Palestinian Media Watch documented how Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub blamed Israel for the October 7th massacre.
By Rachel Avraham
According to a recent report in Palestinian Media Watch, “The Palestinian Authority alternates between justifying Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre and atrocities and blaming Israel for them. The latest to blame Israel is Fatah leader Jibril Rajoub who, speaking in English in South Africa, said: “The Israeli government is the only one responsible for what’s going on, for the suffering, whether for the Palestinians or some Israeli civilians who were killed on Oct. 7.””
Palestinian Media Watch reported, “His solution is for Israel to release all 15,000 Palestinian terrorist prisoners in exchange for the Israeli hostages kidnapped on Oct. 7. He adds the horrific lie that the Palestinian prisoner “hostages,” who include many mass murderers, were “arrested by the Israelis without doing anything.””
He then adds one more horrific lie: “We don’t support killing kids, women, or kidnapping. For sure that this is not part of our policy or our doctrine.” According to Palestinian Media Watch, “the PA “policy and doctrine” is in fact to murder women and children, to kidnap, and to glorify the killers. The PA rewards all terrorists in prison, even mass murderers like Abdallah Barghouti who is serving 67 life sentences for being involved in the murder of 68 men, women and children.”
According to Palestinian Media Watch, “The PA has named five schools after mass murderer Dalal Mughrabi, who led the murder of 12 children and 25 adults after kidnapping them by hijacking a bus. The PA glorifies all suicide bombers who murdered women and children as “Martyrs,” meaning that they died for Allah. The PA fundamentally supports murdering women and children, and this is their policy.”
Regarding kidnapping, Palestinian Media Watch noted that Rajoub himself praised the Oct. 7 murders and rapes of women and children and the kidnapping of hundreds of hostages as “epic” and “heroic”: “What happened on October 7 was an earthquake, an unprecedented incident, and a war of defense full of epics and acts of heroism that the Palestinian people has been waging for 75 years.”
Palestinian Media Watch stressed that “the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist entity in every way – except international designation.” Aside from supporting terrorism, Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub is also known for his antisemitic rhetoric. Last February, he proclaimed: “The American administration, Trump, and this Zionist choir, the neo-Nazi choir, are trying to impose their will on the world via dictates that relate to redrawing the Middle East region. I think they have exposed their essence and their real ideas that strive for hegemony and control over the Middle East region.” In another instance, he proclaimed: “this [Israeli] society is fascist and racist and a model of neo-Nazis, and their policies and ideology constitute a danger to the entire region.”
According to the IHRA working definition, antisemitism includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” Palestinian Media Watch noted, “While Rajoub does this often, perhaps his most cynical statement is to reduce Jewish trauma to a European problem dumped on the Palestinians, saying “We are the victims. We are the scapegoat for what happened.””
Palestinian Media Watch concluded, “This intentional perversion of history is meant to demonize Jews and delegitimize the Jewish state. That such statements come from a high-ranking Palestinian Authority official—the one in charge of youth, sports, summer camps, and its ruling party’s Central Committee—makes them all the more dangerous.”
Photo from Palestinian Media Watch: https://palwatch.org/page/37116
