A picture of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the hospital, apparently published to quell concerns about his health, shows the leader reading a newspaper with an anti-Israel cartoon, The Times of Israel reported Tuesday.
While Abbas appears to be reading one side of the paper, there is a cartoon facing the camera depicting a menacing-looking Israeli soldier replacing a baby’s milk bottle with poison.
The cartoon was described as depicting the reported death of an 8-month-old girl from inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli troops at last week’s Hamas-led riots.
Subsequent to the initial reporting of the claim last week, an unidentified Gaza doctor told reporters that the girl had died from a pre-existing condition.
Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, who had initially charged that the baby had died from tear gas inhalation later told The Times of Israel that the cause of the baby’s death had not yet been determined definitively.
Abbas, who was admitted to the hospital Sunday night with a high fever, is being treated for pneumonia.
Abbas is no stranger to charges that he incites violence.
In September 2015, then-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said that an Abbas speech describing “every drop of blood … spilled for Jerusalem” as “blessed,” raised tensions and asked that he stop using “inflammatory” rhetoric.
A few months later, David Horovitz, editor-in-chief of The Times of Israel, charged that Abbas was “presiding over an ongoing, strategic demonizing of Israel and Israelis — via his education system, political and spiritual leadership and mainstream and social media — that positively guarantees Palestinian violence and terrorism.”
Since his inauguration last year, President Donald Trump has repeatedly asked Abbas to stop inciting against Israel; Abbas has refused to comply with the request. In December of last year, a senior White House official said that Abbas’s incitement “has prevented peace for years.”
[Photo: Twitter]
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