DNC in Coalitions with Pro-Terror Palestinian Parties: SI Adopts Terror Advocates’ Views and Issues

DNC and Affiliates in Coalitions with Pro-Terror Palestinian Parties (full series)
NDI/CAP | Fatah | Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
SI Adopts Terror Advocates’ Views and Issues
PA Accepts Terror Advocates’ Framing

SI Adopts Terror Advocates’ Views and Issues

SI is to be commended for its strong condemnation of the terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. It mentioned Hamas by name and even confirmed that Israel has a right to defend itself.

However, this is an anomaly that only appeared during a time when it was maximally impossible for SI to stand against Israel.

For example, SI previously denounced Israel for acting in its own defense by killing Hamas co-founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin in 2004. SI also honored Yasser Arafat and “his legacy” after he died, despite his egregious violations of the coalition’s principles.

The clearest example of the terror advocates’ influence on SI is when leaders from Fatah, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, PNI, and PPSF participated in a large SI meeting in Ramallah in 2019 to craft SI’s Middle East policies.

The 11 Fatah officials who participated in the meeting included the Palestinian Prime Minister Shtayyeh, current SI Vice President Rawhi Fattouh, and Nabeel Shaath, who was a SI vice president at the time and is known for his dishonesty and manipulation of foreign audiences.

It also included Kifah Harb, the widow of terrorist Abdallah Daoud, who was involved in a wide range of attacks including the 2002 assault on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. A senior Fatah official said she is a sister to “heroes,” a reference to Palestinians who have engaged in violence against Israel. She said Abbas was accurate when he claimed that the Jews provoked Hitler into fighting them because of their immoral behavior, unethical handling of money, and overall negative impact on German society.

PNI’s delegation of eight officials included Secretary-General Barghouti and Bahia Amra. The PPFS delegation consisted of three officials, including Secretary-General Ahmad Majdalani.

Immediately after the event, SI parroted their demands. SI called on Israel to release “all Palestinian prisoners.” The majority are being held for terrorism-related activities and violent crimes. It is an obfuscated effort to assist terrorists.

SI specifically called for the release of convicted Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorist Marwan Barghouti (a distant cousin of the PNI leader); PFLP terrorist group leader Ahmad Saadat; Karim Younis, a terrorist who kidnapped and murdered an Israeli soldier in 1980, and Fuad al-Shobaky, a Fatah-associated terrorist who oversaw illegal shipments of arms from Iran.

The wording of SI’s Ramallah declaration on nonviolence uses a sleight-of-hand implying that Palestinian terrorism is acceptable. If read closely, the language doesn’t actually condemn Palestinian terrorism or violence or insist that it stop.

Instead, the declaration “encourages” nonviolence by “all parties,” which suggests that each side can be potentially justified in using violence. It then “demands the immediate cessation of all forms of violence by the Israeli occupying power and settlers against the Palestinian non-violent resistance.” There is no similar demand that Palestinians stop violence toward Israeli civilians.

SI’s position is that the Israeli military and security services are unjustifiably and violently targeting nonviolent Palestinian “resisters,” but when Palestinian terrorists target nonviolent and/or civilian Israelis, the violence might be legitimate.

SI’s declaration also tellingly defended the Al-Haq nongovernmental organization that the Israeli government and independent researchers accuse of having strong links to terrorism. SI says it stands by Al-Haq as one of the Palestinian “human rights defenders and civil society organizations… that have been victims of a vicious campaign by the Israeli government.”

The situation around Al-Haq is a pet issue of Fatah, PNI, and PPSF. It is usually not on the minds anyone who is not Israeli or Palestinian. It was obviously raised by the Palestinian parties at the Ramallah event, and SI adopted their position.

If SI had taken a few minutes to investigate the matter instead of simply acting at the behest of the Palestinian terror advocates, it would have easily found a mountain of publicly available evidence showing that Al-Haq is a front for the communist/Marxist-Leninist PFLP.

The pro-terrorism Palestinian parties led SI to, yet again, violate its own published standards that reject terrorism and communism.

The strength of SI’s overall bias against Israel seems to have significantly grown in 2018. That June, SI issued an unprecedently one-sided and propagandistic declaration. It prompted Israel’s Labor Party, a longtime member, to quit the coalition.

SI didn’t even write a single sentence expressing some sympathy for Israelis without turning it into an indictment of Israel and a defense of Palestinian extremists. It laughably started a sentence by saying it “would like to reiterate its solidarity with the progressive forces in Israel and Palestine,” followed by “including human rights defenders and civil society organizations that have been victims of a vicious campaign by the Israeli government.”

Of course, there was no mention of the victimizing of human rights and civil society organizations by the Hamas regime ruling Gaza, nor any mention of such actions by Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

SI’s 2018 statement is basically just a laundry list of accusations against Israel with no pretense of fair-mindedness. The statement neither criticizes nor makes any demand of the Palestinian side.

It endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, denigrated Israel as an “apartheid” state, and urged a “total embargo on all forms of military trade and cooperation with Israel.”

Either SI is oblivious about the reasoning behind Israel’s counterterrorism-related policies or it chose not to provide its followers with any context that could conceivably allow them to understand both sides of the conflict.

SI’s demands of Israel included ending the occupation and allowing the creation of a Palestinian state (which would likely put Hamas in control of the West Bank); releasing all Palestinian prisoners (which would include many terrorists); ending all deportations of Palestinians (which, again, would include terrorists); and ending the “siege” and “illegal blockade” of the Gaza Strip, which SI fails to mention is a counterterrorism measure that that Israel took because the Gaza Strip was being ruled by Hamas.

The only violence that it specifically said must end was “all forms of violence by the Israeli occupying power and settlers against the Palestinian non-violent resistance” (wording that later reappeared in the declaration in Ramallah in 2019).

SI also accused Israel of committing violence against “peaceful nonviolent protestors” and deliberately murdering unarmed Palestinians including children, journalists, and paramedics. It was referring to the “Great March of Return” demonstrations on the Gaza border that were arranged independently at first but then became organized, promoted, and led by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and PFLP.

The protests quickly became riots with participants calling for violence and voicing horrific anti-Semitic chants. Participants vowed to rip down the barbed-wire fences by the border and then enter Israel to begin the process of destroying it as a state. Rioters, including armed Hamas terrorists, possessed firearms, knives, and explosives. They tried to harm Israeli soldiers with Molotov cocktails, rocks, burning tires, and anything else they could grab.

On the bloodiest day of the rioting, 62 Palestinians were killed near the border fence. A senior Hamas official admitted that at least 50 of the casualties were Hamas members. Palestinian Islamic Jihad said that another three casualties were its members.

A Jerusalem Post editorial blasted the SI declaration, decrying how the coalition had abandoned Israeli progressives who have been a part of SI since 1923. Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was SI’s honorary president from 1999 to 2003 and was a longtime vice president of SI. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was elected as SI’s Deputy Chairman in 1972.

So, what changed? The editorial explained, “[T]he progressive world has been hijacked by the idea of intersectionality, which creates a hierarchy of grievances in which Israel’s success is considered a demerit and the Palestinians somehow are championed by all.”

In the next installment, the PA’s statements are more measured but still accepts terror advocates’ framing of the violence.