In a speech on “Brexit” day to the EU parliament, Mahmoud Abbas claimed (without a shred of evidence) that Israeli rabbis had called for the poisoning of Palestinians’ water supply and prophesied that were it not for Israel’s behavior, terrorism would cease to exist everywhere. His preposterous words were met with a standing ovation. During the same trip to Brussels, Abbas rejected an invitation to meet with Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin. Evelyn Gordon comments:
[T]he Palestinian Authority (PA) has been promulgating hatred of Israel through its schools and media for over twenty years now, and throughout this time, the EU and its member states have been the PA’s largest donors; thus the EU has been directly subsidizing Palestinian hate education for over two decades. The EU and its member states are also the main financiers of anti-Israel NGOs, so in that way, too, they’ve been funding anti-Israel propaganda for decades. And it’s no accident that the EU has devoted so much money to this purpose; it’s obsessed with Israel to the virtual exclusion of other foreign-policy concerns. . . .
After Abbas refused to meet with him, Rivlin naively said he found this refusal “surprising.” But it’s not surprising at all when Abbas can be rewarded for it with a standing ovation from the very body whose president personally requested him to hold the meeting [with Rivlin]. Just as it’s not surprising that Abbas similarly rejected a personal request by France’s then-foreign minister Laurent Fabius to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu in Paris in October 2015. Why should he agree when Fabius promptly rewarded his refusal by announcing plans to convene an international conference to force Israel to accede to Palestinian demands and pledged that France would unilaterally recognize Palestine as a state if Israel declined to capitulate? . . .
By granting financial and diplomatic rewards to Palestinian rejectionism and hate education, the EU has encouraged Palestinian terror and distanced peace. No self-respecting country should want to be associated with such sorry behavior. Britain is well out of it.
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/the-european-parliament-rewards-hate/