In New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas went to Cooper Union to give a speech comparing his own efforts to those of the American civil-rights movement. Abbas is struggling for relevance at home and for attention abroad at a time when focus has shifted from the conflict in Gaza to the far bloodier and more dangerous one in Syria and Iraq. But the falsehoods and distortions the Palestinian uttered at the school’s venerable Great Hall deserve to be debunked if only because so many in the international community that have descended on the city never question them.

The attempt to compare the Palestinians to African-Americans during the American civil-rights struggle is not new. This specious thesis has been trotted out before by Palestinians and even endorsed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It is predicated on the notion that Palestinians are merely struggling for freedom and independence while being repressed by wicked Israelis who covet their land and deprive them of their rights in the same manner as those who enforced Jim Crow laws in the American south prior to the enforcement of federal civil-rights acts. The choice of the venue for Abbas’ address underlines that ploy since it has been the site of many memorable speeches by Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas, and, most memorably, Abraham Lincoln.

That the Palestinians would seek to continue to portray themselves in this manner is understandable since it is a meme designed to generate sympathy and support for efforts to persuade the UN to vote for measures designed to give them a state without first having made peace with Israel. But while this tired act may work at a General Assembly with a built-in majority that will support any attack on the Jewish state, those who have been paying attention to recent events in the Middle East weren’t impressed.

The purpose of Abbas’s efforts was to split the U.S.-Israel alliance and persuade Americans to support efforts to impose a solution to the conflict on the Israelis. But his calls for Americans to rise up and demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “end the occupation” might have been a bit more credible if he had been upfront about both the history of negotiations and the realities of Palestinian politics.

Let’s start with the fact that the Palestinians were offered exactly what they say they want in 2000, 2001, and 2008 and said no. The last such time it was Abbas, rather than his predecessor Yasir Arafat, who fled the talks rather than be put in the position of once again turning down independence if it meant recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state next door. Since then, Abbas has refused to negotiate seriously with Netanyahu despite the fact that the latter endorsed a two-state solution. Instead of agreeing to keep talking with the Israelis as President Obama asked, Abbas made a deal with Hamas and blew up the talks so as to avoid being put in the delicate position of having to agree to something even his own supporters won’t countenance.

But the problem isn’t just that the Palestinians keep saying no. It’s that the struggle between the two sides was shown again this past summer to have nothing to do with “occupation” or the peaceful efforts of a people to govern themselves.

While Abbas mentioned the latest fighting in Gaza this year, he ignored the fact that it was set off by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers and the subsequent decision by his Hamas rivals to start launching thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. During the course of the 50-day war that followed, Hamas’s actions and the discovery of the network of terror tunnels along the border intended to facilitate mass murder and/or kidnapping of Israelis also put the purpose of their efforts — which were cheered by most Palestinians — into focus. When the Islamists talk about “resisting” the “occupation,” they are not talking about an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank or parts of Jerusalem (things the Israelis have repeatedly offered) or drawing a border that is more generous to the Palestinians than previous efforts. They are, instead, discussing the fulfillment of their goal of destroying Israel and slaughtering its Jewish population.

After all, Israel withdrew every last soldier, settlement, and settler from Gaza in 2005 and instead of an incubator for peace and development, what followed was the transformation of the strip into a large terror base. Gaza is today for all intents and purposes an independent state in all but name. That it is ruled by Hamas rather than Abbas not only underlines his irrelevance but is the reason why Israelis are today even more wary of empowering the leader of the Palestinians on the West Bank. If Israel were to grant Abbas’s wish—with or without his promise that this measure would end the conflict for all time—few doubt that Hamas could overthrow him and install a replica of their Gaza fiefdom in the far more strategically important and larger West Bank.

The basic difference between the civil-rights movement and Palestinian nationalism is that the former laudably sought to gain the rights of blacks without prejudice to those of their white neighbors. The Palestinian drive for self-determination has, unfortunately, always been inextricably linked to the century-long campaign to eradicate the Jewish presence in the land. If Israelis now hesitate to replicate its Gaza experiment in the West Bank it is because Hamas has shown them what happens when withdrawals occur.

Instead of making false analogies about Israel, Abbas should be publicly denouncing the way Hamas used the population of Gaza as human shields and its commitment to terror, not to mention ensuring that the broadcast and print outlets he controls cease fomenting hatred and delegitimization of Israel and Jews.

If Israelis are no longer that interested in Abbas, it’s because the Gaza war proved his irrelevance. If he wants to persuade them to take him seriously, he needs to work for peace among his own people, not waste time smearing Israel when not even his foreign cheerleaders are particularly interested in him.