‘Moderate’ Mohammed Shtayyeh Has Close Encounter With Congressmen

A likely successor to 86-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, now in the seventeenth year of his four-year term as President of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Shtayyeh has been Prime Minister of the P.A. since 2019. The media, always eager to find Palestinian “moderates,” have painted Shtayyeh as such a figure. Stephen Flatow reports on the real Mohammed Shtayyeh, and his meeting with a visiting delegation of Congressmen, here: “Another Palestinian ‘Moderate’ Is Exposed,” by Stephen M. Flatow, JNS.org, March 18, 2022:

Every time a new Palestinian Arab leader begins to emerge, journalists, pundits and diplomats rush to crown him “moderate.” Well, one of those “moderates” just claimed — to a US congressional delegation, no less — that Hamas has only been shooting “fireworks,” not missiles, at Israel.

Funny, I [Stephen Flatow] don’t see that being reported by any of the journalists who previously praised him. I don’t see any of those pundits or diplomats publicly acknowledging that they were wrong about him.

The latest fallen moderate is Mohammed Shtayyeh, who in 2019 was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority by the PA’s apparent chairman-for-life, Mahmoud Abbas.

As soon as Shtayyeh’s name was announced, Western journalists raced to paint him as a reasonable, moderate, all-around wonderful kind of guy. They did that for an obvious reason: They want to see a sovereign “Palestine” created in Israel’s backyard, and the only way to make that happen is to convince Israel—and its supporters around the world—that it would be safe to do so.

Agence France Presse called Shtayyeh “a political moderate.” USA Today assured us that Shtayyeh is not some wild-eyed radical; he’s “a British educated economist.”

Shtayyeh wears a coat and tie, is outwardly mild-mannered, and is an economist, with a degree from the University of Sussex. So what ? Mohamed Atta was a “Western-educated architect.” Ayman al-Zawahiri of Al-Qaeda was a board-certified surgeon. Hanan Ashrawi, everyone’s favorite “Palestinian moderate,” has a Ph.D. in Medieval and Comparative Literature from the University of Virginia. She has been the recipient of numerous awards from all over the world, including the French Legion of Honor in 2006; the 2005 Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation; the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize; the 2002 Olof Palme Prize; the 1999 International Women of Hope “Bread and Roses”; the Defender of Democracy Award – Parliamentarians for Global Action; the 50 Women of the Century; the 1996 Jane Addams International Women’s Leadership Award; the Pearl S. Buck Foundation Women’s Award; the 1994 Pio Manzu Gold Medal Peace Award; and the 1992 Marissa Bellisario International Peace Award. And there’s one more thing, aside from all those awards, that deserves to be note: for decades, Ashrawi has been a viciously anti-Israel propagandist.

The Council on Foreign Relations hosted a public event with Prime Minister Shtayyeh. Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, was the moderator. Engel quickly cast aside his journalistic objectivity and showered Shtayyeh with sympathy. “It must feel more like you’re more alone, though?” Engel asked him. “It must feel like some of your Arab allies have turned their backs on you. … Does it feel more lonely where you are living right now?”

As chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, Engel is supposed to be objective, but he doesn’t even try to pretend. His sympathy for Shtayyeh, and for the Palestinians, is palpable. For Shtayyeh represents “Palestine,” in Engel’s view abandoned by those four Arab states that in 2020 placed their own national interests above those of the Palestinians by joining the Abraham Accords and “normalizing ties with Israel.” Engel feels the anguish of the P.A.’s Shtayyeh: “It must feel like you’re more alone“ and “it must feel like some of your Arab allies have turned their backs on you” and “does it feel more lonely?” — the poor Palestinians, “lonely….lonely….alone.” And poor Mohammed Shtayyeh, too, that well-dressed British-educated economist, though “lonely,” is manfully doing his best to keep up the morale of his betrayed people, with whom we are inveigled into sympathizing.

The word “technocrat” quickly became attached to the new prime minister’s name. Shtayyeh’s position is “a largely technocratic post,” determined The New York Times. Shtayyeh is “seen largely as a technocrat,” declared Reuters, not identifying just who it is that sees him that way and carefully using the passive tone so as to cement the idea that the description is a widely-accepted fact that no one should question.…

When the epithet “technocrat” is affixed to Shtayyeh’s name, this is meant to reassure us that he is.not some gun-toting keffiyeh-wearing terrorist like Arafat, but, rather, a “no-one-here-but-us-economists” kind of guy, like Salam Fayyad, another economist who once served as the Prime Minister of the P.A. But Shtayyeh shows that it’s possible to burn the midnight oil studying spreadsheets and the bond market and still be an implacable — and dangerous – enemy of the Jewish state.

As an economist and a senior official of Fatah, Shtayyeh had to have been deeply involved in the P.A.’s “Pay-For-Slay” program, that provides generous subsidies to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists who died during their attacks. And now, as Prime Minister, he has more to do with “Pay-For-Slay” than anyone else save Mahmoud Abbas. But no one in the Western media has had the bad taste to raise that troubling matter with Shtayyeh; he must be.protected, not covered, by that accommodating media.

This past week, Shtayyeh threatened to upset the apple cart that the media had so carefully constructed in order to protect his image. In meetings with members of Congress who were visiting Ramallah, the PA prime minister launched into a series of venomous anti-Israel tirades.

Shtayyeh, used to being treated with kid gloves by the media, was rattled by his meeting with a Congressional delegation visiting Ramallah, whose members were determined to raise contentious matters with the Prime Minister..

“House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA.) asked Shtayyeh about the 4,000-plus Hamas rocket attacks on Israel last May. Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) and Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) told Jewish Insider that “Shtayyeh dismissed Hamas rocket attacks against Israel as ‘fireworks.’ ”…

“Garbarino said that Shtayyeh’s outrageous statement “really annoyed people” in the delegation and indicated that “[the Palestinian Arabs] are not ready to have an adult conversation.”

Shtayyeh was unprepared for hard questions, so used is he to receiving friendly treatment from a sympathetic Western media. Had he prepared, he might have said something to the effect that “I am Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, and as I’m sure you know, we in the P.A. have very great differences with Hamas. We had nothing to do with what you call those rocket attacks from Gaza – you should ask Hamas about them.” Instead, he tried to minimize the effect of those rockets, describing them as mere “fireworks.” That did not go over well with the Congressmen.

“Jewish Insider reported that Shtayyeh also falsely accused Israel of “apartheid.” Remarkable! The prime minister of the PA, which forbids Jews from living in its territory and forbids Arabs from selling property to Jews under penalty of death, accuses the Jews of apartheid.

“According to Jewish Insider, House Democratic Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “forcefully pushed back” against Shtayyeh’s “apartheid” lie. To his credit, Jeffries recently wrote that accusations of Israeli apartheid are “demonstrably false, dangerous and designed to isolate Israel in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the world.”

Even the Democrats, even the progressive Democrats in the congressional delegation, were not about to let Shtayyeh get away with affixing the “apartheid” label on Israel. Hakeem Jeffries (Democrat, progressive) lit into Shtayyeh, who is unused to criticism – like Mahmoud Abbas himself, Shtayyeh is surrounded by both his Palestinian loyalists and the claque of Western journalists, such as Richard Engel of NBC News, who are prepared to shield him from any critical coverage. Well-informed Congressmen, Shtayyeh has just learned to his great dismay, are perfectly willing to shoot down his flights of malevolent fancy.

Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) came away from the meeting with Shtayyeh convinced that the PA leaders have “such a victim mentality.” Rep. Valadao said, “I just didn’t get the impression that [Shtayyeh] is someone who is looking for long-term peace with Israelis in the region.” And Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) charged Shtayyeh with engaging in “revisionist history.”

Oh dear. Such an unexpected piling up by Congressional critics of Mohammed Shtayyeh. Don’t these American Congressmen know their place? They are supposed to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to the P.A., as the Bidenites have been doing, no questions asked. How dare they find fault with the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, that inoffensive technocrat and British-educated economist, Mohammed Shtayyeh?

Those Congressmen, apparently, were not at all impressed by Mohammed Shtayyeh. His dismissal of the 4,000 rockets Hamas used to bombard Israel last May as merely “fireworks” infuriated several Congressmen (Reps. McCarthy, Garbarino, and Valadeo). He libeled Israel as an apartheid state, eliciting a furious response from one “progressive” Democratic Congressman (Rep. Jeffries) who found such charges “dangerous and demonstrably false.” He exhibited “a victim mentality” (Rep. Kim). He did not appear to be “looking for long-term peace” with Israel (Rep. Valadeo). He engaged in “revisionist” history (Rep. Rice).

Shtayyeh’s close encounter as P.A. Prime Minister with American Congressmen didn’t go as he had expected. His Congressional interlocutors, deeply dissatisfied with his heated responses, came at him hammer and tongs. Back to the spreadsheets and the green eyeshades for now, Mohammed Shtayyeh. Your taqiyya needs work. You aren’t ready for your close-up after all.