Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Has a Nightmare Vision
In November 1974, the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat addressed the entire world from the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly. Always a master of spectacle, Arafat cut an arresting figure as he strode towards the podium in a tieless black shirt and flowing cream jacket, with a perfectly-coiffed keffiyeh wrapped around his head. A holster without its gun—firearms are forbidden in the General Assembly Hall—was draped by his side pocket, completing the aesthetic effect of a Palestinian Che Guevara.
Arafat, however, wasn’t going to let U.N. protocol ruin the dramatic impact of his speech.
“Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun,” he told the U.N. delegates at the end of his speech. “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
In visual terms at least, the contrast between Arafat in November 1974 and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas on Sept. 30, 2015, couldn’t have been greater. At the General Assembly rostrum, the portly, drab Abbas delivered a speech so rhetorically labored and dull that I found myself wondering whether he’d had second thoughts about dropping the much-vaunted “bombshell” everyone had been talking about. (In the end, he delivered on that one.)
In between thanking Norway, Sweden, the Arab League, the Obama administration, and Russia—apologies if I left anyone out—there were strands of sheer nastiness running through Abbas’s speech. Referring to “Palestine” as the “land of holiness,” he spoke reverentially of Jesus and Muhammed, but deliberately omitted any mention of the deep and historic Jewish ties to the land: the Davidic and Hasmonean kingdoms that reigned there, for example, or the jewel in the crown that was the Temple in Jerusalem. (Read more from “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Has a Nightmare Vision” HERE)
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