‘Palestinians are the Real Victims of Anti-Semitism,’ Claims PA

The Palestinian Authority’s tortured logic takes an absurd turn, claiming that Zionism is a form of “anti-Semitism” that discriminates against Palestinians.

By: Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch

With victimhood being the most prominent component of Palestinian identity, and with the world increasingly condemning anti-Semitism, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has decided to embrace anti-Semitism as a new category of Palestinian victimhood.

The PA Foreign Ministry announced that since Palestinians are “Semites,” any policies that harm Palestinians are expressions of anti-Semitism. Since the PA sees Zionism as victimizing Palestinians and as “hostile to Palestine,” it concludes that Zionism inherently is anti-Semitism. Moreover, American policy critical of the Palestinian Authority, is likewise anti-Semitism, according to the PA.

This creative new Palestinian victimhood category announced by the PA comes in response to the American position expressed recently by U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo: “Let me go on record: anti-Zionism IS Antisemitism.”

According to the PA’s new announcement, anti-Zionism cannot be anti-Semitism because Zionism itself, by “hurting Palestinians,” is anti-Semitism.

According to the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Pompeo has voiced a series of false positions … allow[ing] himself to remove the Palestinians and the Arabs from the Semitic race by stating that Anti-Zionism or objection to Israel’s existence as the homeland of the Jewish people, is a type of anti-Semitism that is escalating,” reported the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.

The Ministry “emphasized that hostility towards the Palestinian people is anti-Semitism, and that the ugly, recurring, and deliberate anti-Semitism that [U.S. President] Trump’s administration is committing against Semitic Palestine is also anti-Semitism. In addition, the American administration has no right to ignore the fact that Semitism is not exclusive to the original Jews, but also includes the Arab Palestinians, and therefore any manifestation of hostility towards Palestinians is an explicit manifestation of anti-Semitism. Moreover, since Zionism is hostile to Palestine, its people, and the establishment of a national homeland for the Palestinian people on the land of its homeland, this makes Zionism itself anti-Semitic.”

The comments appeared to reference Pompeo’s statements during a speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference during which he commented,”I am deeply worried about an old threat that is reemerging – the threat of anti-Semitism,” which he called “a cancer metastasizing in the Middle East, America, and Europe, and indeed sadly in the United States as well.”

Pompeo added, “Criticizing Israel’s policies is an acceptable thing to do in a democracy. But criticizing the very existence of Israel is not acceptable. Anti-Zionism denies the very legitimacy of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Friends, let me go on record: anti-Zionism IS anti-Semitism.”