name?”

Abbas Supports and Glorifies Terror

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) shows that Abbas’ participation in the Paris rally was a display of duplicity and hypocrisy, as Abbas himself supports and glorifies terror.

Just last week, five terrorists who in total recently murdered 10 Israelis, were included on a list of “Martyrs of 2014” who “ascended” to Heaven, according to the bi-weekly Al-Asima, a publication distributed with the official Palestinian Authority daily, PMW reports.

The terrorists on the list, who were called “shahids” (martyrs) and thereby achieve the highest status possible in Islam, included the murderers who recently massacred four Jews and a Druze policeman at a synagogue, three terrorists who killed five civilians by running them down with cars and the terrorist who attempted to assassinate Rabbi Yehuda Glick, an activist for equal rights for Jews at the Temple Mount.

Al-Asima lists as its “general supervisor” Othman Abu Gharbieh, who is a member of Fatah’s Central Committee and the Secretary General of the Popular National Conference of Jerusalem, the PLO institution that publishes the bi-weekly.

The Palestinians themselves have recently expressed their sense of oppression under Abbas’s regime. A comprehensive poll shows that the Arabs living under the PA regime consider the leadership corrupt, dictatorial and dangerous.

Only 21% of those polled said there is freedom of the press in PA-controlled territory, and 20% said the same about the situation in the Gaza Strip. Only 30% believe they can openly criticize Hamas and the PA without fear of retribution.

By: Aryeh Savir
Staff Writer, United with Israel

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