For years Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has portrayed himself as a true “moderate” in contrast to his terrorist predecessor, the infamous Yasser Arafat.  

With his kindly demeanor, and sporting a Western style suit instead of a kaffiya and pistol, he has duped much of the mainstream media. But his behavior is hardly moderate. He showed his true colors last week, when he congratulated North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on his country’s Annual Liberation Day celebration.

The move came amidst increased and ongoing tensions between the United States and Pyongyang, and despite a rare unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea for its continued development of long-range missiles.

Abbas expressed appreciation for “Korea’s solidarity in support of our people’s rights and its just struggle to end the occupation and to establish an independent state with east Jerusalem as its capital.”  The official PA news site Wafa quotes the Abbas telegram to Kim as saying that the Korean people made “the greatest sacrifices for the sake of its freedom and dignity.”

Further, Abbas wished Kim “health and happiness” and the Korean people “more stability and prosperity.” Seriously? Kim, who kills millions of his own people and brings the world close to a nuclear exchange, should have “health and happiness”? A country whose people are starved in order that Kim can develop more costly weapons — “stability and prosperity”?

It is high time that Abbas is called out for his phony pose of moderation. By heaping such groveling praise on the leader of the world’s most oppressive and dangerous nation, Abbas continues the stance of his late and unmourned predecessor. No two-state solution can be achieved in the Middle East with a Palestinian leader who admires a murderous and ruthless enemy of peace.