PA: Jewish US Ambassador Friedman is an Antisemite
PA: Jewish US Ambassador Friedman
is an Antisemite
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by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
The Palestinian Authority is now calling the Jewish US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman an Antisemite, just a day after PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas called him a “son of a bitch.” 
Ignoring the fact that the term Antisemitism refers specifically to Jew-hatred, the Palestinian Authority has for years claimed that they cannot be accused of Antisemitism because Arabs themselves are considered “Semites.” Taking this linguistic distortion a step further, the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs is now demonizing Friedman’s positions about the PA as expressions of “the ugliest kind of Antisemitism.”
The PA has repeatedly demonized Ambassador Freidman. Abbas' Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash attacked a statement by Friedman in September saying that a “satanic urge” is what drives Friedman.
[Friday sermon in presence of PA Chairman Abbas, Official PA TV, Sept. 8, 2017]
The following is the text of the new statement by the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Headline: “[PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates: Friedman’s positions are Antisemitic and racist and disqualify him”
“The [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said in a statement that US Ambassador [to Israel] David Friedman’s statements, positions, and hostile behavior towards the Palestinian people and its national rights and human rights constitute a blatant deviation from diplomacy and its conventions, the ugliest kind of Antisemitism, and a scandalous violation of international law...
The statement also said: ‘From day to day Friedman proves that he is an ambassador of the settlers and their gangs. He holds the ideology and positions of the extremist right-wing in Israel, which are based on perpetuating the occupation and the settlement enterprise, on enmity towards the Palestinian people, and on negating its national and human existence.’”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 21, 2018]
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: “They [the US] decided to transfer their embassy to it [Jerusalem], cut their allocations to UNRWA, and consider settlement legal. This was said by more than one American official, the first of them is their ambassador here in Tel Aviv, David Friedman, who said: "They are building in their land." Son of a bitch! (Lit: “son of a dog”) They are building in their land? He is a settler, his family are settlers, and he is the US ambassador in Tel Aviv, so what do we expect of him?”
[Official PA TV, Abbas speech to Palestinian leaders
at PA headquarters in Ramallah, March 19, 2018]