Palestinian leader is two-faced in his ‘support’ for free speech

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced as “heinous” the attack on French satirists who mocked Islam. That must have come as quite a surprise to the Palestinian satirist of Islam whom Abbas recently jailed, tortured, and forced to publicly recant.

The massacre of the staff of the Charlie Hebdo magazine was a “heinous crime, condemned by morality and religion,” Abbas declared in a telegram to French President Francois Hollande.

Abbas never uses such language when commenting on Palestinian terrorist attacks in which Israeli Jews are murdered. At the most, he’ll say that he is against “all terrorism.” Usually he’ll add a reference to “state terrorism,” which is his way of saying that whatever some Palestinian did, everything the Israelis do is worse.

Sometimes, Abbas’s “condemnations” are issued only in English, and don’t even appear in the Palestinian news media, which is where they are needed. Even when they do show up in the PA’s media, though, they come with a wink and a nod that Abbas’s followers understand.

Consider, for example, how Abbas’s condemnation of the Nov. 18 Jerusalem synagogue massacre was interpreted by Member of Parliament Najat Abu-Bakr, who is a representative of Abbas’s own Fatah movement. Abu-Bakr told Al-Quds Radio on Nov. 19, “The Palestinian president is forced to speak this way to the world and these statements result from his responsibility for the Palestinian people.” In other words: When he condemns killing Jews, don’t worry, he doesn’t really mean it—he’s just forced to say these things to the outside world.

But the real irony in Abbas’s condemnation of the attack on the French satirists, and his joining others in the Paris march, is to be found in his own brutal treatment of a Palestinian satirist.