PA officials: Trump showed Abbas videos of PA incitement
Abbas reportedly claimed that the videos were forged: 'Just ask the CIA.'
Contact EditoTal Polon, 01/06/17 08:46
PA officials confirmed reports in Israel that US President Donald Trump had lambasted PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas during their meeting in Bethlehem over the PA’s involvement in anti-Israel incitement.
On Sunday, Channel 2 reported that the meeting between Trump and Abbas in Bethlehem last week had been anything but cordial.
The report cited a US official present during the meeting who claimed that the president had expressed outrage with Abbas, yelling at him regarding Abbas’ claims that his Fatah faction was not involved in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement.
“You tricked me in Washington,” the president is said to have yelled at Abbas, referencing the PA leader’s March trip to the US capital.
On Wednesday, the London-based Arab news outlet “Al-Araby Al-Jadeed” cited PA officials who confirmed the reports. According to them, Abbas had described his meeting with Trump in Bethlehem as “unpleasant,” and said that Trump had expressed anger towards him, blaming him for incitement against Israel.
According to the report, Trump showed Abbas a number of video clips, including one in which Abbas was seen saying, “We incite, and the Israelis incite.” In response, Abbas had claimed that the videos had been cut, and were being taken out of context.
The PA officials said that Abbas had claimed that Trump’s rage at him was the result Israeli “incitement” against him. “You have methods in the CIA, ask them to analyze the videos, and you’ll find that they were taken out of context or forged in order to incite against the Palestinians,” he reportedly told Trump.
The PA sources described the meeting as having been tense, and said that Abbas had repeatedly exploded in annoyance when his senior advisers asked questions.
Marine LePen: Fundamentalist Islam is a mortal danger
France's Le Pen accuses rival Macron of being soft on Islamists.
AFP, 15/04/17 22:47
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Saturday accused her main rival for president, centrist Emmanuel Macron, of being soft on Islamists, in a blistering attack eight days before
the vote.
Le Pen pounced on remarks by Macron defending one of his top campaigners in the gritty suburbs north of Paris whom the far-right has labelled a "radical."
Mohamed Saou was asked to step back from Macron's campaign after a website published several of his old Facebook messages, one of which criticized the Charlie Hebdo newspaper targeted by jihadists in January 2015 for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
"He did one or two things that were more... radical.... But he's a good guy otherwise," Macron told Beur FM radio on Friday, adding he did not want to fire Saou.
Addressing around 1,000 flag-waving supporters in the southern city of Perpignan Le Pen accused the leader of the "En Marche" (On the Move) party of doing the bidding of Islamist groups.
"With Mr Macron, it would be Islamism on the move," Le Pen said. "It's as if he's writing a new chapter of Houllebecq's book Soumission," she said, referring to a novel by author Michel Houllebecq which portrays a fictional Islamist president coming to power in France.
The anti-EU, anti-immigration Le Pen and Macron, the 39-year-old europhile optimist given the best chance of beating her in a run-off, are leading polls for the first round of the election on April 23 with around 22-24 percent each.
In the past few days, radical left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon and conservative ex-premier Francois Fillon have gained ground, transforming the election into a tight four-way race. The two leaders of the first round will go through to a runoff on May 7.
Le Pen, who says she would best defend France against the jihadists who have killed over 230 people in France since 2015, also took Fillon to task, accusing him of letting Muslims close themselves off from society when he was prime minister between 2007 and 2012.
"We must be intransigent with the mortal danger that fundamentalist Islam represents for our country," she said.
In a Facebook message in September Saou expressed revulsion over a cartoon by Charlie Hebdo depicting Italian earthquake victims as pasta dishes.
"I never was and never will be Charlie," he wrote, referring to the "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) slogan which became a rallying cry for freedom of expression after the January 2015 attack on the paper's Paris offices which left 12 people dead.
His remarks echoed those of a number of French people, who said that while they deplored the attack they felt Charlie Hebdo's cartoons stigmatized Muslims.
Macron described the post as "hurtful to people."
Saou is being investigated by the party's internal ethics committee.
In other Facebook posts published by a French Jewish news site, Saou criticized the bans imposed by some towns last year on the Islamic "burkini" swimsuit and expressed concern about a backlash against Muslims after the July 14 truck massacre in the city of Nice.
Fillon's camp has also seized on the controversy to attack Macron, an economic liberal who took over the frontrunner spot from Fillon after Fillon became embroiled in a fake jobs scandal in January.
Eric Ciotti, a senior Fillon campaigner, accused former economy minister Macron of supporting "a man (Saou) who does not share our vision of France."
Macron's party accused both Le Pen and Ciotti of "rampant Islamophobia."
Orbán and Le Pen: breaking the EU’s cordon sanitaire?
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