US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield lambasted PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s accusation that America backed Israel’s creation to expel its Jews and called it outrageous, and denounced the antisemitic and racist rhetoric fueling Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Abbas’s “claim that the United States ‘wanted to get rid of the Jews and benefit from their presence in Palestine’ is totally without basis and it is deeply offensive to the American people,” Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council during its monthly meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Thomas-Greenfield took issue in particular with the speech Abbas had delivered to the UN on May 15 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Nakba Day, which for Palestinians marks the catastrophe of Israel’s creation and the resulting displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians. The US was among 45 nations that boycotted the speech and the Nakba Day event held that evening in the UN General Assembly’s main hall.
During that speech, Abbas equated statements by Israeli officials with those of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Such comments, Thomas-Greenfield said, “are a gross affront to Holocaust victims and survivors. Making this kind of statement about the world’s only Jewish state is entirely unacceptable, especially during a time of rising antisemitic violence around the world.”