EDITORIAL: PM’s terrible choice to create Palestine

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While we disagree with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to conditionally recognize a new Palestinian state at a United Nations vote in September, what is appalling is his touting of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to create it.  

Abbas, 89, elected in 2005, cancelled future elections.  

He has been accused of supporting terrorism through the PA’s Martyrs’ Fund, which makes payments to the families of dead or imprisoned terrorists.   

Abbas terminated these “Pay for Slay” payments earlier this year, but critics say the change is largely cosmetic and payments continue in other forms.  

Polls show most Palestinians believe the PA, which has received billions of dollars in foreign aid, is corrupt and that Abbas should resign.  

Given all this, what Carney describes as Abbas’ “commitment” to “fundamentally reform” the Palestinian Authority’s governance and “to hold general elections in 2026,” is suspect at best.  

So is his “commitment” that Hamas will play no part in that election, given that Abbas’ Fatah party only controls the West Bank, while Hamas rules in Gaza.  

Then there’s Abbas’ history of antisemitic remarks and minimizing or denying the Holocaust.  

In 2018, he said Jews brought on the Holocaust themselves, not because of antisemitism, but because they engaged in money lending, which then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland condemned as antisemitism, calling for Abbas to apologize.  

While he did at the time, describing the Holocaust as the “most heinous crime in history,” he repeated his 2018 smear against Jews two years ago in a speech to the Fatah Revolutionary Council.  

In 1984, he published a book – The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism – based on his 1982 PhD dissertation at a Russian university.  

In it, he falsely claimed Zionists were “fundamental partners” of the Nazis and that it was a “myth” and “fantastic lie” that Hitler murdered six million Jews, citing figures of “890,000” or “a few hundred thousand” instead.  

A decade later, he said he wrote the book while Israelis and Palestinians were at war and wouldn’t make such statements today.  

Many Canadian Jews were understandably appalled when then-foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly and then-Liberal cabinet minister Ya’ara Saks posed for a photo holding hands with Abbas last year.  

Imagine their level of alarm now.