UPDATE: Click here to read our letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
B’nai B’rith International President Gary P. Saltzman and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin have issued the following statement:
We are deeply concerned at the pro-Palestinian bias displayed in a new State Department report that severely mischaracterizes the reality in the region.
In the new annual Country Reports on Terrorism, the State Department blames Israel for Palestinian violence against Israelis. It is astonishing that State is echoing the false Palestinian narrative. If it were not released by the State Department, it would be easy to mistake the inflammatory and accusatory language as coming directly from the Palestinians.
According to the report, a “lack of hope” drives Palestinian violence.
Israel is not driving the violence committed by the Palestinians. It’s Palestinian leadership—Fatah and Hamas— that incites violence against Israelis on a daily basis. The Palestinian leadership even compensates terrorists and their families with cash as a reward for carrying out an attack on Israelis.
President Trump himself criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for incitement and paying stipends to terrorists, and Ambassador Nikki Haley emphatically rejects similar language when it’s used at the United Nations.
If it is the intention of the administration to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, this report sets it up as a non-starter. We urge the State Department to correct its imbalanced narrative.
