Abbas' Lies Contradicted From His Own Mouth

Pravda-on-the-Hudson recently published an op-ed written by Mahmoud Abbas, the unelected president of the Palestinian Authority. Well,not by him, but by a functionary like one of the 'Palestinian's ' American PR experts or US ex-diplomat Edward Abington, who lobbies for the 'Palestinian' Authority.

In the op-ed, he claims that he was forced to flee as a thirteen-year-old from Tzfat (Safed) in what is now Israel in 1948 and was made to live in a tent city in Syria as a poor refugee. He further claims the Palestinians were victims of what he refers to as 'our expulsion' and that 'Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel,which was why 'Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.'

What's unusual here is not only that this is a blatant falsehood, but that it was contradicted publicly by Abbas himself!

The Wall Street Journal in 2003 made reference to an article penned by Abbas (AKA Abu Mazen) in an article entitled “Abu Mazen Charges that the Arab States are the Cause of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" ( emphasis mine) :

"Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote an article in March 1976 in Falastin al-Thawra, the official journal of the PLO in Beirut: ‘The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.’”

Not only that, but in an interview with Al-Palestinia TV in 2009, Abbas admitted that his family was not expelled or driven out, but rather left voluntarily out of fear that the Jews might take revenge for the slaughter of 20 Jews in the city during the Arab pogroms of 19 years earlier:

“I am among those who were born in the city of Tzfat (Safed). We were a family of means. I studied in elementary school, and then came the naqba [calamity, namely, the founding of the State of Israel – ed.]. At night, we left by foot from Tzfat, to the Jordan River, where we remained for a month. Then we went to Damascus, and then to our relatives in Jordan, and then we settled in Damascus.

“My father had money, and he spent his money systematically, and after a year, the money ran out and we began to work.

So much for those moving claims of being reduced to living in a tent as a poverty stricken refugee.

As always, there's lots more of this sort of thing easily found:

Jordan Daily Newspaper Falastin 19 February 1949:

The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees.

Cairo Daily Newspaper Akhbar El-Yom 12 October 1963:

May 15 1948 arrived; on that very day the Mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead.

Memorandum by the Arab National Committee to the Arab League Governments on their refusal to sign a truce 27 April 1948:

When the Arab delegation entered the conference room, it proudly refused to sign the truce and asked that the evacuation of the Arab population and their transfer to neighbouring Arab countries be facilitated. The Jewish Representatives expressed their profound regret. The Mayor of Haifa adjourned the meeting with a passionate appeal to the Arab population to reconsider its decision...

Abbas' claims that the Arab armies intervened only after the Israelis supposedly expelled the Arab inhabitants en masse is also a falsehood. The Arab states had publicly declared their intention to murder every Jew living in Israel even before the UN vote took place and that is a matter of historical record.

For you see, that's what the so-called Nakba really commemorates - a failed attempt at genocide a mere three years after Auschwitz was liberated, and an attempt in which a significant number of the Arab inhabitants of what was then the Palestine Mandate took part.

I was able to find these references after a cursory search. I find it difficult to believe that the New York Times, with its professional researchers and fact checkers and all its resources was unable to do the same and more.

Was it the intention of the New York Times to suspend credibility and basic standards to dramatize the failed massacre of the Jews known as the Nakba? Can I assume that if Mahmoud Abbas writes in his next op-ed that the moon’s made of green cheese and it’s the fault of the Zionists, the Times will run it uncritically?

There were two groups of refugees that arose out of the 1948 Arab attack on Israel. Apparently only one of those groups is worthy of sympathy, and attention in certain quarters.

The Big Lie, as repeated by The Gray Lady...again, and again and again.