Saeb Erekat is an excellent choice to teach students how to prevent the achievement of peace - by Mitchell Bard

Yes, Harvard students can learn a great deal from Saeb Erekat. The rest of us have discovered how little value Harvard places on scholarship, morality, and honesty. 

 

Mitchell Bard.. 

Algemeiner.. 

10 September '20.. 

 The standards of academia continue to slide, as “academic freedom” and tenure have increasingly been used to shield faculty from accountability. The result has been widespread abuses that include the substitution of propaganda for scholarship, the misuse of the classroom to promote personal agendas, and the normalization of antisemitism on campus. 

 Some people may believe universities are interested in education, but they are even more interested in money. It is therefore not surprising they are solicitous of Arab states and individuals who have donated more than $5.1 billion dollars to influence their curricula and faculty. Harvard has raked in more than $100 million. 

 The sellout of academic values is exemplified by Harvard’s acceptance of $1.6 million from the “State of Palestine.” Could it be a coincidence that, in a case study of the university’s decline in standards, it hired Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, to mentor students and give virtual seminars as a fellow in The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs? He is among the new fellows who faculty chair Nicholas Burns said “will strengthen our capacity to learn the lessons of effective diplomacy and statecraft.” 

 One hardly knows where to begin in digesting this astounding example of moral and academic myopia. Given that Burns was among the peace processors with a career history of failure at the State Department, it may not be surprising that he would choose someone to teach diplomacy who has also been a failure as a negotiator. 

 If Harvard is interested in teaching students how to prevent the achievement of peace, they have picked the right man. 

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Question: Is Saeb Erekat the Palestinians' Chief Negotiator or Chief Liar? - by Bassam Tawil

With negotiators like Erekat, one can understand why the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been stalled for so many years.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
03 August '20..

Ahmed Erekat, a 26-year-old Palestinian from the village of Abu Dis, south of Jerusalem, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers on June 23 after ramming his car into an Israeli military checkpoint. One soldier was lightly wounded in the attack.

Footage released by the Israeli authorities leaves no room for doubt that Erekat was on a mission to kill soldiers. The footage shows Erekat deliberately turning his car as he waited in line, driving directly at the soldiers, hitting one female soldier and then crashing into a guard booth. Erekat then got out of the vehicle and started walking towards the soldiers, who fired a number of bullets at him, killing him instantly.

Such terrorist attacks are not uncommon in the West Bank, where Palestinian terrorists have carried out dozens of car-rammings against Israeli soldiers and civilians in the past few years.



This attack, however, caught the attention of the international media because the terrorist happens to be a relative of Saeb Erekat, the former Palestinian chief negotiator with Israel who currently serves as secretary general of the PLO.

Since the car-ramming, Saeb Erekat has been waging a campaign of incitement and lies against Israel. He has accused it of "cold-blooded murder" and now of the "extrajudicial execution" of his cousin.

The senior PLO official is deliberately ignoring the video that clearly shows his cousin using his car in an attempt to kill Israeli soldiers. He is also, perhaps not surprisingly, ignoring the testimonies of the soldiers his cousin tried to kill.

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Saeb Erekat calls Arab normalization with Israel a "stab in the back" for Palestinians. (Get used to it.) - by Elder of Ziyon

...The Arab League will talk a good game of support for Palestinian aspirations but in reality they are sick of the issue, sick of the Fatah/Hamas split and sick of the Palestinians refusing all Israeli initiatives for peace. They still cannot say this quite so publicly but op-eds in official Arab media are starting to change their tune from being gung-ho pro-Palestinian. Erekat better get used to being stabbed in the back.

Elder of Ziyon..
10 February '19..

Once again the Arab League met and offered platitudes of support for Palestinians.

The Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Saeb Erekat, spoke there and railed against the normalization of relations between Arab nations and Israel.

Erekat said that the prerequisites for any relations with Israel are "when Israel withdraws from the occupied Arab territories and ends its occupation, including East Jerusalem, the occupied Arab Golan, the rest of Lebanese territory and solves the refugee issue."

Which is pretty much full Israeli surrender.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The ongoing joke of Palestinian ‘democracy’ - by Lt. Col. (Res) Maurice Hirsch

Apparently for the PA, holding general elections twice in 25 years is a sign of a “true democracy”.

Lt. Col. (Res) Maurice Hirsch..
JNS.org..
06 December '18..

In a recent Conflict Zone interview, acclaimed journalist Tim Sebastian grilled veteran Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiator Saeb Erekat. While Erekat may not remember the interview as his finest hour, it could—and should have—been much worse had Sebastian pointed out a number of ludicrous statements Erekat made.

During the interview, Erekat argued that the Palestinian Authority is “a true democracy”, that Mahmoud Abbas “won 62% of the vote” in the 2005 elections for Chairman of the PA, and that “Hamas carried out a coup d’état in Gaza” in 2007.

Closer examination of these claims shows their inherent contradictions.

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Electronic Intifada's Falsehoods, Erekat's Jenin Fictions - by Gilead Ini

...It bears repeating that 52 Palestinians, not 500, were killed during intense urban warfare in Jenin. And it bears remembering who, in the days and months that followed, tried to deceive the public — not only Saeb Erekat with his lies about Jenin, but also Ali Abunimah with his lies about Saeb Erekat’s lies.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA..
05 July '18..

In 2002, during the campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings known as the “Second Intifada,” and at the height of Israel’s counter-terrorist offensive to stop the attacks, Palestinian officials took to CNN to allege an Israeli “massacre” in the West Bank city of Jenin.

This charge, and the more specific allegation that Israel killed 500 people in the city, quickly spread through the media. Almost as quickly, it was walked back, after it became clear that just over 50 Palestinians, mostly combatants, and about two dozen Israelis, were killed during intense house-to-house fighting in the city.

“That’s not 500,” conceded one critic of Israel, in an article lamenting the “credulous response” by many of his fellow left-wing activists to false Palestinian claims about Jenin.

Reputations suffered. One of the Palestinian officials most responsible for the false rumors, Saeb Erekat, was ridiculed as “Mr. 500 dead in Jenin” by the director of the Center for Israeli Studies at University College in London. The New York Post was more direct, titling a column about Erekat and his accusations “Why TV News Loves a Liar.”

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Saeb Erekat ludicrously claims paying terrorists is mandatory under international law - by Elder of Ziyon

...As usual, Erekat is a liar. But he knows that paying terrorists looks very bad for the PLO, and he wants to throw as much dust on the concept as he can.

Elder of Ziyon..
30 March '18..

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat stated yesterday that paying terrorists were an obligation under international law.

And it isn't the PLO that should pay them - but Israel!

However, if Israel refuses to pay the terrorists, then the Palestinians must pick up the slack.

Yes, he really said this.

“Palestine pays a financial price for the occupation because Israel refuses to uphold its international obligations regarding prisoners. We will not abandon our prisoners. We consider this a moral and legal obligation enshrined by Article 81 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. While Israel will not make these payments, as required by international humanitarian law, Palestine will provide for the families through the Palestinian social welfare system – as any other nation worldwide provides for the maintenance of their citizens.”

OK, let's look at Article 81 of the Fourth Geneva Convention:

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Israel Slanderer and Boycott Advocate Waits for Israeli Lung Transplant - by Mordechai Sones

'Those who choose to boycott the State of Israel should show some self-respect and boycott all the services of the State of Israel.'

Mordechai Sones..
Shurat Hadin/Israel Law Center..
Link: http://israellawcenter.org/israel-slanderer-waits-for-israeli-lung-transplant/

Legal human rights organization Shurat Hadin, joined by 50 IDF reserve officers and soldiers, wrote to the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center requesting that PA diplomat Saeb Erekat be removed from the waiting list for transplants in Israel.

About 50 soldiers and officers who fought in Operation Defensive Shield and who hold organ donor cards today petitioned the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center to immediately remove Saeb Erekat from the list of transplants in Israel, due to the fact that Erekat has repeatedly slandered IDF soldiers, called for the boycott of the State of Israel, campaigned for sanctions against it, and led the BDS movement to isolate and harm the State of Israel.

Yesterday the media reported that an application had been filed on behalf of Saeb Erekat, a senior PA official, for a lung transplant in Israel.

In the wake of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and the reserve soldiers battle in Jenin in which 13 IDF soldiers were killed, a false propaganda film by director Muhammad Bakri, entitled Jenin Jenin, was released. The film purports to provide prima facie evidence of war crimes committed by the IDF in Jenin which turned out to be wholly spurious, as was decided by the Central District Court.

Erekat took a large part in disseminating the blood libel embodied in the film, which portrayed the story as if a massacre took place in Jenin when noting of the sort occured. Israel lost 13 soldiers in the city which it entered after dropping warnings from the air telling the residents to leave and then refraining from bombing from the air to prevent civilian deaths.. Erekat appeared at the time in the various media, mainly on foreign television channels, and disseminated the lie of the massacre.

In addition, in November 2010, Erekat wrote a letter praising the planner of then Minister Rechavam Ze'evi's assassination, and in December 2015 he paid a condolence visit to another family whose son carried out a shooting attack against IDF forces.

In addition, Erekat is an enthusiastic supporter of the boycott movement against Israel - BDS. He has visited EU representatives in the past because they did not support BDS, and asserted that all their support for the two-state solution is meaningless if they do not support the boycott of Israel.

(Saeb Erekat hypocrisy edition) Israel must be boycotted, unless it is too inconvenient - by Elder of Ziyon

...Erekat could go to Europe or an Arab country to get the transplant and treatment. But - he chooses Israel. The hypocrisy doesn't end there. The PA has recently slashed the number of medical permits for Gazans to get treated in Israel, but for Erekat, of course, he must get the best medical care possible.

Elder of Ziyon..
01 August '17..

We've seen before how BDS activists talk big about boycotting Israel - meaning, everyone else must boycott Israel.

We know how Omar Barghouti wants everyone to boycott Israeli universities while he attended (attends?) one. We've seen how BDS groups happily use Israeli website technology - and even try to justify it!

Add to this list Saeb Erekat. Erekat has publicly called for BDS in Europe. But now, he needs medical help in Israel, and he doesn't hesitate to use it:

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BBC ‘frequent flyer’ Saeb Erekat's other messaging - by Hadar Sela

...With Erekat tipped by Yolande Knell as one of Mahmoud Abbas’ potential successors, BBC audiences’ understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would of course be enhanced were they provided with some insight into the stance that he (along with other potential candidates) presents to his domestic audience rather than just the PR messaging promoted for Western ears.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
06 November '16..

In her recent article (previously discussed here) concerning the question of who will succeed Mahmoud Abbas in his roles as president of the Palestinian Authority, chair of the PLO and head of the Fatah party the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell informed audiences that:

“One potential post-Abbas scenario would see the division of his titles: President, head of Fatah, and Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

If different individuals took these jobs it would allow for a more collective political leadership.

This might involve Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator and secretary general of the PLO, and Nasser al-Kidwa, a former foreign minister and representative to the UN who is also nephew of the revered late leader, Yasser Arafat.

BBC audiences are of course familiar with Saeb Erekat due to his frequent appearances on the corporation’s various platforms. They are however considerably less well-informed with regard to the views expressed by Saeb Erekat when communicating with his own people rather than with the audiences of Western media organisations.

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Peace-maker Saeb Erekat's barbarians and heroes - by Arnold Roth

...“She started screaming, the children saw me and also started screaming, then I stabbed her in her upper body another three or four times. She tried to fight me and tried to take the knife from me. The two children who were there were still screaming, but she continued to resist, so I pushed her, and overpowered her,” he said,....Astonishingly Erekat, who means barbarians like these when he praises his heroes, keeps getting invited to appear on global TV programs and keeps being taken seriously. We're baffled.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
03 November '16..

He appears to crave publicity. And he gets plenty of it in parts of the mainstream news-reporting industry where his self-flattering claims to being a peace-maker are taken seriously.

He also gets his op eds published in the likes of the New York Times, The Guardian and the Washington Post; is a featured interview subject on the BBC, Aljazeera, PBS and NPR; and manages to insert himself into what he calls "the forces of moderation in this region".

Some serious talent there.

But for our part, we have long felt that Saeb Erekat (and his under-appreciated ability to issue and then serially retract dramatic resignations over several decades) gets less attention than his self-promoting showboating, stunning flexibility in invoking history and outlandish disrespect for truthfulness would justify.

Here's a good recent starting point - a report from a few days ago in which he makes plain the kind of "peace" he has in mind as he goes about making it.

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Saeb Erekat's Lie of the Day - by Elder of Ziyon

...There is no caveat to the UN's acceptance of Israel as a member. Erekat lies again.

Elder of Ziyon..
18 September '16..

Saeb Erekat published a statement on the 34th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in which he does not say one word about the Christian Phalangists who actually murdered hundreds of Palestinians in Lebanon in 1982. Instead, he blames Israel and only Israel.

In his statement, he makes a claim that he has made before:

Erekat said that Israel was accepted as a United Nations member under the commitment to honor partition of Palestine resolution 181 and right of return of refugees resolution 194 as well as the UN Charter.

While the UNGA resolution that gave recognition to Israel mentioned the earlier UNGA resolutions, nothing in its language says that Israel's becoming a member of the UN is contingent on its acceptance of those non-binding resolutions.

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Erekat's propaganda post in Newsweek. Here's what he doesn't say. - by Elder of Ziyon

...It is interesting that Erekat has chosen the very time that BDS is failing as the time to try to prop it up, against the PA's own policies. Either it is another example of spectacularly bad timing on the PLO's part, or an attempt by Erekat to bolster his own chances to succeed Abbas as the PA and PLO leader.

Elder of Ziyon..
17 August '16..

Saeb Erekat wrote an article in Newsweek that is the usual mix of half-truths, lies and omissions.

Israeli government officials have announced further measures against nonviolent actions by civil society. During the First Intifada, the Israeli occupation authorities deported non-violent activists and tried to prevent any peaceful demonstration against the imposed and oppressive policies. Nowadays, Israel, with some international support, is trying to quash a growing solidarity movement with the Palestinian cause for freedom and independence.

Over the past year, the Israeli government and other organizations have conducted a campaign against any expression of disapproval of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, its crimes and its racist policies. Palestinian human rights organizations, such as Al Haq, have been victims of orchestrated efforts aimed at jeopardizing their funding, including vicious attacks and hateful incitement that has led to death threats against some of their employees.

Regrettably, this campaign against Palestinian civil society and partners has been somehow accepted and even encouraged by some members of the international community. We were astonished to see an official European Union presence at two anti-BDS conferences, with the EU representative to Tel Aviv not only praising Israel for its “human rights record,” but also by publicly stating that “settlement products are welcome in European markets.”

The PLO is clearly panicking over anti-BDS moves in Europe. And Erekat is happy to publicly support BDS, which supports the destruction of Israel.

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Surprise? Lost in Haaretz Translation: Saeb Erekat's Relative Shot 2 Israelis

...It is precisely the unfounded claims of Palestinian perpetrators' innocence and false charges of 'extrajudicial killings' which fuel additional Palestinian attacks." Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is the latest to pull this deadly trick, and yesterday he found a helping hand at Haaretz's English print edition

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA Snapshots..
15 November '15..

In the past, CAMERA and others have noted how Palestinian leaders and social media have falsely claimed that Palestinians killed as they were carrying out terror attacks were innocent, and that the purported Palestinian victims were killed in cold blood. As previously noted here, "It is precisely the unfounded claims of Palestinian perpetrators' innocence and false charges of 'extrajudicial killings' which fuel additional Palestinian attacks."

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is the latest to pull this deadly trick, and yesterday he found a helping hand at Haaretz's English print edition. The Dec. 14 page-one article by Barak Ravid ("Obama to HaaretzQ conference: Peace a must for Israel to remain a Jewish state") referred to Erekat's nephew, who had carried out a terror attack on Dec. 3, as follows: "Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, whose 37-year-old nephrew [sic] killed [sic] last week at the Hizme checkpoint . . . "

The print edition article does not include the critical information that Erekat's nephew carried out a shooting attack on Dec. 3, moderately injuring an Israeli Arab man and lightly hurting a soldier. It was then that Israeli forces shot him dead.

Erekat's semantic games and the PA's open embrace of terror

..."But where is the partner for peace that Israel needs?" It's a fine question. But so long as media analysts and political figures are willing to play along with the not-terror-but-self-defence semantic games of loathsome figures like Erekat and his boss, Mahmoud Abbas, and as long as gunmen and knifers and car-rammers are claimed as Palestinian Arab "martyrs" and role-models, peace is certain to remain a mirage.

Erekat on the left, hanging out with the
mourners in the Aribah/Oraiba home in
Abu Dis on Saturday [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
06 December '15..

Just a few days ago, we reported ["03-Dec-15: Thursday morning north Jerusalem shooting attack - gunman is a PA officer"] on a terror attack at the busy Hizme checkpoint on the edge of the Pisgat Ze'ev neighbourhood of north-east Jerusalem. A gunman emerged from his vehicle, and opened fire on nearby Israelis, striking two of them before being shot dead by alert IDF service personnel.

We mentioned that Fatah - at whose head stands none other than Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president - declared three days of mourning and a mass strike in Abu Dis, the Jerusalem suburb where the gunman - Oraiba Mazen Hassan [مازن حسن عريبة] - lived. The ostentatious response to yet another terrorist killed in the act may have stemmed from this particular gunman having been, at the time of his unexpected demise, a salaried officer in the PA armed forces.

Oraiba/Aribeh is in the news again today because, as Times of Israel notes, Saeb Erekat, the noted Palestinian Arab "peace" negotiator with the amazing ability to resign from the role again and again and again and still escape mainstream news media ridicule, paid a condolence call to the deceased gunman's family on Saturday.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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A third knife-wielding Arab boy is dead in terror attack

...Today's three dead 16 year olds join the long list of Palestinian Arab lives - many of them the lives of children - thrown away for nothing other than to serve the vanity, greed and weakness of this 80 year old hateful, bigoted fraud.

The Arabic news site, Alquds, says today this
 photo shows the site of the attempted stabbing
[Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
23 November '15..



This post is about a low-profile terror attack today (Monday) that has gotten almost no news coverage: also about little examined matters like where the terrorists come from, how they got there and who sent them. They're serious existential questions.

According to Israel National News:

An Arab attempted a stabbing attack in the Hatmar Junction (also known as the Territorial Brigade junction - ed.) in Samaria on Monday afternoon, close to 3:00 pm. The stabber was eliminated by IDF soldiers at the scene before he was able to harm anyone.

This is the same checkpoint where another terror attack was done just yesterday. As Israel National News reported that, a little after 9 am Sunday a Palestinian Arab woman launched a stabbing assault on Israeli pedestrians in a place the article calls Brigade Square in the Samaria district. She failed to inflict any injuries on anyone. The attempt itself came to an end when a vehicle driven by a former head of the Samaria Regional Council deliberately plowed into her in order to thwart her obvious intentions, immediately after which IDF soldiers on duty at the site, acting on the relatively-new "shoot-to-kill-terror-attackers-in-the-act shot and killed her in the act.

Today's attack is reported in the Arab media with a few more details.

This version comes from International Middle East Media Center, self-described as "a joint Palestinian-International effort [that] combines Palestinian journalists' deep understanding of the context, history, and the socio-political environment with International journalists' skills in non-partisan reporting." It got started in 2003. Just how non-partisan is something we can discuss.

In any event, here's part of the IMEMC report:

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teenager on Monday afternoon after he allegedly attempted to stab an Israeli soldier at the Huwwara checkpoint south of Nablus, Israel's army said. An Israeli army spokesperson said that as the Palestinian approached the checkpoint, he "drew a knife and attempted to attack a soldier." She said that the soldier "responded to the immediate danger" and opened fire on the Palestinian, "resulting in his death." The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the alleged attacker to Ma'an News Agency as Alaa Khalil Sabah Hashah, 16.

If they're right, this makes the hapless attacker at Huwwara Checkpoint the third Palestinian Arab 16 year-old child (yes, child) to be killed in the same day, today, while carrying out an attack on Israelis with a knife in his hand. We posted about the other two here and here.

Not for the first time, we ask ourselves and our readers how a society engineers things such that it produces children of 16 and less ready to kill and be killed in an undeclared war. Conveniently, one part of the answer popped up today via Twitter:

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Novel Idea? Judge Palestinians By the Same Standard as the Israelis?

...But even if you want to be cynical about Shalom’s commitment to the process, it bears asking why the same people who think him insufficiently devoted to peace have no problem accepting and even praising Palestinians who do far worse. PA negotiator Saeb Erekat has regularly denounced Israel and engaged in libelous attacks on it while always denying it the right to be a Jewish state. His boss, PA leader Abbas, embraces and honors terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands, and has also incited Palestinians to attack Jews in order to compete with Hamas for popularity with a public that links bloodshed with political legitimacy. There has never been a Palestinian negotiating team that hasn’t stated positions that are far more extreme than anything Shalom ever said, yet never are they denounced as obstacles to peace.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
19 May '15..

Less than a week after his new government was sworn in, European and American critics are once again lambasting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His appointment of Interior Minister Sylvan Shalom as the head of the country’s negotiating team in potential talks with the Palestinians is being panned as emblematic of the coalition’s inability to make peace. Shalom is a hawkish member of Likud and has in the past stated his opposition to a Palestinian state. Coming a day after Netanyahu reaffirmed the country’s commitment to opposing the redivision of Jerusalem on the 48th anniversary of its unification during the Six Day War, the naming of, as far his critics are concerned, the misnamed Shalom seemed to solidify the government’s international image as opposed to peace. But there are two problems with this point of view. One is that both Netanyahu and Shalom have committed themselves to negotiate in good faith. The other is that whatever one might think of the Israelis, it’s fair to ask why foreign critics don’t judge Palestinian negotiators by the same standard applied to Israelis.

There’s little doubt that the Obama administration has no expectation that the Netanyahu government will give them what they want in terms of concessions to entice the Palestinians back to the table. The State Department dismissed Shalom’s appointment with what Foreign Policy termed “a shrug” as if to indicate that the president and Secretary of State John Kerry don’t really care who Netanyahu designates for the job of negotiator.

Like most members of his party, Shalom has been a skeptic about the peace process. He has said he will vigorously pursue a deal with the Palestinians and has a reputation as a pragmatist. But some people are suggesting, as the Times of Israel pointed out, that his true mission is to sabotage the talks. That is hardly likely since Netanyahu has never closed the door to negotiations in any of his previous three terms in office. No matter his positions on the shape of a potential deal, the prime minister views the continuation of talks as being in his best interests in terms of both domestic politics and the country’s foreign policy.

But while others are lamenting the comparison between Shalom and his predecessor in this role, Tzipi Livni, it should be pointed out that having an ardent advocate of a two-state solution leading the Israeli delegation at the talks didn’t make a bit of difference. The Palestinians blew up the talks last year when Fatah signed a unity pact with Hamas and decided to pursue recognition at the United Nations in an end run around the peace process. Though a bitter critic and rival of Netanyahu, Livni confessed that it was not the prime minister who torpedoed Kerry’s initiative. Rather, she said, it was Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas who showed once again that he was incapable of making peace even if he wanted to do so.

Highly Visible, Highly Unreliable. Erekat's Alternate Media Universe

...Last year, Erekat fabricated on a grand scale. In early April, he declared, “Hamas is a Palestinian movement, is not and never will be a terrorist organization.” In May he called it “a political, not a terrorist movement. Apparently there's another Hamas (Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement), unrelated to the one designated by the United States, Israel, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries as a terrorist organization. Or, perhaps Erekat does not consider the group's murder of hundreds of Israeli non-combatants (not to mention scores of members of Erekat's own Fatah organization) and its indiscriminate firing of thousands of mortars and rockets at Israel as terrorism.

Myron Kaplan/Eric Rozenman..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
04 March '15..

Journalists are as good as their sources. When it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a prized source for many Western reporters is Saeb Erekat. Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority's chief negotiator is a serial prevaricator.

A fairly recent example came on Al Jazeera America's “Consider This” program hosted by Antonio Mora. Erekat told Mora, who did not question the claim, that Israel “never left” the West Bank and now wants to destroy the P.A. so it“could resume as the occupying power.”

In reality, as part of the 1990s “Oslo peace process,” Israel turned over large parts of the West Bank, containing more than 90 percent of the Arab population, to P.A. administration. Only after numerous Palestinian terrorist attacks during the second intifada, including frequent suicide bombings originating from towns its troops had vacated, was Israel forced to reoccupy, and then temporarily, West Bank population centers.

Viewers could not tell from Al Jazeera America's Erekat interview, but Israel—when possible—has worked with P.A. security forces to suppress Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in the West Bank that seek to destroy the authority first, Israel second.

Erekat raised a big warning flag over his own credibility in 2002 when he told Cable News Network of an Israeli massacre in Jenin with at least 500 dead. Eventually, Palestinian officials themselves put the figure at 52. Nearly all of them were combatants, killed in house-to-house fighting in which Israel lost 23 soldiers.

In 2005, Erekat asserted to Agence France-Presse that the Israeli-Palestinian “road map” promoted by the United States, Russia, United Nations and European Union committed Israel to, among other things, releasing Palestinian prisoners. In fact, the Quartet's diplomatic initiative did not mention prisoners.

Last year, Erekat fabricated on a grand scale. In early April, he declared, “Hamas is a Palestinian movement, is not and never will be a terrorist organization.” In May he called it “a political, not a terrorist movement.”

Were 96% of Gaza Dead Civilians? Erekat’s Latest Whopper

...Rettig Gur is right that the Palestinian leadership consistently seeks international pressure on Israel as a tactic to gain in an edge in negotiations. The leadership of the BDS movement, however, is not concerned with negotiations. It seeks to isolate Israel in order to undercut its legitimacy and ultimately crush its Jewish identity.

Image: CC BY Munich Security Conference
Tobias Kleinschmidt via Wikimedia Commons/em>

Alex Margolin..
Honest Reporting..
06 October '14..

One has to wonder why any reputable media outlet would invite the truth-challenged Palestinian official Saeb Erekat for an interview. It must be for the entertainment value of the outlandish things he’s bound to say.

And his recent appearance on Army Radio did not disappoint.

Erekat revealed that a full 96% of all Palestinians killed were civilians. The number well exceeds the figure cited by the UN, based mostly on reports by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which stands at around 75%. Israeli officials claim that just about half of the Gazans killed in the war were members of Hamas or other terror groups.

The dispute over casualty figures is likely to continue for many months. In fact, the ultimate winner of the Gaza war, at least in the court of public opinion, is the side that persuades the public that it acted with greater morality and care. And Erekat’s Big Lie is intended to bolster the Palestinian claim that Israel used excessive force in Gaza.

Erekat, of course, was the Palestinian leader who claimed that 500 Palestinians were killed in Jenin in 2002, when the number was actually far less than 100, alongside substantial Israeli casualties. According to Haviv Rettig Gur, these sorts of claims are part of a larger strategy, also championed by the BDS movement, that seek to isolate Israel internationally.

Saeb Erekat, Fabrications and Cold-Blooded Lying All Wrapped-Up Into One

...the issue is not with Erekat. As the Turks said, he is a man of "incoherence", and they were being polite and restrained. The problem - the far greater problem - is with all those editors, analysts, politicians and civil servants who deal with this disgraceful man as if he were the genuine article, as a man seeking peace. It's not possible they are unaware of the truth.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
09 June '14....





Some ten days ago, the man universally known to the media as the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, said about Israel that it

seeks to destroy the two-state-solution and replace it with a one state solution with two different systems; the apartheid regime...

Saeb Erekat went on. Not content with blaming Israel for single-handedly destroying something ("the two-state solution") that was never actually implemented, and comparing it to South Africa's apartheid regime for good measure, he picked up steam and launched into a more concrete, credible-sounding allegation. Referring (it seems) to the period commencing August 2013, Ereket trumpeted a claim that Israel had

killed, in cold-blood, more than 66 Palestinians... among other measures.

You can see the published text in a news report on the WAFA news agency web site. WAFA is owned and controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The lines it takes can safely be regarded as the positions of the moment being promoted by the Mahmoud Abbas regime.

Not every analyst would get as hot and bothered as we do about systematically extravagant, exaggerated and hateful claims by Arab leaders. One who does is a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs whose work we and many others greatly admire. He went off and looked coolly and closely at the facts behind the deaths that Erekat - whose work we certainly do not admire - cites. His name is Jonathan D. Halevi and his findings are published in a paper released earlier today.

(Continue)

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Shocked! Saeb Erekat Exonerates Hamas

...By now, indicted by his own statements, Erekat would seem to deserve little credibility with members of the news media. That he continues to be treated as a viable source appears to speak volumes about the shortage of self-professed moderates, fluent in English, on the Palestinian side.

Eric Rozenman..
CAMERA Snapshots..
24 April '14..

Saeb Erekat is the gift that keeps on giving—for those tracking the Swiss cheese-like consistency of “the Palestinian narrative.” Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator in PA-Israeli talks, has a habit of making Pinocchio-like assertions. For example:

* In 2002, he insisted to Cable News Network (CNN) that Israeli troops had destroyed the refugee district in the West Bank city of Jenin. In truth, they killed 55 Palestinian Arabs, almost all combatants, losing 23 of their own in house-to-house fighting.

* Earlier this year he declaimed on his people’s descent from ancient Canaanites who allegedly preceded the Israelites in the Promised Land by thousands of years. Never mind the much later arrival of Arabs or that the Palestinian Arab national movement essentially began in 1920.

Now Erekat has done it again. According to Middle East Monitor, the PA representative declared, “Hamas is a Palestinian movement, is not and will never be a terrorist organization .” Apparently the United States,