Fatah official: US is the plague
“Yesterday [Jan. 20, 2020] a memorial service was held for distinguished national leader Ahmed Abd Al-Rahman (i.e., senior Fatah official and advisor of former PLO and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat) at the [PLO] Presidential Headquarters’ Ahmad Al-Shaqiri Hall in Ramallah, and this was under the auspices of [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas…
In a speech he gave on behalf of President Abbas, Fatah Movement Deputy Chairman and [Fatah] Central Committee member Mahmoud Al-Aloul said: ‘The departed represented throughout his path the story of an entire generation of young people in the best of their years, and students who were stunned as a result of the [Arab] nation’s defeat in 1967 (i.e., the Six Day War), and they were freed from their frustration by joining Fatah.’ …
He added: ‘Ahmed passed away with all of the experience that he obtained throughout the long path. He passed away at a time when we are in need, at the least, of this experience and this understanding so that they will help us continue to act in the difficult conditions and under the great pressures and challenges with which we are dealing.The goal [of these pressures] is to subjugate us and cause us to make concessions on our principles. Since what needs to be done is essential and related to ideology, history, and the future, and relates to Jerusalem, the [refugees’] return, sovereignty, and independence, we have taken a position rejecting all ideas [of the Americans] and the connection with them, while emphasizing your friend Mahmoud Darwish’s (i.e., Palestinian national poet) words: “America is the plague, and the plague is America.”’”
Mahmoud Darwish is considered the Palestinian national poet. He published over 30 volumes of poetry and 8 books of prose and has won numerous awards. He joined the Israeli Communist Party in 1961 and the terrorist organization PLO in 1973, becoming a member of the PLO Executive Committee in 1987. He left the PLO in 1993 because it signed the Oslo Accords with Israel. Many in Israel see his poetry as inciting hate and violence. One poem he wrote in 1988 at the height of the Palestinian wave of violence and terror against Israel in which approximately 200 Israelis were murdered (the first Intifada, 1987-1993) calls to Israelis: “Take your portion of our blood - and be gone… Live wherever you like, but do not live among us… Die wherever you like, but do not die among us… Leave our country, our land, our sea, our wheat, our salt, our wounds, everything, and leave the memories of memory.” In 1964, he wrote a poem entitled "ID Card" in which he said: "I do not hate people, And I do not steal from anyone, But if I starve I will eat my oppressors' flesh; Beware, beware of my starving, And my rage." He also wrote “Silence for the Sake of Gaza” in 1973, which many see as glorifying terror: “She wraps explosives around her waist and blows herself up. It is not a death, and not a suicide. It is Gaza's way of declaring she is worthy of life.” His defenders have claimed that Israel misinterprets his poetry and that he sought reconciliation with Israel. One wrote in 2017: “Darwish arranged meetings between Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals, and published essays on their discussions. He was optimistic that, through mutual understanding, the two sides could eventually reconcile.” [https://www.bcalnoor.org/]