The Al Manar network that is run by Hezbollah has a scoop!
It says that Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was actually born in northern Sudan. His real name, we are told, is Attallah Abdul Rahman al-Shaul, and his family owned large amount of land there and were prominent in import/export. They fled the Sudan when Jaafar Nimieri took over the country in 1969 and he went to Israel.
The article says that Netanyahu was 15 when his family moved, although it also says (accurately) that he was born in 1949; Nimieri took over Sudan in 1969.
It also says that his knowledge of Arabic and Nubian came in handy as he joined the IDF.
Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has extended its hand in peace from the moment it was established 63 years ago. On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I extend that hand again today. I extend it to the people of Egypt and Jordan, with renewed friendship for neighbors with whom we have made peace. I extend it to the people of Turkey, with respect and good will. I extend it to the people of Libya and Tunisia, with admiration for those trying to build a democratic future. I extend it to the other peoples of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with whom we want to forge a new beginning. I extend it to the people of Syria, Lebanon and Iran, with awe at the courage of those fighting brutal repression.
But most especially, I extend my hand to the Palestinian people, with whom we seek a just and lasting peace.
Ladies and gentlemen, in Israel our hope for peace never wanes. Our scientists, doctors, innovators, apply their genius to improve the world of tomorrow. Our artists, our writers, enrich the heritage of humanity. Now, I know that this is not exactly the image of Israel that is often portrayed in this hall. After all, it was here in 1975 that the age-old yearning of my people to restore our national life in our ancient biblical homeland -- it was then that this was braided -- branded, rather -- shamefully, as racism. And it was here in 1980, right here, that the historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt wasn't praised; it was denounced! And it's here year after year that Israel is unjustly singled out for condemnation. It's singled out for condemnation more often than all the nations of the world combined. Twenty-one out of the 27 General Assembly resolutions condemn Israel -- the one true democracy in the Middle East.
Well, this is an unfortunate part of the U.N. institution. It's the -- the theater of the absurd. It doesn't only cast Israel as the villain; it often casts real villains in leading roles: Gadhafi's Libya chaired the U.N. Commission on Human Rights; Saddam's Iraq headed the U.N. Committee on Disarmament.
You might say: That's the past. Well, here's what's happening now -- right now, today. Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the U.N. Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world's security.
You couldn't make this thing up.
So here in the U.N., automatic majorities can decide anything. They can decide that the sun sets in the west or rises in the west. I think the first has already been pre-ordained. But they can also decide -- they have decided that the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest place, is occupied Palestinian territory.
And yet even here in the General Assembly, the truth can sometimes break through. In 1984 when I was appointed Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, I visited the great rabbi of Lubavich. He said to me -- and ladies and gentlemen, I don't want any of you to be offended because from personal experience of serving here, I know there are many honorable men and women, many capable and decent people serving their nations here. But here's what the rebbe said to me. He said to me, you'll be serving in a house of many lies. And then he said, remember that even in the darkest place, the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide.
Today I hope that the light of truth will shine, if only for a few minutes, in a hall that for too long has been a place of darkness for my country. So as Israel's prime minister, I didn't come here to win applause. I came here to speak the truth. The truth is -- the truth is that Israel wants peace. The truth is that I want peace. The truth is that in the Middle East at all times, but especially during these turbulent days, peace must be anchored in security. The truth is that we cannot achieve peace through U.N. resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties. The truth is that so far the Palestinians have refused to negotiate. The truth is that Israel wants peace with a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want a state without peace. And the truth is you shouldn't let that happen.
Ladies and gentlemen, when I first came here 27 years ago, the world was divided between East and West. Since then the Cold War ended, great civilizations have risen from centuries of slumber, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty, countless more are poised to follow, and the remarkable thing is that so far this monumental historic shift has largely occurred peacefully. Yet a malignancy is now growing between East and West that threatens the peace of all. It seeks not to liberate, but to enslave, not to build, but to destroy.
That malignancy is militant Islam. It cloaks itself in the mantle of a great faith, yet it murders Jews, Christians and Muslims alike with unforgiving impartiality. On September 11th it killed thousands of Americans, and it left the twin towers in smoldering ruins. Last night I laid a wreath on the 9/11 memorial. It was deeply moving. But as I was going there, one thing echoed in my mind: the outrageous words of the president of Iran on this podium yesterday. He implied that 9/11 was an American conspiracy. Some of you left this hall. All of you should have.
Since 9/11, militant Islamists slaughtered countless other innocents -- in London and Madrid, in Baghdad and Mumbai, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in every part of Israel. I believe that the greatest danger facing our world is that this fanaticism will arm itself with nuclear weapons. And this is precisely what Iran is trying to do.
Can you imagine that man who ranted here yesterday -- can you imagine him armed with nuclear weapons? The international community must stop Iran before it's too late. If Iran is not stopped, we will all face the specter of nuclear terrorism, and the Arab Spring could soon become an Iranian winter. That would be a tragedy. Millions of Arabs have taken to the streets to replace tyranny with liberty, and no one would benefit more than Israel if those committed to freedom and peace would prevail.
This is my fervent hope. But as the prime minister of Israel, I cannot risk the future of the Jewish state on wishful thinking. Leaders must see reality as it is, not as it ought to be. We must do our best to shape the future, but we cannot wish away the dangers of the present.
And the world around Israel is definitely becoming more dangerous. Militant Islam has already taken over Lebanon and Gaza. It's determined to tear apart the peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and between Israel and Jordan. It's poisoned many Arab minds against Jews and Israel, against America and the West. It opposes not the policies of Israel but the existence of Israel.
Now, some argue that the spread of militant Islam, especially in these turbulent times -- if you want to slow it down, they argue, Israel must hurry to make concessions, to make territorial compromises. And this theory sounds simple. Basically it goes like this: Leave the territory, and peace will be advanced. The moderates will be strengthened, the radicals will be kept at bay. And don't worry about the pesky details of how Israel will actually defend itself; international troops will do the job.
These people say to me constantly: Just make a sweeping offer, and everything will work out. You know, there's only one problem with that theory. We've tried it and it hasn't worked. In 2000 Israel made a sweeping peace offer that met virtually all of the Palestinian demands. Arafat rejected it. The Palestinians then launched a terror attack that claimed a thousand Israeli lives.
Prime Minister Olmert afterwards made an even more sweeping offer, in 2008. President Abbas didn't even respond to it.
But Israel did more than just make sweeping offers. We actually left territory. We withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 and from every square inch of Gaza in 2005. That didn't calm the Islamic storm, the militant Islamic storm that threatens us. It only brought the storm closer and make it stronger.
Hezbollah and Hamas fired thousands of rockets against our cities from the very territories we vacated. See, when Israel left Lebanon and Gaza, the moderates didn't defeat the radicals, the moderates were devoured by the radicals. And I regret to say that international troops like UNIFIL in Lebanon and UBAM (ph) in Gaza didn't stop the radicals from attacking Israel.
We left Gaza hoping for peace.
We didn't freeze the settlements in Gaza, we uprooted them. We did exactly what the theory says: Get out, go back to the 1967 borders, dismantle the settlements.
And I don't think people remember how far we went to achieve this. We uprooted thousands of people from their homes. We pulled children out of -- out of their schools and their kindergartens. We bulldozed synagogues. We even -- we even moved loved ones from their graves. And then, having done all that, we gave the keys of Gaza to President Abbas.
Now the theory says it should all work out, and President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority now could build a peaceful state in Gaza. You can remember that the entire world applauded. They applauded our withdrawal as an act of great statesmanship. It was a bold act of peace.
But ladies and gentlemen, we didn't get peace. We got war. We got Iran, which through its proxy Hamas promptly kicked out the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority collapsed in a day -- in one day.
President Abbas just said on this podium that the Palestinians are armed only with their hopes and dreams. Yeah, hopes, dreams and 10,000 missiles and Grad rockets supplied by Iran, not to mention the river of lethal weapons now flowing into Gaza from the Sinai, from Libya, and from elsewhere.
Thousands of missiles have already rained down on our cities. So you might understand that, given all this, Israelis rightly ask: What's to prevent this from happening again in the West Bank? See, most of our major cities in the south of the country are within a few dozen kilometers from Gaza. But in the center of the country, opposite the West Bank, our cities are a few hundred meters or at most a few kilometers away from the edge of the West Bank.
So I want to ask you. Would any of you -- would any of you bring danger so close to your cities, to your families? Would you act so recklessly with the lives of your citizens? Israel is prepared to have a Palestinian state in the West Bank, but we're not prepared to have another Gaza there. And that's why we need to have real security arrangements, which the Palestinians simply refuse to negotiate with us.
Israelis remember the bitter lessons of Gaza. Many of Israel's critics ignore them. They irresponsibly advise Israel to go down this same perilous path again. Your read what these people say and it's as if nothing happened -- just repeating the same advice, the same formulas as though none of this happened.
And these critics continue to press Israel to make far-reaching concessions without first assuring Israel's security. They praise those who unwittingly feed the insatiable crocodile of militant Islam as bold statesmen. They cast as enemies of peace those of us who insist that we must first erect a sturdy barrier to keep the crocodile out, or at the very least jam an iron bar between its gaping jaws.
So in the face of the labels and the libels, Israel must heed better advice. Better a bad press than a good eulogy, and better still would be a fair press whose sense of history extends beyond breakfast, and which recognizes Israel's legitimate security concerns.
I believe that in serious peace negotiations, these needs and concerns can be properly addressed, but they will not be addressed without negotiations. And the needs are many, because Israel is such a tiny country. Without Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, Israel is all of 9 miles wide.
I want to put it for you in perspective, because you're all in the city. That's about two-thirds the length of Manhattan. It's the distance between Battery Park and Columbia University. And don't forget that the people who live in Brooklyn and New Jersey are considerably nicer than some of Israel's neighbors.
So how do you -- how do you protect such a tiny country, surrounded by people sworn to its destruction and armed to the teeth by Iran? Obviously you can't defend it from within that narrow space alone. Israel needs greater strategic depth, and that's exactly why Security Council Resolution 242 didn't require Israel to leave all the territories it captured in the Six-Day War. It talked about withdrawal from territories, to secure and defensible boundaries. And to defend itself, Israel must therefore maintain a long-term Israeli military presence in critical strategic areas in the West Bank.
I explained this to President Abbas. He answered that if a Palestinian state was to be a sovereign country, it could never accept such arrangements. Why not? America has had troops in Japan, Germany and South Korea for more than a half a century. Britain has had an airspace in Cyprus or rather an air base in Cyprus. France has forces in three independent African nations. None of these states claim that they're not sovereign countries.
And there are many other vital security issues that also must be addressed. Take the issue of airspace. Again, Israel's small dimensions create huge security problems. America can be crossed by jet airplane in six hours. To fly across Israel, it takes three minutes. So is Israel's tiny airspace to be chopped in half and given to a Palestinian state not at peace with Israel?
Our major international airport is a few kilometers away from the West Bank. Without peace, will our planes become targets for antiaircraft missiles placed in the adjacent Palestinian state? And how will we stop the smuggling into the West Bank? It's not merely the West Bank, it's the West Bank mountains. It just dominates the coastal plain where most of Israel's population sits below. How could we prevent the smuggling into these mountains of those missiles that could be fired on our cities?
I bring up these problems because they're not theoretical problems. They're very real. And for Israelis, they're life-and- death matters. All these potential cracks in Israel's security have to be sealed in a peace agreement before a Palestinian state is declared, not afterwards, because if you leave it afterwards, they won't be sealed. And these problems will explode in our face and explode the peace.
The Palestinians should first make peace with Israel and then get their state. But I also want to tell you this. After such a peace agreement is signed, Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. We will be the first.
And there's one more thing. Hamas has been violating international law by holding our soldier Gilad Shalit captive for five years.
They haven't given even one Red Cross visit. He's held in a dungeon, in darkness, against all international norms. Gilad Shalit is the son of Aviva and Noam Shalit. He is the grandson of Zvi Shalit, who escaped the Holocaust by coming to the -- in the 1930s as a boy to the land of Israel. Gilad Shalit is the son of every Israeli family. Every nation represented here should demand his immediate release. If you want to -- if you want to pass a resolution about the Middle East today, that's the resolution you should pass.
Ladies and gentlemen, last year in Israel in Bar-Ilan University, this year in the Knesset and in the U.S. Congress, I laid out my vision for peace in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state. Yes, the Jewish state. After all, this is the body that recognized the Jewish state 64 years ago. Now, don't you think it's about time that Palestinians did the same?
The Jewish state of Israel will always protect the rights of all its minorities, including the more than 1 million Arab citizens of Israel. I wish I could say the same thing about a future Palestinian state, for as Palestinian officials made clear the other day -- in fact, I think they made it right here in New York -- they said the Palestinian state won't allow any Jews in it. They'll be Jew-free -- Judenrein. That's ethnic cleansing. There are laws today in Ramallah that make the selling of land to Jews punishable by death. That's racism. And you know which laws this evokes.
Israel has no intention whatsoever to change the democratic character of our state. We just don't want the Palestinians to try to change the Jewish character of our state. (Applause.) We want to give up -- we want them to give up the fantasy of flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians.
President Abbas just stood here, and he said that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the settlements. Well, that's odd. Our conflict has been raging for -- was raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West Bank. So if what President Abbas is saying was true, then the -- I guess that the settlements he's talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be'er Sheva. Maybe that's what he meant the other day when he said that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for 63 years. He didn't say from 1967; he said from 1948. I hope somebody will bother to ask him this question because it illustrates a simple truth: The core of the conflict is not the settlements. The settlements are a result of the conflict. (Applause.)
The settlements have to be -- it's an issue that has to be addressed and resolved in the course of negotiations. But the core of the conflict has always been and unfortunately remains the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state in any border.
I think it's time that the Palestinian leadership recognizes what every serious international leader has recognized, from Lord Balfour and Lloyd George in 1917, to President Truman in 1948, to President Obama just two days ago right here: Israel is the Jewish state.
President Abbas, stop walking around this issue. Recognize the Jewish state, and make peace with us. In such a genuine peace, Israel is prepared to make painful compromises. We believe that the Palestinians should be neither the citizens of Israel nor its subjects. They should live in a free state of their own. But they should be ready, like us, for compromise. And we will know that they're ready for compromise and for peace when they start taking Israel's security requirements seriously and when they stop denying our historical connection to our ancient homeland.
I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That's like accusing America of Americanizing Washington, or the British of Anglicizing London. You know why we're called "Jews"? Because we come from Judea.
In my office in Jerusalem, there's a -- there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. That's my last name. My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin -- Binyamin -- the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Sumeria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.
And for those Jews who were exiled from our land, they never stopped dreaming of coming back: Jews in Spain, on the eve of their expulsion; Jews in the Ukraine, fleeing the pogroms; Jews fighting the Warsaw Ghetto, as the Nazis were circling around it. They never stopped praying, they never stopped yearning. They whispered: Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in the promised land.
As the prime minister of Israel, I speak for a hundred generations of Jews who were dispersed throughout the lands, who suffered every evil under the Sun, but who never gave up hope of restoring their national life in the one and only Jewish state.
Ladies and gentlemen, I continue to hope that President Abbas will be my partner in peace. I've worked hard to advance that peace. The day I came into office, I called for direct negotiations without preconditions. President Abbas didn't respond. I outlined a vision of peace of two states for two peoples. He still didn't respond. I removed hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints, to ease freedom of movement in the Palestinian areas; this facilitated a fantastic growth in the Palestinian economy. But again -- no response. I took the unprecedented step of freezing new buildings in the settlements for 10 months. No prime minister did that before, ever. Once again -- you applaud, but there was no response. No response.
In the last few weeks, American officials have put forward ideas to restart peace talks. There were things in those ideas about borders that I didn't like. There were things there about the Jewish state that I'm sure the Palestinians didn't like.
But with all my reservations, I was willing to move forward on these American ideas.
President Abbas, why don't you join me? We have to stop negotiating about the negotiations. Let's just get on with it. Let's negotiate peace.
I spent years defending Israel on the battlefield. I spent decades defending Israel in the court of public opinion. President Abbas, you've dedicated your life to advancing the Palestinian cause. Must this conflict continue for generations, or will we enable our children and our grandchildren to speak in years ahead of how we found a way to end it? That's what we should aim for, and that's what I believe we can achieve.
In two and a half years, we met in Jerusalem only once, even though my door has always been open to you. If you wish, I'll come to Ramallah. Actually, I have a better suggestion. We've both just flown thousands of miles to New York. Now we're in the same city. We're in the same building. So let's meet here today in the United Nations. Who's there to stop us? What is there to stop us? If we genuinely want peace, what is there to stop us from meeting today and beginning peace negotiations?
And I suggest we talk openly and honestly. Let's listen to one another. Let's do as we say in the Middle East: Let's talk "doogli" (ph). That means straightforward. I'll tell you my needs and concerns. You'll tell me yours. And with God's help, we'll find the common ground of peace.
There's an old Arab saying that you cannot applaud with one hand. Well, the same is true of peace. I cannot make peace alone. I cannot make peace without you. President Abbas, I extend my hand -- the hand of Israel -- in peace. I hope that you will grasp that hand. We are both the sons of Abraham. My people call him Avraham. Your people call him Ibrahim. We share the same patriarch. We dwell in the same land. Our destinies are intertwined. Let us realize the vision of Isaiah -- (speaks in Hebrew) -- "The people who walk in darkness will see a great light." Let that light be the light of peace.
We entered those negotiations [in 2010] with
open hearts and attentive ears and sincere intentions, and we were ready with our documents,
papers and proposals. But the negotiations broke down just weeks after their launch.
They entered them kicking and screaming after 9 months of a 10-month settlement freeze.
After this, we did not give up and did not cease our efforts for initiatives and contacts.
Over the past year we did not leave a door to be knocked or channel to be tested or path to be
taken and we did not ignore any formal or informal party of influence and stature to be
addressed.
Except for Israel.
The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference
for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it
frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine
The settlements have no expanded in years. The core issue is that Abbas refuses to compromise - on borders, on Jerusalem, on "refugees." And he bragged about his intransigence, in Arabic, less than two months after he broke off the talks.
Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the
land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination
against our people that this policy entails. This policy, which constitutes a breach of
international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions, is the primary cause for the
failure of the peace process, the collapse of dozens of opportunities, and the burial of the great
hopes that arose from the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993 between the Palestine
Liberation Organization and Israel to achieve a just peace that would begin a new era for our
region.
Guess what? If the PLO would have accepted the peace proposal in 2000, there would have been no more new "settlers" on "Palestine"! Imagine that!
Also, as Abbas knows, Israel signed no agreement to limit settlement activity. Nothing in Oslo mandated that.
The occupying Power also continues to undertake excavations that
threaten our holy places, and its military checkpoints prevent our citizens from getting access to
their mosques and churches, and it continues to besiege the Holy City with a ring of settlements
imposed to separate the Holy City from the rest of the Palestinian cities.
So Abbas is saying that Jews have no rights to Jerusalem. Nice.
As he also well knows, Jerusalem was not meant to be part of the Arab state in the 1947 partition plan, but rather an international city. He is using Jordan's illegal occupation as a legal basis for his own claim to the city. Yet Israel's annexation is, to him, illegal.
The occupation is racing against time to redraw the borders on our land according to what
it wants and to impose a fait accompli on the ground that changes the realities and that is
undermining the realistic potential for the existence of the State of Palestine
Define "realistic." They never have. They just insist on "1967" borders and Jerusalem. But exactly why can a Palestinian Arab state be on less land then that and still be "realistic"? It is mere assertion, the repeated mantra of "1967 border plus Jerusalem" that make people believe it - but there is not a shred of truth in that statement.
In recent years, the criminal
actions of armed settler militias, who enjoy the special protection of the occupation army, has
intensified with the perpetration of frequent attacks against our people, targeting their homes,
schools, universities, mosques, fields, crops and trees. Despite our repeated warnings, the
occupying Power has not acted to curb these attacks and we hold them fully responsible for the
crimes of the settlers.
I know of lots of Jews in Judea and Samaria who have been killed by Palestinian Arabs in recent years. I am not aware of any Arabs killed by settlers in the same timeframe. By Abbas' logic, he is responsible for the deaths of the Fogels and others.
These are just a few examples of the policy of the Israeli colonial settlement occupation,
and this policy is responsible for the continued failure of the successive international attempts to
salvage the peace process.
He likes to use the word "colonial" - which is just another lie. Israel's interest in territory isn't colonialist; it is a recognition of the historic Jewish national home.
In addition, we now face the imposition new conditions not previously raised, conditions
that will transform the raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict and a threat
to the future of a million and a half Christian and Muslim Palestinians, citizens of Israel, a matter
which we reject and which is impossible for us to accept being dragged into.
Abbas is claiming that by calling Israel a Jewish state it will turn the war into a religious war - yet his own constitution says that "Islam is the official religion in Palestine."!
And of course, Jews are a nation, not just a religion - but that is something that Abbas will never, ever admit.
In 1974, our deceased leader Yasser Arafat came to this hall and assured the Members of
the General Assembly of our affinnative pursuit for peace, urging the United Nations to realize
the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people, stating: "Do not let the olive branch fall
from my hand."
And he was responsible for the deaths of countless people even after he made that statement. Yet Abbas considers him a hero.
When we adopted this program, we were taking a painful and very difficult step for all of
us, especially those, including myself, who were forced to leave their homes and their towns and
villages...
The 1948 AI-Nakba [was] one of the worst
operations of uprooting, destruction and removal of a vibrant and cohesive society that had been
3 contributing in a pioneering and leading way m the cultural, educational and economic
renaissance of the Arab Middle East.
Essentially all of the economic strides made by Arabs in Palestine before 1948 came because of the Jews. It was the booming economy that the Jews created that prompted at least 200,000 Arabs from other countries to emigrate to Palestine in the decades before 1948. Those people are all now knows as "Palestinians" - and many of them are desperately trying to prove they are really Lebanese or Egyptian in order to gain citizenship and stop being pawns from people like Abbas.
Thus, we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical
Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.
No such thing as "historical Palestine" that coincides with the British Mandate - and this is proof that there is no real "Palestinian" history.
The occupying Power also continues to refuse
permits for our people to build in Occupied East Jerusalem, at the same time that i t intensifies its
decades-long campaign of demolition and confiscation of homes, displacing Palestinian owners
and residents under a multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at pushing them away from
their ancestral homeland.
See here."The Arab population of Jerusalem quadrupled between1967 (when Israel annexed East Jerusalem) and 2008, from 68,600 to 268,600, while the city’s Jewish population rose by a factor of 2.5. Consequently, Arabs now constitute 35 percent of Jerusalem’s population, up from 26 percent in 1967. Since ethnic cleansing is normally meant to reduce the target population, if Israel were actually attempting such cleansing, it is surely the most incompetent ethnic cleanser in human history." (h/t CHA)
I confirm, on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people, which will remain so until the end of the conflict in all
its aspects and until the resolution of all final status issues...
He is trying to have his cake and eat it too...to say that even after a state is declared, it would be subservient to the PLO - which he conveniently runs. So when it helps his cause to pretend to be a state, he will, when it hurts his cause legally (especially with "refugees") he reverts to the PLO.
What kind of state is run by an organization?
...a just
and agreed upon solution to the Palestine refugee issue in accordance with resolution 194
The PLO and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and
condemning of terrorism in all its forms, especially State terrorism, and adhere to all agreements
signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.
But at the exact same time, they want to be "unified" with Hamas - which rejects those conditions explicitly and repeatedly. Not a word about Hamas in the entire speech. Yet they are supposedly his "partners".
Our people will continue their popular peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation and its
settlement and apartheid policies and its construction of the racist annexation Wall.
His definition of "peaceful resistance" includes Molotov cocktails, high-velocity slings and dropping boulders from the Temple Mount onto worshippers at the Kotel.
...the strength of this defenseless
people, armed only with their dreams, courage, hope and slogans in the face of bullets, tanks,
tear gas and bulldozers.
Now, why didn't he mention Kalashnikovs, suicide bomb belts, Grad rockets or laser-guided anti-tank missiles that are aimed at school buses?
Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or de-legitimizing it; rather we want
to gain legitimacy for the cause of the people of Palestine. We only aim to de-legitimize the
settlement activities...
Only two weeks ago Abbas said "we have been under occupation for 63 years." Which is before 1967. So how is that not delegitimizing Israel?
I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine
messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus
Christ (peace be upon him), to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people in the homeland and in
6 the Diaspora, to say, after 63 years of suffering of an ongoing Nakba: Enough.
He cannot even bring himself to admit that Jewish people find the land he demands is holy to them, too. Only Muslims and Christians, not the People who came before them.
As far as 63 years of suffering, let's quote Abbas from 2009, when he told the Washington Post that he is not interested in negotiating and is happy to allow Obama to pressure Israel:
He says he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life."
And this is Abbas in a nutshell. Not willing to make any hard decision, instead he tries to set up situations where others will do what he wants without him losing anything. That was his strategy with Obama in 2009 and that is what he is doing at the UN today.
A Hizbullah member escaped to Israel last June after the Shiite party’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah unveiled that the group had captured three spies among its members, two of whom were allegedly recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, An Nahar daily reported Friday.
Nasrallah said at the time that CIA members at the U.S. embassy had recruited at least two Hizbullah members and the group was investigating whether the intelligence agency or another foreign agency recruited a third.
On Thursday, Hizbullah denied media reports about the arrest of new members on charges of spying for the Mossad and said a man named Abou Abed Salim has never been a party official.
But An Nahar quoted informed sources as saying that the third member of the spying network that Nasrallah had talked about is Salim who escaped to Israel a few days after the Hizbullah leader’s speech.
Media reports said Thursday that five Hizbullah members had escaped to the Jewish state.
An Nahar’s report came as informed sources told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat that Hizbullah had arrested four of its members on charges of spying while a fifth had escaped.
Other sources said that a top Hizbullah official had gone missing “for allegedly collaborating with the Mossad.”
The man who was identified by his initials as M.S. was allegedly a top official in Hizbullah’s military operations and was questioned in April 2010 by the U.N. commission investigating ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination.
The sources said the man’s parents and wife don’t know his whereabouts since he disappeared from the family home in the Ghobeiri district of Beirut’s southern suburbs.
According to rumors, the man is an Israeli spy and was involved in the assassination of Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh. Other rumors say that the party distanced him for unknown reasons.
More rumors than facts, but if Hezbollah believes that it cannot trust its own people, that can only be a good thing.
12.22pm: Unconfirmed reports are coming in that Israeli police have begun fining Palestinian drivers for flying flags from their cars. The Ma'an news agency is saying that Israeli police placed a checkpoint in the north of the West Bank and imposed fines of $40 for small flags and $68 for large ones.
The Palestinian Authority media centre issued a statement saying:
It is reported that the Israeli authorities are imposing fines on Palestinians for flying flags on their cars in support of our campaign at the United Nations. It is not a crime to show pride in your country, nor to support the cause of freedom, with symbols that do no harm. Israel seems incapable of understanding the idea of peaceful protest at its illegal occupation.
They found the original story at WAFA, quoting an unnamed "security source." Read the whole thing.
CiFWatch concludes:
It seems as if the sole “source” of the Guardian allegation against Israel was the claim of one official from the PA -controlled Palestinian security service, as relayed to the PA-controlled media.
Moreover, anyone not blinded by ideologically inspired antipathy towards Israel would immediately be skeptical of such a rumor, as it flies in the face of the most rudimentary understanding of the rights of free expression in the Jewish state – which explains, of course, why it was published in the Guardian.
The story is indeed absurd, and the desire by the anti-Israel crowd to automatically accept any crazy story that demonizes the Jewish state is bottomless.
The world's first colloquium in the Arab world for the study of the Holocaust took place this week, in large measure thanks to the groundwork laid by a program that seeks to educate American high school graduates about the history of cooperation between Jews and the other nations. The symposium, hosted by Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco and co-sponsored by the Israel gap-year program Kivunim, included three days of presentations and panels on the Nazi genocide, its repercussions for Morocco, and the historical relationships between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East.
The only Holocaust conference held in the Muslim world prior to this took place in Tehran, Iran in December 2006, and was widely denounced by Jewish leaders as an attempt not to gain a greater understand of those events, but to cast doubt on their ever having taken place. The groundbreaking Ifrane conference received the support of local Jewish community leaders and was attended by mainstream historians of the Holocaust, coexistence facilitators, government representatives - including the American Ambassador and emissaries of the Moroccan king - and ordinary Moroccan Muslims and Jews.
The conference was originally the idea of a group of Muslim students at Al-Akhawayn University in the Atlas Mountains, who formed a "Mimouna Club" -- named for the post-Passover holiday of Jewish-Arab fraternity. The club shared their idea with students from the Kivunim program that they had met who were visiting the country to learn about Moroccan Jewish history. Kivunim Founding Director Peter Geffen, who accompanied the group, realized the historic importance of such an opportunity and agreed to help organize the event, bringing some of those same Kivunim students back to Morocco this week to attend the conference.
During World War Two, when Morocco was occupied by the French, who were in turn occupied by the Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis, Moroccan King Mohammed V is said to have protected the Jews living in his domain from suffering the fate that befell the Jews of Europe. On March 18, 2009, his grandson, the ruling monarch Mohammed VI, honored that tradition of inter-religious solidarity when he publicly proclaimed that he and the Moroccan people perceive the Shoah "as a wound to the collective memory, which we know is engraved in one of the most painful chapters in the collective history of mankind."
I don't see anything about the Holocaust conference specifically on the website of the school. All I can find is that over the same three day period the Mimouna Club is celebrating "Jewish Days" where there are lectures, debates, visits to museums and kosher meals in Ifrane and Casablanca. The word "Holocaust" isn't mentioned in their program, but it must be the same one that Ha'aretz is reporting on.
Which means that this is not exactly a public conference on the Holocaust.
Sunday, Aug. 21, was a tough day for the communities on the Gaza periphery. Sirens sounded in Ashkelon and Beersheba as well. Grad and Qassam rockets left destruction and traumatized people in their wake, and residents were told to remain in protected areas. While most of the media attention was directed southward, at the same time, police and soldiers in Jerusalem were in a race against time, trying to capture Qawasmeh, 20, a would-be suicide terrorist from Hebron who, according to intelligence, was on his way to Pisgat Zeev.
The bomb that Qawasmeh was supposed to use had been captured 24 hours earlier. It comprised a sprinkler filled with 6 kilograms of explosives, with ball bearings glued around it. Azhak Arrafa, a resident of east Jerusalem who was supposed to transport Qawasme to his destination, was the one who led the police officers and the security services to the bomb, which had been hidden near his home in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood.
Security officials did not know whether Qawasme was carrying additional explosives on his person. A nerve-wracking 24 hours passed. It seemed that the earth had swallowed Qawasmeh. In the end, one long-time detective guessed that Qawasme was hiding inside a mosque, perhaps even the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. He based his guess on past experience: Over the years, there had been several incidents in which mosques in general, and the mosques on the Temple Mount in particular, have served as hideouts in which terrorists who had perpetrated attacks, or were about to carry them out, met, organized or hid.
The last connection to the Temple Mount that the detective remembered had to do with two terrorists who had allegedly planned to fire a rocket at Teddy Stadium during a Betar Jerusalem game. (One of them has since been tried and convicted, and the other’s trial is still in progress.} According to the Shin Bet, the two men served as Hamas’ representatives on the Temple Mount and were employed there at high salaries for three years. In Qawasmeh’s case, the shot in the dark proved accurate. He was indeed hiding on the Temple Mount and even stayed there overnight. He was captured the next morning near the Al-Aqsa Mosque thanks to intelligence that came from the Temple Mount.
How dare the Israelis enter such a holy spot - to stop a man from his holy mission? It is simply islamophobic.
Security forces are currently investigating the possible involvement of two well-known politicians in instigating the recent attack on the Israeli Embassy and the events that accompanied it, said a security source on Thursday.
The source pointed out that surveillance cameras located in the embassy building and photographic evidence collected by security forces from regular citizens had prompted their suspicions.
The source explained that investigations indicated the involvement of the two politicians, one of whom was involved in inciting and angering the protesters, while the other gave money to some of the defendants. He added that the evidence included “15-minutes of video footage, which includes a full account of the Israeli Embassy events”.
“The defendants' are close in age but live in different districts,” said the source. “The defendants confessed that two politicians were are among the masterminds behind the events, which included the Giza Security Directorate, two police stations at Cairo University, and a Nahda Square Traffic Department, in addition to the embassy."
The traffic authorities are looking for three cars that were in the vicinity of the Israeli Embassy whose drivers the defendants claimed “were handing out money to them”.
Al Ahram last week reported that an Egyptian millionaire was paying the core group of protesters; it is not clear if he is one of the people mentioned.
Meanwhile, there are reports that Egyptian youth are organizing a similar attack against the US embassy in Cairo if the US vetoes the PLO statehood bid.
Palestine Press Agency reports on a speech that Mahmoud Abbas gave last night to 200 representatives of American Arabs of Palestinian descent in New York.
In the name of God the Merciful, and with appreciation for the brothers and sisters here, each seeking the truth and to advocate for the free State of Palestine, God willing, I am with you to say, God willing, we will have the state of Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem.
My brothers, in a few hours I will head to the United Nations, but I have come to tell you something important. We are under huge pressure to change our decision to claim the recognition of the State of Palestine, but I tell you I am going to the Security Council and will never retract whatever the pressures. [applause]
We're going to implement the decision of the Palestinian leadership whatever the pressures and, of course, the U.S. administration has done all it can to pressure us not to go, but we continue to go no matter what the pressures and obstacles they put in us by our decision.
We are the only people who remained under occupation on this earth and I think that no one can bear more than we endured....
...I assure you that the negotiations with Israel has not achieved any progress at all, despite the fact that Israel and America, the Quartet and all brokers ask us to go back to negotiations, but we tell them again we will not [negotiate] without Netanyahu declaring his recognition of the State of Palestine on the borders of 1067 and his announcement and implementation of a settlement freeze.
Talking about the Jewish state, I tell them a final answer: We will not recognize the Jewish state .... [long applause]
They talk about many other issues they want to negotiate with us around for several more years, and I say we will not go back to the negotiations in this way; we will only accept that Palestine be free of settlers and soldiers and by the occupation, and it is better for Israel to get out of the agreement with us [than accept any Israeli Jews in the territories]. This is what we have said for all, this is our opinion and we will not give in at all.
Sarkozy made a proposal, and I'll tell you my response: I am the President and am not authorized to examine any suggestions other than the decision of the State of Palestine at the United Nations. If there are any other suggestions, then I am to go back to the Palestinian leadership, and study it first, I have here with a clear task to have the State of Palestine become a full member [of the UN.] As for any other suggestions, I say: I am not authorized, I am not authorized to accept them. I am only authorized to drive one thing, the State of Palestine becoming a full member at the United Nations.
That last part is very disingenuous - he did not seek approval from other Palestinian Arab leaders to do the UN stunt to begin with, only a close set of Fatah cronies.
Abbas has always used this gambit of saying that he must consult with others - often the Arab League - when he doesn't want to do something, but when he wants something done he does it without any consultations.
This way he can claim helplessness when it is to his advantage and then he can act like a ruthless dictator the rest of the time.
Even more ironic, Abbas accused Netanyahu of "acting like a child hiding behind his father" in the run up to the UN stunt.
While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters, Newsweek has learned.
In an exclusive story to be published Monday on growing military cooperation between the two allies, U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just several months after Obama took office.
The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying political relations between the two countries in public.
The Israelis first requested the bunker busters in 2005, only to be rebuffed by the Bush administration. At the time, the Pentagon had frozen almost all U.S.-Israeli joint defense projects out of concern that Israel was transferring advanced military technology to China.
In 2007, Bush informed Ehud Olmert, then prime minister, that he would order the bunker busters for delivery in 2009 or 2010. The Israelis wanted them in 2007. Obama finally released the weapons in 2009, according to officials familiar with the still-secret decision.
U.S. and Israeli officials told Newsweek that Israel had developed its own bunker-buster technology between 2005 and 2009, but the purchase from the U.S. was cheaper.
While the Obama administration has touted some public cooperation with the Israeli military, Newsweek’s article Monday will reveal other covert efforts by the U.S. military to aid Israel in the volatile Middle East region, and the impact the improving military cooperation has had on the sometimes chilly relations between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the president’s popularity in the American Jewish community.
The leak must be intentional.
The story is quite believable. US military cooperation with Israel has remained high even as diplomatic relations appeared strained. It also makes sense that this is why Netanyahu would have agreed to a settlement freeze to begin with.
According to a Wikileaks cable, the transfer of the GBU-28s were described as "upcoming" in November 2009. The freeze started in December 2009.
However, it looks like the Bush administration did send GBU-28s to Israel during the Lebanon war and even beforehand.
Who's to blame for the continued failure of the Middle East peace process? Former President Bill Clinton said today that it is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- whose government moved the goalposts upon taking power, and whose rise represents a key reason there has been no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
Clinton, in a roundtable with bloggers today on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, gave an extensive recounting of the deterioration in the Middle East peace process since he pressed both parties to agree to a final settlement at Camp David in 2000. He said there are two main reasons for the lack of a comprehensive peace today: the reluctance of the Netanyahu administration to accept the terms of the Camp David deal and a demographic shift in Israel that is making the Israeli public less amenable to peace.
"The two great tragedies in modern Middle Eastern politics, which make you wonder if God wants Middle East peace or not, were [Yitzhak] Rabin's assassination and [Ariel] Sharon's stroke," Clinton said.
Sharon had decided he needed to build a new centrist coalition, so he created the Kadima party and gained the support of leaders like Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert. He was working toward a consensus for a peace deal before he fell ill, Clinton said. But that effort was scuttled when the Likud party returned to power.
This is a bit of wishful thinking on Clinton's part. Sharon's goal in giving up Gaza was to help strengthen Israel's hold on the settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria,and this is why he was so keen on the letter from Bush that said that the 1967 borders are a non-starter. I do not believe that Sharon would have been nearly as generous as Barak was before him and as Olmert was afterwards.
"[Palestinian leaders] have explicitly said on more than one occasion that if [Netanyahu] put up the deal that was offered to them before -- my deal -- that they would take it," Clinton said, referring to the 2000 Camp David deal that Yasser Arafat rejected.
From all publicly available information, the Olmert offer in 2008 went even beyond the Clinton parameters, and the Palestinian Arabs kept on asking for more. So on this point I am calling BS - the PalArabs might have told Clinton this but it is not true.
But the Israeli government has drifted a long way from the Ehud Barak-led government that came so close to peace in 2000, Clinton said, and any new negotiations with the Netanyahu government are now on starkly different terms -- terms that the Palestinians are unlikely to accept.
"For reasons that even after all these years I still don't know for sure,Arafatturned down the deal I put together that Barak accepted," he said. "But they also had an Israeli government that was willing to give them East Jerusalem as the capital of the new state of Palestine."
The reason is simple, and it is the same reason that Abbas didn't accept any peace offers as well - because in the end, they want to ensure that they can continue to make more claims against Israel even after "peace." Whether it is the "right to return" or a demand for 1947 borders or whatever, there has been no desire on the Palestinian Arab side to truly end the conflict.
The Netanyahu government has received all of the assurances previous Israeli governments said they wanted but now won't accept those terms to make peace, Clinton said.
"Now that they have those things, they don't seem so important to this current Israeli government, partly because it's a different country," said Clinton. "In the interim, you've had all these immigrants coming in from the former Soviet Union, and they have no history in Israel proper, so the traditional claims of the Palestinians have less weight with them."
The Russian aliyah took place before Camp David. However, one thing is true - the Russian Jews know a thing or two about dealing with totalitarianism, and they recognize it in the Palestinian Arab leadership and their partners in Hamas. They know the tricks and the subterfuge that they experienced firsthand.
Clinton then repeated his assertions made at last year's conference that Israeli society can be divided into demographic groups that have various levels of enthusiasm for making peace.
"The most pro-peace Israelis are the Arabs; second the Sabras, the Jewish Israelis that were born there; third, the Ashkenazi of long-standing, the European Jews who came there around the time of Israel's founding," Clinton said. "The most anti-peace are the ultra-religious, who believe they're supposed to keep Judea and Samaria, and the settler groups, and what you might call the territorialists, the people who just showed up lately and they're not encumbered by the historical record."
Clinton has fallen into the lazy trap of regarding all Jewish residents of the territories as being religious Jews from Brooklyn!
Clinton affirmed that the United States should veto the Palestinian resolution at the U.N. Security Council for member-state status, because the Israelis need security guarantees before agreeing to the creation of a Palestinian state. But the Netanyahu government has moved away from the consensus for peace, making a final status agreement more difficult, Clinton said.
"That's what happened. Every American needs to know this. That's how we got to where we are," Clinton said. "The real cynics believe that the Netanyahu's government's continued call for negotiations over borders and such means that he's just not going to give up the West Bank."
Why is Israel the only state in the world who is not allowed to change its politics to the right? After all, Netanyahu and his coalition did get more votes than their opponents. That is what would be considered a mandate in any other democratic context.
Turkey can decide on a whim to shut down diplomatic relations with other countries and to start threatening them. People aren't thrilled but no one says that Turkey must always adhere to the most dovish of its previous behaviors. Nations change, populations change, opinions change. And between Camp David and today there was a little matter called an intifada, that was enthusiastically embraced by the majority of Palestinian Arab society until they started losing. That is what made Israeli society move to the right, far more than anything else. To blame Netanyahu means to blame Israel for electing him. (And he has moved his positions leftward as well since he's been elected.)
This is why the goalposts were moved - the majority of Israelis were not comfortable with the direction that Kadima was going in giving up rights of Jewish self-determination.
Clinton is not stupid, and I respect him. But this analysis smacks more of egomania and nostalgia, a refusal to admit that it was Palestinian Arab terror that pushed Israel to the right - terror that was Arafat's strategic choice instead of accepting the Camp David offer. He doesn't even mention the slight problem of a split government between Gaza and Ramallah, and the terrorists that control 40% of the population.
Clinton wants to turn back the clock and pretend that nothing has changed in the past eleven years. It would be nice, but it is fantasy.
UPDATE: read the comments - there are some very good ones.
The errors and misstatements in Clinton’s interview with bloggers are sufficient to change his reputation from that of a firm supporter of Israel into that of a firm supporter of Israelis who agree with his twisted version of the facts. Clinton simply blames the Israeli right for killing peace efforts. He appears entirely—in fact, embarrassingly— unaware of what has actually happened to the Israeli right over the last ten years, where the change has been extraordinary.
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Elder of Ziyon
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