Hamas gloats at terror and encourages death. The Palestinian Authority condemns violence then implicitly excuses it in the next breath. And all in the first hours of mourning after an abominable terrorist attack on Jews.

That’s the deplorable state of current Palestinian leadership, and anyone who supports either of these wretched organizations — whether in the media, at the United Nations or here in St. Louis — should be utterly ashamed.

As the response to the death of four rabbis — all with dual citizenship, three American, one British — in a Jerusalem synagogue Tuesday morning illustrates, there is little if any civilized leadership of the Palestinian people.

Hamas’ official statement as reported said, “The attack in Jerusalem is a reaction to the crime and execution of the martyr al-Ramouni and a reaction to the crimes of the occupation; the Hamas movement is calling for more revenge attacks.”

Put aside for the moment that the bus driver al-Ramouni’s death by hanging may well have been self-inflicted, according to an autopsy report, rather than at the hands of settlers as was alleged. Hamas cannot govern in Gaza, cannot provide for its people, cannot do much of anything, with the exception of kill, maim and encourage killing and maiming.

This is why Egypt, and now several other Arab countries in the Middle East, don’t want Hamas or its parent Muslim Brotherhood. Those who try to defend the Brotherhood cite ad nauseum its origins as a fraternal organization devoted to the common good. This is utterly disingenuous: What the group started as decades and decades ago is unrelated to its present mission of desecration, destruction and indiscriminate violence.

President Mahmoud Abbas, who runs the Palestinian Authority, is only a bare step better. While he condemned Tuesday’s murders, he just couldn’t help himself, so the statement didn’t stop there. Rather than taking a deep breath and honoring the memories of those slain, Abbas had to in the same statement point attention to “incursions and provocations by settlers against the Aksa Mosque” and accused “some Israeli ministers” of incitement.

Hours after a bloody massacre in a place of worship, Abbas makes a political statement about societal context, at the same time he is supposedly condemning such beastly behavior, implicitly offering a latent justification for the attack.

This is loathsome, pure and simple. Say what you want about Israeli leadership — and we have before, many times — but did you ever once see an Israel government official say, “Oh, good, we killed more Palestinian civilians today?”

The European Union and others who are trying to shoehorn Israel into a deal with Palestinians must understand who these so-called leaders are. They can recognize the sad plight of the Palestinian people all they want — we certainly do, and it is a sad plight and it’s a tragedy that hasn’t yet been solved — but to insist that broken, hateful leadership like this be recognized as a legitimate government is going to exacerbate, not eliminate, the problem.

Mob killings of civilians represent the basest of human instincts, and justifications by political leaders demonstrate an inability and unwillingness to effect civil governance. But no matter the efforts to deflect blame onto Israeli leadership, the Times of Israel Editor David Horovitz, on the heels of the massacre in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, made clear this tactic will never succeed:

“Because the final thing that has to be put in writing, even on a horrible, evil day like this, when the fingers loathe the necessity to tap the keyboard, is that it’s not going to work. Palestinian terrorists, and those who incite them and support them, should know: We are not going to be shot and stabbed and bludgeoned out of here by your brutality and the false justifications you invoke to legitimize it.”