Moreover, given the direction of the New York Times coverage in recent months, it’s no longer even surprising that the paper would allow Abbas to fabricate in its pages. It’s not surprising, but it’s also not excusable. Abbas has an Op-Ed today
[1] in the former “Paper of Record,” claiming:SIXTY-THREE years ago, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was forced to leave his home in the Galilean city of Safed and flee with his family to Syria. He took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees. Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their home and homeland, they were denied that most basic of human rights. That child’s story, like that of so many other Palestinians, is mine.
It’s a sad story, but it’s not his story. As blogger Daled Amos uncovered, Abbas once let it slip in an Arabic newspaper that his family was not expelled, but left under different circumstances. Daled Amos blogs:
In a Jerusalem Post article, Sarah Honig writes about Abbas and his admission that he and his family left Safed on their own:
Fatah’s cofounder reminisced at length about his Safed origins and haphazardly let the truth slip out. “Until the nakba” (calamity in Arabic - the loaded synonym for Israeli independence), he recounted, his family “was well-off in Safed.” When Abbas was 13, “we left on foot at night to the Jordan River… Eventually we settled in Damascus… My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work. “People were motivated to run away… They feared retribution from Zionist terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising [Muslim pogroms instigated by the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, known later for his Nazi sympathies]. This was in the memory of our families and parents… They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and our belongings.”
Abbas continues with his historical revisionism:
It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued. Indeed, it was the descendants of these expelled Palestinians who were shot and wounded by Israeli forces on Sunday as they tried to symbolically exercise their right to return to their families’ homes.
Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.
Abbas of course doesn’t mention the Palestinian Arab rejection of U.N. Partition Plan, versus Israel’s acceptance. Had the plan been accepted by the Arab side, it would have been implemented, and a Palestinian state would have been a fulfilled promise 63 years ago.
