Why there’s no peace
Amassing grievances dating back nearly a full century, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday revealed to the United Nations that the ultimate obstacle to peace with Israel is the very existence of the Jewish state. Abbas invoked the Balfour Declaration in which Great Britain in 1917 supported creation of a “national homeland for the Jewish people.” He called on England to apologize “for the catastrophes, miseries and injustices that it created.”
Speaking from the same podium where Abbas had condemned Britain as complicit in the creation of Israel three decades later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented world leaders with a truth that so many have labored so long to reject:
“This conflict has never been about the settlements or about establishing a Palestinian state. It’s always been about the existence of a Jewish state, a Jewish state in any boundary.”
Seconds later, in a hopeful sign of shifting perspectives in the United Nations, long filled with anti-Israel sentiment, Netanyahu received sustained applause when he said:
“Israel is ready, I am ready to negotiate all final status issues but one thing I will never negotiate: Our right to the one and only Jewish state.”
Then, saying that “the Palestinians are not only trapped in the past, their leaders are poisoning the future,” Netanyahu powerfully described for the delegates the climate in which Palestinian children are raised. All too realistic, his portrait was horrifying: “I want you to imagine a day in the life of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, I’ll call him Ali.
“Ali wakes up before school. He goes to practice with a soccer team named after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the murder of a busload of 37 Israelis.
“At school, Ali attends an event sponsored by the Palestinian Ministry of Education honoring Baha Alyan, who last year murdered three Israeli civilians.
“On his walk home, Ali looks up at a towering statue erected just a few weeks ago by the Palestinian Authority to honor Abu Sukar, who detonated a bomb in the center of Jerusalem, killing 15 Israelis.
“When Ali gets home, he turns on the TV and sees an interview with a senior Palestinian official, Jibril Rajoub, who says that if he had a nuclear bomb, he’d detonate it over Israel that very day.
“Ali then turns on the radio and he hears President Abbas’ adviser, Sultan Abu al-Einein, urging Palestinians, here’s a quote, ‘to slit the throats of Israelis wherever you find them.’
“Ali checks his Facebook and he sees a recent post by President Abbas’ Fatah Party calling the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics a ‘heroic act.’ On YouTube, Ali watches a clip of President Abbas himself saying, ‘We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.’
“Over dinner, Ali asks his mother what would happen if he killed a Jew and went to an Israeli prison? Here’s what she tells him: She tells him he’d be paid thousands of dollars each month by the Palestinian Authority.
“In fact, she tells him, the more Jews he would kill, the more money he’d get. Oh, and when he gets out of prison, Ali would be guaranteed a job with the Palestinian Authority.”
Netanyahu finished by saying: “This is child abuse.”
It is also the perpetuation of a culture founded on the eradication of Israel.