The Simon Wiesenthal Center is calling on the European Union – specifically France and Germany – to condemn Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for displaying an anti-Semitic cartoon on social media.
Abbas, who is currently hospitalized in Ramallah for pneumonia, can be seen in a picture posted to social media on May 21 reading a newspaper that featured a cartoon of an Israeli soldier taking away a baby’s milk bottle and forcing it to drink poison.
Abbas showed the world he’s recovering by reading a newspaper with a Der Strumer-esque antisemitic cartoon https://t.co/7kq6r6epax
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) May 22, 2018
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper said in a statement that the photo “shows how deep the cancer of hatred the Palestinian Authority President harbors for the Jewish State, her people and values.”
“The validation of that cartoon by him exposes how little difference there is between the PA and Hamas,” Hier and Cooper said. “Both continue to brainwash a new generation of children that Israelis are interlopers and latter-day Nazis.”
They added, “The big lie tactics employed in the so-called marches of return, gained the Palestinians nothing of practical value, with the exception that the man in street in Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East is convinced that Jews are baby killers, cold blooded murderers who deserve whatever terrorist or other bombing attacks on inflicted on Jews, inside in Israel and/or around the world.”
It’s not known if Abbas had intentionally posed for the photo with the cartoon showing, but it would be in line with some of his most recent rhetoric.
The cartoon is based on the reports of an 8-month-old baby dying at the recent Gaza riots, however there is reason to believe that the baby died from a pre-existing medical condition and not from the tear gas deployed by the Israel Defense Force (IDF).
Abbas is could be discharged from the hospital as soon as May 23.
