Scores of Palestinian diplomats at the United Nations, across Europe and around the world celebrated the attack on Israel on October 7, compared Israel to the Nazis or made other disturbing statements, the JC can reveal.

The findings raise serious questions about the legitimacy of Palestinian Authority (PA) officials on the world stage. The PA is increasingly expected to participate in governing Gaza after the war and help build a two-state solution.

A dossier of evidence compiled by investigators from the GnasherJew group uncovered troubling details from the social media activity of ambassadors, other officials and even embassy accounts.

The analysis of hundreds of posts from more than 30 profiles found senior diplomats smearing Israeli troops as Nazis, supporting the actions of Hamas and advocating the erasure of Israel.

The most disturbing statements began on October 7 itself. Hassan Albalawi, the deputy head of the Palestine mission to the EU, reacted by celebrating Hamas as “heroic”, while Adel Atieh, the Palestinian ambassador to the EU, described the terrorists as “the people of the mighty”. Meanwhile, Khuloussi Bsaiso, a Palestinian diplomat at the UN, shared a map of the Middle East without Israel. “Palestine as it should be,” he commented.

When questioned by the JC, Bsaiso claimed that his social media posts were not shared in a professional capacity, adding: “For your information we the Palestinians are Jews, Christians and Muslims.”

In Britain, meanwhile, Rana Abuayyash, consul at the Palestinian mission to London, shared a post on November 3 showing the Israeli flag morphing into Hitler and reposted a TikTok video of Netanyahu underneath the Nazi dictator. There are dozens of similar examples.

As the war in Gaza continues to rage, many of those named in the dossier are regarded as moral authorities in their host countries, invited to discuss the conflict on television and posting to thousands of followers on social media.

“Our findings are deeply troubling,” said a spokesman from GnasherJew, which took a month to compile the material from open sources.

“Numerous diplomats were found to openly support terrorism and frequently make antisemitic remarks. The scale of this issue is significant. It is inconceivable that individuals entrusted with the responsibility of representing Palestine on the international stage are engaging in such behaviour. We call for their immediate removal from their positions and expulsion from their host countries.”

Ambassador Dennis Ross, former Middle East advisor to several US administrations, said of the findings: “The PA cannot have it both ways; they cannot claim they are for peace and then support what Hamas has done.

“If you are saying you want to see a two-state outcome, then these tweets give you a reason to have pause over what kind of a state you are talking about. If it is a state that is committed to coexistence that’s one thing. If it’s a state based on the principle of resistance to Israel, it is something entirely different. That’s the prescription for an enduring conflict.”
The examples are as numerous as they are troubling. On October 7, the PA ambassador to the EU, Adel Atieh, posted in Arabic on Facebook: “Freedom and breaking tyranny these are the people of the mighty... this is the only path to freedom and negotiation in the end, not the other way around.”

When approached by the JC, Atieh, who is based in Brussels and formerly represented the PA at the UN, claimed that this translation was incorrect, but did not provide an alternative.

Atieh was far from the only Palestinian diplomat based in Europe to have courted such controversy. When the Auschwitz Memorial Museum tweeted that they had lost followers in October, Alaa Jadallah, a Palestinian diplomat at the EU, replied: “Unfortunately, Israel is instrumentalising holocaust to get away with its crimes against humanity and heinous war crimes.”

Many Palestinian envoys based in Europe openly posted this material on public profiles, suggesting they felt confident that nobody would criticise them for doing so. This was particuarly noticeable in France.

Despite the slaughter of innocent revellers at the Nova Festival, Hala Abou-Hassira, the Palestinian ambassador to Paris, and Nadine Abualheija, a diplomat at the same mission, apparently attempted to justify the crimes of Hamas.

Abou-Hassira posted: “Israel bears full responsibility,” while Abualheija tweeted: “A colonial state is not an innocent victim when its victims resist genocide.”

Later that day, Abualheija suggested Israelis were the “real terrorists,” describing Hamas as members of “Palestinian resistance” who “targeted illegal Israeli soldiers”.

In December, she shared theories about Israelis harvesting Palestinian organs and compared the IDF with the Islamic State.

Jamila Hassan Eragat, another Palestinian diplomat based in Paris, shared a graphic on October 13 which stated: “Don’t judge a group of people for rising up against their oppressors... violence is necessary for decolonisation”. She also tweeted a picture of a protester holding an image of Adolf Hitler turning into Benjamin Netanyahu.

The behaviour of officials in France was reflected elsewhere on the Continent. Khaldun Almassri, a diplomat at the Palestinian mission in Spain, shared a painting of people dancing with Palestinian flags on October 7. In January, he posted about the “Zionist lobby” and shared an image which suggested Hitler and Netanyahu were one and the same.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Lema Nazeeh, a Palestinian diplomat at the EU, took to X/Twitter to apparently describe it as “decolonisation in tangible terms,” adding: “Palestinians are experiencing a profound sense of dignity and triumph, not mere victimhood”.

She also shared a picture of a truck breaching the Gaza border fence with the caption: “Ladies and Gentlemen, #Gaza break free. 7th October 2023”. This same image was posted by the official Facebook account for the Palestinian embassy in Cyprus. “Palestinians broke through with so much excitement,” the account enthused.

The Cyprus account has repeatedly posted images of dead Jews during the Holocaust and Palestinians in Gaza since October 7. On one occasion, it compared the arrest of suspected Hamas terrorists with the treatment of Jews during the Shoah. “History never repeats itself, as most people fear,” the account said. “People usually repeat history”.

Meanwhile, on October 8, Dania Dasouqi, a Palestinian diplomat in Ireland, shared an image of a boy being detained by the IDF. “But you were never mad about this,” it was captioned.

Similar attitudes were found among Palestinian officials worldwide. Salman El Herfi, the former Palestinian ambassador to South Africa and France, who now works as an advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, reposted an impression of Mary and Jesus next to a Palestinian mother and her child with the caption: “The pain of the Mother is the same as it was 2,000 years ago. The same killer”. The image has been shared by several other diplomats.

Ambassador Ross said that this was evidence that the PA was adopting Hamas’ attitudes. “The Palestinian Authority sees themselves increasingly weakened and they sense a mood among the Palestinian public in the West Bank... who like the idea that [Hamas] is standing up to the Israelis,” he said. “The PA does not want to be seen as soft on Israel so they adopt these kinds of positions.

“I believe the Palestinians are a people and have the right to self-determination, but that right cannot be exercised unless they are prepared to fulfil responsibilities and make it clear they are committed to coexistence and peace with Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

“What the PA needs to understand is to be a partner for peace, they also have to identify with peace. Not just at a sloganistic level. They have to demonstrate they are prepared to fulfil responsibilities. They have to prove themselves which at this stage they are not doing.”

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, accused the diplomats of “hypocrisy and double talk”. He said: “When it comes to Hamas’s actions against Israel, even though Hamas are their bitter enemy, the Palestinian diplomats will turn a blind eye to their atrocities against Israel and worse they will even encourage them and defend them because in their view, the only goal is to attack Israel.

“Despite the Palestine Authority having the pretence of complying with EU principles of peace, human rights and international law (the PA is a welcome partner with human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) in reality they openly defend and promote Hamas atrocities.

“They should be treated as collaborators with Hamas,” Neuer argued.

In Africa, there were many more disturbing examples. The embassy in Tanzania shared a video which appeared to deny any basis for the existence of Israel. It included the phrase: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same way that England belongs to the English or France to the French.”

On October 9, the ambassador in Mozambique, Fayez Abduljawad, posted a graphic that said: “If you are silent when Israel kills Palestinians remain silent when Palestinians defend themselves.”

Similarly, Thaer Abubaker, the ambassador to Guinea and Sierra Leone, called October 7 “heroic,” posting on X/Twitter: “Liberation is the goal of every fighter who risks their life for the sake of freedom and jihad for God’s path.”

Days after the massacre he wrote: “A reminder, the US Secretary of State and Defense are Jews. The first is a Khazar Jew, that is, not from the children of Israel or Semites, and the second has become a Jew out of necessity.”

In a further post appearing to refer to Jews, he wrote: “Evil spread to the whole world, and therefore all the countries of the European continent expelled them and were disgusted with them, so they did everything in their power to deport them to our land.”

He posted that Jews were “falsifying history and religion” and tweeted: “I brought you to Palestine full of scabies and contagious diseases, and yet it hosted you only to turn against it.”

In November, Abubaker shared an image of dead bodies from the Holocaust next to body bags in Gaza, with the caption: “These people... for 75 years have been doing what they claimed Hitler did”. Writing on X/Twitter in December, he described October 7 as “a magnificent form of struggle against the criminal Nazi Israeli occupation.”

There are many more examples across Africa. Manar Alagha, a diplomat in Zimbabwe, shared a video on Facebook of festivalgoers fleeing Nova with the tag “here to victory”, while the embassy in Tanzania posted a picture in December with the message: “Stop doing what Hitler did to you.”

In another post, a consul at the embassy in the Ivory Coast shared a painting of a paraglider and a wave engulfing the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Khattab Bayyari added the caption: “You are the soldiers of God in the field. You crossed to the land that you loved and which loved you and the dignity of the nation liberated you. Tell us how you created that freedom fighter inside you despite your siege?”

Bayyari also posted a video on Instagram of a man holding a sign which said, “F*** Israel stand with Hamas.” Like many of the diplomats in the dossier, Bayyari shared pictures that compared the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust with that of Palestinians, writing: “Today is like yesterday”.

In May, he posted a video on Instagram showing a map that erased the Jewish state and claimed that Israeli politicians belonged in Europe.

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London said: “The investigation reflects the worrying level of incitement to hatred and violence that we see in parts of Palestinian society.”She said: “Rather than promoting friendly relations between the Palestinian territories and other countries, it seems that they are spreading hatred for Jews and Israelis around the world.”

Meanwhile Caroline Turner, Director of UK Lawyers for Israel, called the findings “alarming”.

Turner added: “We hope that now that this has come to light, the host countries will object to this behaviour and require the diplomats to leave.”

Further afield, Palestine’s ambassador to Japan and South Korea, Waleed Siam, shared an image on X/Twitter of a grim reaper figure labelled “Israel” putting Gaza into an oven; posted “Zionism is really curse on all Humanity”; and claimed that Israelis “have yet to find proof of their imaginary temple”.

When approached by the JC, Siam said: “I am not antisemitic and have nothing against Jewish people; my concerns are with the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.”

He added: “It’s important to note that I have Semitic origins myself. Zionism is an ideology that doesn’t necessarily represent all Jewish people or their religion, as many Jews do not identify with it.”

A cartoon of an IDF soldier reflecting a Nazi shooting a victim of the Holocaust has been shared by numerous Palestinian diplomats, including the attaché to the ministry of foreign affairs in Ramallah, Israa Daas, who added the caption: “The irony of becoming what you once hated.”

The deputy ambassador in Sri Lanka, Hisham Abu Taha, also shared the image on October 22, while the official account for Palestine in Azerbaijan posted it in December.

In November, the Azerbaijani account posted a cartoon of two prisoners contorted into swastikas, one Jewish victim of the Holocaust and one Palestinian man.

“That will never happen again! It’s happening once again,” the account remarked.

A spokesman for the embassy told the JC that the post “obviously compares Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians to the Nazi’s genocide against Jews in the Holocaust, not necessarily in numbers but in its savagery.”

He added: “We aren’t antisemitic. On the contrary, we embrace our Jewish brothers and sisters as millions of them are disgusted of Israel’s behaviour.”

He also suggested that “what the fanatic Zionist government in Israel is doing is antisemitic.”

The Consul General in Istanbul, Hana Abu Ramadan, shared a cartoon on October 18 of the Israeli PM as a horned devil.

This is another popular image among Palestinian officials. The JC contacted all of the diplomats mentioned above who have not provided a response via their respective embassies for comment.