Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan posted a video rebuke of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday after Abbas said that Palestinian terrorism was simply a measure of “peaceful resistance” at the UN General Assembly on Thursday.
“Mere weeks ago, President Abbas defended Hitler and blamed the Jews for being massacred during the Holocaust… today he stood at this podium and called the vicious Palestinian terror attacks ‘peaceful resistance’,” Erdan said in his video.
“Let me be clear – terror is terror… President Abbas proved today that he is no partner for peace and that he is totally detached from reality and irrelevant,” declared Erdan.
Abbas’ UNGA speech
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas used his platform at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday to declare that Middle East peace is not possible without recognition of Palestinian statehood at pre-1967 borders. The speech comes amid a push for an Israeli normalization deal with Saudi Arabia.
“Those who think that peace can prevail in the Middle East without the Palestinian people enjoying their full, legitimate, and national rights, would be mistaken,” Abbas said as he addressed the high-level opening session of the 78th General Assembly.
Abbas further accused Israel of “entrenching its apartheid” policies against his people and attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. “As I stand before you here, the Israeli racist right-wing government continues its attacks on our people and its army and its racist terrorist settlers continue to intimate and kill our people, steal our money, and resources,” Abbas said.
Erdan, who has served as Israel’s Ambassador to the UN since 2020, published the scathing video several days after his interview with The Jerusalem Post – in which he called Abbas irrelevant and said his departure from Palestinian leadership is necessary to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
“Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s antisemitic comments this week prove what we’ve been saying for years. The ongoing criticism towards Israel feels misplaced, especially when such sentiment comes from the Palestinian leadership,” Erdan told The Jerusalem Post’s Zvika Klein on Saturday. “Our goal should be to encourage other nations to see Abbas’s departure as a necessary step. This isn’t merely about Hamas in Gaza but rather [about] recognizing the Palestinian Authority under Abbas as an adversarial entity.”
Prior to taking the reins as Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Erdan played a central role in countering efforts to delegitimize and boycott Israel, exposing the antisemitic nature and terrorist connections of the BDS campaign as Israel’s strategic affairs minister – a position he held for five years prior to his promotion to UN Ambassador.
Zvika Klein contributed to this report.
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