At a gathering of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s central council on Sunday, Mahmoud Abbas delivered a two-hour speech assessing the current situation of the Palestinians, setting forth his ideas as to how they should proceed, and railing against the Trump administration. He also elaborated on Palestinians’ claims to the land of Israel and the illegitimacy of Jewish claims, and expounded a complex web of conspiracy theories—ranging from the anti-Semitic to the insane—that, to him, explain Palestinian suffering. But none of this made it into the New York Times’ coverage of the speech, as Noah Pollak reports:

Abbas, the Times reports, “stopped well short of embracing an alternative to a two-state solution.” “Abbas said nothing about abandoning it,” the reporter, David Halbfinger, adds editorially. Not only was Abbas promoting peace, “he also shied away from urging the kind of provocative acts,” like ending security cooperation with Israel, that would “shake officials in Jerusalem and Washington.” In fact, Abbas “reaffirmed his commitment to nonviolence.” . . . The Times did allow a discordant note into its report, quoting Abbas saying that Zionism “is a colonial enterprise that has nothing to do with Jewishness.”

But much to Abbas’s annoyance, one imagines, the Times left out all the good stuff, [such as his comment that] “Israel has imported frightening amounts of drugs in order to destroy our younger generation.” Much of the speech was consumed with a lengthy exposition of a multi-century global conspiracy among Europeans, British, Americans, and Jews to steal Palestinian land. “The issue did not start 100 years ago. It started much earlier in 1653 when Cromwell ruled Britain.” Centuries later, he said, Europe “asked the Dutch, who had the largest fleet on earth, to transport the Jews” to the Middle East. . . .

Abbas wrapped up the speech by honoring terrorists, . . . . [noting that] “today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Abu Iyad Abu al-Houl.” Abu Iyad was the founder of the notorious Black September terrorist group, mastermind of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, and a year later, of the murder of two American diplomats in Khartoum. Abu Iyad, a true Palestinian hero.

That Abbas called out a terrorist for special recognition and honor is important in understanding his mentality and that of Palestinian politics. That the New York Times ignored this detail and so many others like it is important to understanding the mentality of contemporary Western liberalism. Mahmoud Abbas is tired of pretending and wants to tell the world what he really thinks. The New York Times won’t let him.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.