The opening of a hall that the Palestinian Authority named for a terrorist who killed 125 people. Photo: Palestinian Media Watch.

Throughout history, antisemites have used blood libels to incite violence against Jews. And throughout Palestinian Authority (PA) history, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, PA columnist and former advisor to Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, has frequently used blood libels to demonize Israel.

The PA — and Al-Ghoul in particular — consistently use the antisemitic themes of the Middle Ages to generate hatred against the Jewish Sate and to incite violence.

Most recently, Al-Ghoul said that Israel commits holocausts and that Israeli leaders drink the blood of Palestinian children and always want more blood:

Spilled blood of defenseless and innocent children, women, and elderly; a flowing river of fierce red [blood] in the Gaza Strip districts in particular and Palestine in general; soft and gentle bodies [of children] were burned, turned into charcoal, and mutilated; the Rafah district’s north, south, and west sunk into the furnace of massacre.

All of this follows the stream of Israeli holocausts and massacres that have been continuing for eight months, until the number has risen to 3,220 massacres. And the Israeli vampires [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his colleagues in the cabinet of the war of annihilation against the Palestinian people are still enjoying and dancing the dances of death and crime, while they drink the blood of Palestinian children — and they have yet to satiate their thirst, even though more than 46,000 Martyrs have fallen including the missing, and more than 81,000 wounded.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida website, May 29, 2024]

This is par for the course for Al-Ghoul. In March 2024 (after also doing so in 2020), he insinuated that Israel is “liable to spread viruses” and “to poison the water.” Last year, he again invoked the Holocaust when he called Israel a “holocaust state.”

Al-Ghoul’s despicable language aside, many experts such as Ret. Colonel John Spencer, the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, have completely debunked the PA’s accusations of Israel intentionally or even negligently causing civilian casualties.

In Spencer’s own words, Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any military in history, and has set a standard that will be both hard and potentially problematic to repeat.

The PA would benefit the Palestinian civilians in Gaza far more if it would direct its outrage against Hamas. It should demand that Hamas surrender and end the war and Palestinian suffering.

Hamas, which hides its terrorists behind civilians, is responsible for every civilian death in Gaza, and it is the one the PA should be criticizing. But the PA, as is its policy, will always blame Israel for any Palestinian problems — even when Palestinian leaders are the ones responsible.

Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is PMW’s Founder and Director. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.