BREAKING: World leaders from UN to EU to Germany & US condemn Mahmoud Abbas for anti-Semitic speech. NYT editorial calls for Palestinian President to step down. The post-Abbas era is approaching. Here’s the latest.

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(Jerusalem) — In January, I said on Fox News that “we may be heading for a post-Abbas era.” That day just grew much closer.

World leaders from the United Nations to the European Union to the German government and the U.S. are publicly condemning a speech Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave this week as “anti-Semitic,” “vile,” “ugly” and “unacceptable.” Personally, I can’t remember such governments ever rebuking the Palestinian leader in such strong and unified terms.

And in another unprecedented development, the editorial board of the New York Times is now calling on the 82-year old Abbas — currently serving the 13th year of his four year term — to step down and give the Palestinian people the opportunity for a new leader “with energy, integrity and vision.”

As noted, the editorial board of the New York Times — long a harsh critic of the Israeli government and sympathizer with Mr. Abbas — made the stunning decision to call the Palestinian leader to step down. Excerpts:

  • “Feeding reprehensible anti-Semitic myths and conspiracy theories in a speech on Monday, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, shed all credibility as a trustworthy partner if the Palestinians and Israelis ever again have the nerve to try negotiations….
  • Mr. Abbas’s anti-Semitic tendencies are not new. In the 1980s, he wrote a dissertation that seemed to question the widely accepted Holocaust death toll of six million Jews….
  • “Mr. Abbas, who oversees a governing system plagued by corruption and dysfunction, has lost support among the Palestinian people.

  • “He has weakened government institutions that are essential for a future state and refused to call new elections, thus overstaying his term by many years and preventing younger leaders from emerging.

  • “He has also failed to unify the Palestinians in the West Bank, where his Fatah faction dominates, with those in the even more desperate circumstances of the Gaza Strip, where Hamas holds sway.

  • :Even in this gloomy climate, however, Mr. Abbas’s vile speech was a new low. No doubt he feels embittered and besieged on all sides. But by succumbing to such dark, corrosive instincts he showed that it is time for him to step down.”

Please pray for Mr. Abbas, his family and his advisors. Please pray, too, for the Palestinian people both in the West Bank and in Gaza, where they live under the slavery and tyranny of Hamas. God loves the Palestinian people, and so must we. They need better. They deserve better. May the Lord show them much grace and mercy.

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