DNC in Coalitions with Pro-Terror Palestinian Parties: Fatah

DNC and Affiliates in Coalitions with Pro-Terror Palestinian Parties (full series)
NDI/CAP | Fatah | Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
SI Adopts Terror Advocates’ Views and Issues
PA Accepts Terror Advocates’ Framing

Fatah

Fatah is a political party and a member of PA, and former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, a Fatah official, is on the board. Fatah is also a full member of SI, and a Fatah official is a SI vice president.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has led Fatah since 2005. Abbas is also the chairman of the Fatah-controlled Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is an umbrella grouping of Palestinian parties.

Fatah, Abbas, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority are often described as “moderates,” “pro-peace,” and even sometimes as “nonviolent.” They are favorably contrasted against their Islamist rivals Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Yet, Fatah and the PLO have a very long history of perpetrating terrorist attacks on civilians and spreading anti-Semitism of the worst kind.

The Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority does maintain limited cooperation with Israel on counterterrorism, but it continues to incite terrorism, foment anti-Semitism, and provide generous salaries to imprisoned “martyrs” and/or their families if they are killed. Many of its officials and security personnel publicly support terrorism and some have even perpetrated attacks themselves.

In fact, a Palestinian Media Watch report released in January documented many times that Fatah and Palestinian Authority officials, including Abbas, have glorified terrorism and publicly boasted about their security forces’ personnel dying while committing violence. They usually commit their acts in the name of the Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which the U.S. State Department includes on its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Fatah’s first formal reaction to the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, came about two days after. The statement indirectly exalted participants in the attacks as “forces of heroism that confront the occupation’s crimes and aggression, attacking the enemy and not fleeing and defending the people in every village, refugee camp and city in the Palestinian West Bank and the proud Gaza Strip.”

The statement urged the formation of a common front and told the Palestinian population that it has an “obligation” to “escalate all the conflict zones with the occupier throughout our homeland Palestine, in order to defend our people and stand with our residents in the Gaza Strip.”

Abbas has repeatedly honored terrorists and legitimized brutal terrorist campaigns targeting civilians.

In August 2023, Abbas was recorded publicly complaining that “many Jewish books” propagated the supposed myth that Hitler hated Jews for their religion and for merely existing. The reality, Abbas claimed, was that Hitler “fought the Jews” (language that implies both sides were combatants) because their poor behavior, especially regarding money, was severely damaging German society.

Mohammad Shtayyeh, a Fatah official and former Palestinian Authority prime minister, sits on PA’s board. Shtayyeh’s role as prime minister included overseeing the Palestinian Authority’s terrorism-related activities. As prime minister, he refused to condemn the October 7 attacks or to describe them as acts of terrorism.

In May 2023, he honored two Hamas members who murdered an Israeli woman and her two daughters and a third who hid the perpetrators. In October 2013, he attended a reception welcoming 21 terrorists released by Israel, including ones who killed Israeli civilians.

Shtayyeh justifies the Palestinian Authority’s salaries for terrorists who are held in prison and for the families of killed terrorists. He does not consider any Palestinian prisoner to be a terrorist.

Rawhi Fattouh, is the SI vice president and a Fatah official.

Fattouh hailed the October 7 attacks as “brave resistance” in “defense of Palestinian honor” and pledged that such actions would “continue.”

In March 2023, Fattouh published photos of himself meeting with a terrorist who had just been released by Israel. He called the terrorist, who oversaw a massive Iranian arms shipment to the Palestinian Territories, a “heroic national commander.”

He also defended President Abbas after he made his anti-Semitic assertion that the Jews’ immoral role in society provoked Hitler. Fattouh claimed Abbas was taken out of context.

Israel revoked Fattouh’s entry permit in January 2023 after he attended a welcome-home event for a released terrorist who murdered an Israeli soldier in 1980. The former prisoner offered the soldier a ride home, which the soldier accepted, and he then shot the soldier in the head and left the soldier on the side of the road to die.

Nabeel Shaath, is a Fatah official and a former SI vice president. He has been caught using deception to appeal to Westerners. Shaath was videotaped praising Hamas’s terrorism to a Palestinian crowd and then making peaceful-sounding remarks to Israeli and international audiences a week later.

He was also caught lying in 2003. He was given the honor of being one of the Palestinian officials who met with President George W. Bush. Shortly thereafter, Shaath caused a firestorm by claiming that Bush had told the Palestinian delegation that God instructed him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and now God was telling him to make peace in the Middle East by creating a Palestinian state while keeping Israel secure.

No other Palestinian officials who were at the meeting backed up Shaath when his account was challenged. The U.S. government responded by telling the Palestinian Authority to never include him in a delegation again.

Palestinian National Initiative

PNI is an official member of PA, and PNI official Bahia Amra is on PA’s board. PNI Secretary-General Mustafa Barghouti appears on PA’s website in a section titled “People,” so he apparently has an unspecified role in PA. An op-ed on the PA website written by Barghouti in 2020 says he was a member of the coalition’s board at the time of publication.

PNI is also a member of SI with “consultative party” status, which means it has the right to speak but not to vote.

PNI is oftentimes referred to as “moderate,” “democratic,” and “nonviolent,” but these are relative terms based on the overall extremism of the major Palestinian political parties. While PNI has never had an armed wing and PNI is likely the least terroristic and irredentist of the major parties, it still falls far short of the most minimal moral standards proclaimed by the DNC, the DNC-affiliated think tanks, and the international left-wing coalitions.

Barghouti justifies the October 7 attacks while claiming he opposes any violence against civilians. He staunchly protests the describing of the perpetrators and Hamas as terrorists.

Barghouti has close ties to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a formerly Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. PFLP endorsed his presidential campaign in 2005. He attended the funeral of PFLP’s founder and leader in 2008. According to news coverage of the event, “Barghouti said [PFLP leader] Habash was a symbol of the Palestinian struggle and a tireless advocate of Palestinians’ rights.”

Bahia Amra, the PNI official on PA’s board, was or is an assistant to Barghouti, according to her bio on her X page, which has been inactive since 2013. Her LinkedIn page identifies her as the external relations director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, which is led by Barghouti and has had at least two members discovered to be PFLP terrorists.

In the next installment, PPSF is a Palestinian political party and a member of SI and has committed terrorism against Western targets and still incites terrorism.