'Stop demonizing Israel and resume peace talks'

ADL director says he'd placed "great hopes" in Abbas's leadership, accuses him of deligitimizing Israel in UN speech, stalling negotiations.

Abe Foxman 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Abe Foxman 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Anti Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman called for an end to the "demonizing" of Israel and a resumption of peace talks on Thursday, in an open letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
"For those of us who have placed great hopes in your leadership to transform the path of the Palestinians," Foxman wrote, "your words and actions over the past year, culminating in your speech to the United Nations on September 23, have been disillusioning."
Foxman accused Abbas of seeking to deligitimize Israel in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly by using "code words and phrases that provoke Israel’s isolation from the world community." "You miscast Israel’s understandable desire to be recognized as a Jewishstate, a recognition which should not be a big matter if the goal is two states living side-by-side in peace and security. The UN partition plan of 1947 specifically talked about an Arab state and a Jewish state in place of mandatory Palestine," Foxman wrote.
He called for Abbas to resume peace talks with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and prove that the Palestinians have not "given up their their long-held goal to continue the conflict anyway they can until the Jewish state disappears."