1,800 Israeli Generals, Officers, Mossad Agents Warn: Abbas Wants to ‘Annihilate Jewish State’

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Mahmoud Abbas likes to present himself to the world as a “moderate.” But his aim is no different from that of Hamas and Islamic Jihad – the destruction of Israel. 1,800 generals, officers and Mossad agents have just released a letter warning against trusting Abbas. A report on their letter is here: “PA President Mahmoud Abbas Wants to ‘Annihilate Jewish State,’ Warn 1,800 Retired Israeli Generals, Officers,” Algemeiner, April 30, 2021:

A group of retired Israeli military officer and intelligence officials issued a warning on Friday [April 30] against placing any political trust in Palestinian Authority President and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

A position paper shared on Friday with The Algemeiner by “Habithonistim”— a group of 1,800 retired Israeli generals, officers and Mossad operatives — asserted that “Abu Mazen (Abbas’s nom-de-guerre) and the PLO have never given up the way of terrorism, and they consider all kinds of struggle against Zionism legitimate and complementary of each other.”

While most terrorism against Israel is now carried out by Hamas and Hezbollah, in the 1970s it was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – the umbrella group that Abbas heads and to which Abbas’ Fatah belongs – that was best known for its terrorism against Israel around the world. The PLO has never renounced terrorism as an instrument of war. One of the most deadly terrorist groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), is in the PLO that Abbas heads. And indeed, Abbas does a great deal to encourage terrorism against Israel. His “Pay-For-Slay” program provides generous subsidies to imprisoned terrorists or to the families of terrorists who died while committing their attacks. The program thus both rewards past terrorism, and incentivizes future terrorism. Abbas supports those terrorists through Pay-For-Slay, no matter whether they belong to Hamas, which is his political rival, or to any of the other terrorist groups — Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the PFLP. His support is not only financial. He has also honored “martyred” (i.e. dead) terrorists by naming streets and squares after them, another way Abbas shows his support for, and encourages young Palestinians to emulate, terrorists. He has, as those generals and Mossad agents contend in their letter, “never given up the way of terrorism.” He may attack Hamas as his political rival, but has no objection to the group’s terrorism against the Jewish state; he unstintingly pays Hamas terrorists and their families, and celebrates them by naming public places after them.

Abbas should be understood as the front man for the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel. He doesn’t wear army fatigues, as Arafat used to do. Instead, he is always in a sober business suit. He’s the one who puts on his nobody-here-but-us-accountants act, the man willing to use diplomacy and propaganda to put pressure on Israel, so as to squeeze it back within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist at Qalqilya. He’s the one engaged in the Slow Jihad of diplomacy, while Hamas and other groups (Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, Hezbollah) — conduct the Fast Jihad of terrorism. But the ultimate goal of the PA and of Hamas is the same: to push Israel back within those 1949 lines and then to go in for the kill, that is, the elimination of the Jewish state.

It [the open letter from the Israeli generals, officers, and Mossad agents] argued: “While Abu Mazen, like many other Palestinians, thinks that at this point, popular violence without using firearms and explosives is more effective than armed struggle as a tool for promoting Palestinian goals, he is ready to support all sorts of struggles conducted by other factions within the Palestinian community, including those who are part of the PLO, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and those who are not members of the PLO, such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”…

Mahmoud Abbas believes that for now that he can be most effective in his non-violent guise, using propaganda and diplomacy to pressure Israel into retreating within the 1949 armistice lines, as a complement to the use of terrorism by Hamas, the PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad., to achieve the same end through different methods.

The Pay-For-Slay program shows Mahmoud Abbas’ unswerving commitment to supporting terrorism. While he had to slash the PA’s budget after Trump ended American aid to the PA, he has refused to cut by the slightest amount any of the aid provided to terrorists and their families, which now amounts to about $350 million a year. He has also provided government jobs in the PA to the relatives of imprisoned or dead terrorists.

The public image of Abbas – the mild-mannered accountant, in suit and tie – hides the reality of this unwavering supporter and encourager of terrorism. Abbas, shaken by Israel’s military victories, is convinced that the “salami” strategy of avoiding a frontal military assault, which the Arabs at this point cannot win, is the right way to go. His method is to try to create diplomatic pressure on Israel so severe that it will give up more and more territory. Israel has already returned all of the Sinai to Egypt, and removed all Israelis from Gaza, both territories it won in the Six-Day War. Abbas has been trying to persuade the world that if “real peace” is to be achieved, Israel must give up all of the West Bank, return to the 1949 lines, and allow the formation of an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. While he works the diplomatic circuit – the EU and the UN – Hamas and its fellow terrorists keep up their attacks on Israel. They are working toward the same goal using complementary methods.

We already know about Mahmoud Abbas’ maximalist demands on Israel. In 2008, he was unwilling to accept the astonishing offer made to him by Ehud Olmert, then Israel’s Prime Minister. Olmert offered to give up 94% of the West Bank to Abbas, and to make up for that 6% by handing over other territory that was then part of Israel, as well as to place the Old City under international control. Despite this offer, Abbas wouldn’t even discuss it; he walked away. Abbas will not be satisfied until Israel has given up the entire West Bank — having required its nearly 500,000 Jewish inhabitants to leave –- to an independent Palestinian state.

And then? And then, those 1,800 generals, officers, and Mossad agents with long experience of observing Mahmoud Abbas’ every meretricious move, have just warned the world, Abbas has no intention of being satisfied with an independent Palestine in only “part of Palestine.” His goal, though not his tactics, remains the same as that of Ismail Shtayyeh of Hamas, and Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, and Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP. That goal is a “Palestine from the river to the sea,” that is, the annihilation of the Jewish state. He wants the PA he heads to rely, for now, mainly on other instruments of war – diplomacy and propaganda – while the other groups focus on terror attacks. Both are means to the same end. But Abbas also supports terrorism against Israel, with the Pay-For-Slay program that rewards terrorists no matter what group they may belong to. These stipends show that Abbas is determined both to reward and to incentivize terrorism. Don’t be fooled by the suit and tie; don’t think of Abbas as “wanting to live in peace” with Israel. He’s a financial supporter of those who, through their acts of terrorism, hope to destroy the Jewish state. And Mahmoud Abbas knows better than Hamas that “war is deceit.”

First published in Jihad Watch.