The “Al-Aksa Is in Danger” Libel: The History of a Lie

The modern blood libel “Al-Aksa is in danger,” referring to the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, originated in the days of Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, ally of Hitler, and is propagated today by Sheikh Raed Salah, Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, and many others in the Muslim world. Now that it has come to be regarded as unalloyed truth by millions in the Muslim world, it is urgent to address this lie.

Nadav Shragai, a journalist and commentator at the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz for more than 25 years (1983-2009), has devoted this fascinating book to refuting the lie, drawing its portrait, and shedding light on its origins, purposes, and manifestations.

Israeli Jews, a besieged minority in the Middle East, need reassurance that Palestinian statehood won’t threaten their national existence. The real obstacle to Palestinian statehood

As the Palestinians press for recognition of statehood at the United Nations, Israelis fear that their own national legitimacy is under growing assault. When Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas recently addressed the General Assembly, he blamed the origins of the conflict and the absence of peace entirely on Israel, and noted the attachment of Christians and Muslims to the Holy Land but omitted the Jews. He received a standing ovation.
In the current atmosphere, the Israeli demand that Palestinians recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state has assumed a new urgency. On the face of it, that expectation should hardly pose a dilemma for Palestinian leaders committed to peace. A two-state solution, after all, means that each state has the right to define itself by its majority culture.
Yet Mr. Abbas, along with other Palestinian leaders, insists he will never accept a Jewish state. In opposing the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, Palestinian leaders have exposed the real obstacle to Middle East peace: not the creation of a Palestinian state, which most Israelis support, but the existence of a Jewish state, which most Palestinians reject.
The root of Palestinian rejectionism is the perception – widespread in the Arab world – that the Jews are not a nation at all but a religion. After all, many Arabs argue, the Jews lived for centuries as a religious minority under Islamic rule. Only in the 20th century did they reinvent themselves as a nation.
In fact, the Jews perceived their exile as a temporary aberration, and never stopped dreaming of renewed sovereignty in their homeland. Since ancient times, Jews have identified themselves as a people practising a particular faith. The centrality of peoplehood in Judaism even allows the seeming anomaly of Jewish atheists, so long as they identify with Jewish history and values.
The Arab world’s insistence on defining the Jews out of their own national identity isn’t only insulting: It prolongs the conflict by encouraging rejection of Israel’s legitimacy.
If the Jews have contrived their national identity, what, then, is the meaning of their history and attachment to their homeland? The Palestinian solution is to turn Jewish history, too, into a lie. Palestinian media routinely dismiss the Jewish narrative: There was no ancient Jewish presence in the land of Israel, there was no temple on the Temple Mount, and the Holocaust has been exaggerated or entirely invented.
The denial of Jewish history and identity – widespread in the Arab world – is ultimately the greatest threat to peace. Settlements can be dismantled, as Israel proved during its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. But an insidious educational process of delegitimizing the other can’t so easily be uprooted.
Palestinian leaders argue that accepting Israel as a Jewish state would mean jeopardizing the status of the country’s Arab minority. In fact, there is no conceptual contradiction between Israel as a Jewish state and as a democracy – the two essential elements of its identity as defined by its Declaration of Independence.
Still, Israeli Jews need to take that Palestinian challenge seriously. The ongoing Middle East conflict, and Jewish fears of Arab disloyalty, impedes efforts to achieve Arab equality in the Jewish state. The Jewish majority must do far more to reassure Arabs that they can play a full role in Israeli society.
One way of reassuring Arabs that “Jewish state” is not a code word for their exclusion is to adopt the formula suggested at the UN by Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez – to recognize Israel as “the homeland of the Jewish people.” The state created by the Jews in their homeland should be equally responsible for all of its citizens, Jews and non-Jews, even while maintaining intimate connections with Diaspora Jews.
But Israeli Jews, a besieged minority in the Middle East, also need reassurance – that Palestinian statehood won’t threaten their national existence.
Israeli Jews see Palestinian rejection of their legitimacy as proof that Palestinian leaders have no intention of honouring the spirit of a peace agreement. Israeli Jews fear that a Palestinian state would become a terrorist base, from which missile attacks would be launched against Israel’s population centres. That fear is hardly unfounded: Thousands of missiles were fired at Israeli towns in the south after the withdrawal from Gaza.
A majority of Israelis want to save the Jewish state from the moral and demographic dangers of occupation. For centrist Israelis, a Palestinian state is an existential necessity. But it is also, potentially, an existential threat.
Achieving Palestinian statehood, then, requires reassuring anxious Israelis that Palestinian empowerment will not lead to Israeli vulnerability.
Tragically for both peoples, historical revisionism remains normative in Palestinian discourse. When Palestinian leaders acknowledge that the Jews are a people and that their state is called Israel, the way will be open for the creation of a state called Palestine.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and a contributing editor of The New Republic.

How the Palestinian Leadership Is Ignoring History Alan Dershowitz

The Palestinians are in the process of seeking sovereignty from the United Nations, but in doing so, they are asking for more than what was offered them in any prior negotiation with Israel—including during the talks involving President Clinton and Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001. Rather than more, it is imperative that the Palestinians get less.

It is imperative to world peace that the Palestinians pay a price—even if it’s only a symbolic price—for rejecting the generous Clinton/Barak offer and responding to it with a second intifada in which 4,000 people were killed. It is also important that Israel not return to the precise armistice lines that existed prior to the 1967 war. If the Palestinians were to achieve a return to the status quo prior to Jordan’s attack on Israel in June of 1967, then military aggression will not have been punished, it will have been rewarded. That’s why Security Council Resolution 242—which was essentially the peace treaty that resulted from the end of the Six Day War—intended for Israel to retain territory necessary to give it secure boundaries (Indeed, in the formal application submitted by Abbas, he sought membership based on UN General Assembly Resolution 1810-11 of November 29, 1947, which would put the borders where they were before the Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state in 1948. This would reward multiple aggressions.)

Yet, however important it is that aggressive and unjustified violence not be rewarded, the international community seems bent on doing just that. If the end result of Jordan’s 1967 attack on Israel—an attack supported by the Palestinian leadership and participated in by Palestinian soldiers—is that the Palestinians get back everything Jordan lost, there will be no disincentive to comparable military attacks around the world. If the Palestinians get more than, or even as much as, they rejected in 2000 and 2001 (and did not accept in 2007), then further intifadas with mass casualties will be encouraged. A price must be paid for violence. That’s how the laws of war are supposed to work and there is no reason to make an exception in the case of the Palestinians.

I support a two-state solution based on negotiation and mutual compromise. But the negotiations must not begin where previous offers, which were not accepted, left off. They must take into account how we got to the present situation: The Arab rejection of the UN partition plan and the attack on the new Jewish state that resulted in the death of one percent of Israel’s population; the attack by Jordan and its Palestinian soldiers against Israel in 1967, which resulted in Israel’s capture of the West Bank; Israel’s offer to trade captured land for peace that was rejected at Khartoum with the three infamous “no’s”—no peace, no recognition, no negotiation; Israel’s generous offer of statehood in 2000-2001 that was answered by violence; and Olmert’s subsequent, even more generous, offer that was not accepted by President Abbas.

Efforts to achieve peace must look forward but they must not forget the past. A balance must be struck between not rewarding past violence and not creating unreasonable barriers to a future peace. But the Palestinians made it clear last week that they reject such balance.

I was at the United Nations on Friday when President Abbas made his speech demanding full recognition of Palestine as a state with the borders as they existed just before the Jordanians and Palestinians attacked Israel. In other words he wants a “do over.” He wants the nations that attacked Israel to suffer no consequences for their attempt to destroy the Jewish State. He wants to get back The Western Wall, The Jewish Quarter, and the access road to Hebrew University. Only then will he begin negotiations from this position of strength. But why then negotiate if the UN gives him more than he can possibly get through negotiation? Will he be in a position to seek less from Israel than what the UN gave him? Will he survive if he is seen as less Palestinian than the UN? Abbas blamed Israel for the self-inflicted wound the Palestinians cynically call the Nakba(the catastrophe). He denied the Jewish history of the land of Israel and he quoted with approval his terrorist predecessor Arafat. He refused to acknowledge Israel’s legitimate security needs. Abbas’s message, in sum, left little or no room for further compromise.

I also sat in the General Assembly as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to begin negotiations with Abbas, with absolutely no preconditions, in New York, at the United Nations, that very day. He said he would come to Ramallah to negotiate with him or keep the door of his Jerusalem office open. He did not even require as a precondition to negotiations that the Palestinians acknowledge what the UN recognized in 1947—namely, that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Although many in the international communities and on the editorial pages of newspapers claim that Abbas wants to negotiate a two-state solution, while Netanyahu has refused to do so, the truth was on full and open display at the General Assembly on Friday: Netanyahu wants to negotiate a peace now, whereas Abbas wants to win recognition from the United Nations before any negotiations begin. As Netanyahu put it: “Let’s stop negotiating about negotiating and let’s just start negotiating right now.”

If the Palestinians accept Netanyahu’s offer to negotiate a peaceful two-state solution, it will get a real state on the ground—a state that Israel, the United States, and the rest of the international community will recognize. It will not be on the pre-1967 borders because the Palestinians are not entitled to such borders and because such borders are not conducive to peace, but it will be close. The Palestinians will get a viable state and Israel will get a secure state.

If, on the other hand, the UN were to reward nearly a century of Palestinian rejectionism and violence by simply turning the clock back to 1967 (or 1947), it will be encouraging more cost-free rejectionism and violence. The Palestinians must pay a price for the thousands of lives their rejectionism and violence have caused. The price must not be so heavy as to preclude peace, but it must be heavy enough to deter war.

Alan Dershowitz is a professor at Harvard Law School.

Lieberman Slams Abbas' Speech: It is Incitement

Foreign Minister Avigddor Lieberman slammed on Friday the speech by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in the United Nations and labeled it an incitement.
Lieberman, who walked out as an act of protest during Abbas’ speech, told Israel’s Channel 10 News, “Abbas’ speech was one of most difficult incitement. I’ve never heard such a speech from him before.”
“It was an appeal to the darkest side,” added Lieberman. “He said Israel is deliberately digging underneath holy Arab places, he said that ‘price tag’ groups are sponsored by the IDF, he said the IDF sics dogs on Palestinians. He spoke of Arafat’s ethos and said that all the prisoners are political prisoners. Looks like the murderers of the Fogel family are also political prisoners.”
When asked whether there is a chance of a future return to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, Lieberman replied. “I guess they have made a strategic decision not to negotiate. Since this government was established, we’ve offered to sit down for negotiations. It was a difficult decision for us to stop building in Judea and Samaria for ten months, but after this speech is clear that the Palestinians have no intention of returning to negotiations.”
Other senior political officials also slammed Abbas’ speech, telling Channel 10 they were sorry that the PA Chairman used his visit to New York to attack Israel instead of meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
“We heard nothing but propaganda in this speech,” the officials said.
In his speech, Abbas said he holds the Israeli government responsible for the expansionist movement of the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, saying that this will destroy chances of peace. He blamed Israel for shattering every peace initiative and claimed that Israel has been occupying ‘Palestinian’ territories for 63 years.
He confirmed that he is submitting an application for a sovereign and independent homeland, which he said contains a request for full member nation status in the UN based on the June 4, 1967 borders.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American Desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)

Jerusalem - FACT CHECK: Abbas Presents Disputed Narrative

Jerusalem - In his historic speech to the United Nations, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas eloquently laid out the case for granting his people an independent state. But in doing so, he presented a narrative that is disputed by Israel, and in at least one case, appeared to be factually incorrect.

Here is a look at the counterarguments to Abbas' claims:

OCCUPATION: Abbas called Israel's control of the territories claimed by the Palestinians "the only occupation in the world."

THE FACTS: The world is full of ethnic minorities that might claim to be ruled by occupiers, ranging from Tibetans living under Chinese rule to Kurds in Turkey, Basques in Spain, Chechens in Russia and Muslim separatists in Indian-ruled Kashmir.

PRISONERS: Abbas referred to the roughly 8,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails as prisoners of conscience.

THE FACTS: Abbas did not mention that most Palestinian prisoners are being held because of alleged involvement in violence against Israelis. Israel's prison service says it's holding some 6,000 "security" prisoners, many of them involved in planning or carrying out deadly attacks on civilians.

JEWISH CONNECTION TO THE HOLY LAND: Abbas called for two states, Israel and Palestine, to live in peace together.

THE FACTS: Abbas did not address one of Israel's central demands, that he recognize the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. And he ignored this Jewish connection by referring to the area as the land of Muhammad and Jesus, with no mention of any Jewish biblical figure.

GAZA STRIP: Abbas referred to Gaza as an integral part of a future Palestine, briefly mentioning his reconciliation agreement with the territory's Hamas rulers and condemning an Israeli "war of aggression" there nearly three years ago.

THE FACTS: Abbas lost control of Gaza to Hamas militants four years ago, and talks over implementing a reconciliation deal announced last May are at a standstill, in large part because of Hamas' refusal to disarm or renounce its armed struggle against Israel. In condemning Israel's 2008-2009 offensive in Gaza, Abbas did not mention that the operation was launched in response to persistent rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled territory.

PEACE TALKS: Abbas declared the Palestinians "believe in peace" and repeatedly presented Israel as the obstacle to renewing peace talks.

THE FACTS: The Palestinians did not accept two Israeli peace offers, in 2000 and 2008, that offered them a state in the vast majority of the territories they claim. Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly offered to launch negotiations — but refused to accept minimum outlines of a peace deal endorsed by the Palestinians and the international community. He has also not met the Palestinian condition of a settlement freeze for the duration of the talks.

SETTLEMENTS: Abbas repeatedly condemned Israeli settlement activity as the chief obstacle to peace, saying that continued Israeli construction on lands claimed by the Palestinians shows that Israel is not serious about peace.

THE FACTS: Israel might argue — as Netanyahu did in his rebuttal Friday — that Arab enmity to Israel long preceded the settlement of lands occupied in 1967. But Abbas, ironically, could have been even stronger in his condemnation and mentioned a jarring statistic: The number of Jews living in the West Bank and east Jerusalem has roughly doubled, to some 500,000 people, since the Oslo Accords of 18 years ago.

No Moral Equivalence Between Abbas and Netanyahu: Abbas lied, and Netanyahu told the truth

The media is already treating the dueling speeches today at the United Nations General Assembly by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as morally equivalent. But such a view of these addresses would be dead wrong.

To put it bluntly, Abbas lied, and Netanyahu told the truth.

Abbas based his claim for the United Nations to allow him to bypass negotiations and to get a state without first making peace with Israel on the notion Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem is “the last occupation.” That would be news to the Kurds and a host of other ethnic groups large and small throughout the globe who have suffered as much if not more than the Palestinians, but who have never been considered worthy of an independent state by the international community.

Assuming the mantle of victimhood that has been a staple of Arab diplomacy, Abbas claimed the Palestinians came to the United Nations asking for a state armed only with “hopes and dreams.” But to accept this you have to ignore the fact an independent Palestinian state already exists in Gaza, albeit ruled by Hamas terrorist groups. As Netanyahu later replied, the Palestinians had come with “Hopes, dreams — and 10,000 missiles and Grad rockets supplied by Iran.”

Some journalists commenting on the speeches immediately claimed there was no difference between Abbas’ baseless claims of Israeli racism and Netanyahu’s noting the Palestinians intend their state to be free of Jews. But these claims are not equal. Israel is a democracy in which its Arab minority can claim full rights of citizenship. Yet Abbas himself has said peace must mean every town and village in the West Bank as well as neighborhoods in Jerusalem where Jews live over the green line must be eradicated. That means Netanyahu’s claim Palestine would be “Judenrein” and his mentioning of the fact the Palestinians have laws prohibiting the sale of land to Jews (a crime punishable by death) are not slurs but accurate reflections of the Nazi-like hate that permeates the PA.

Abbas said the peace process had “shattered on the rock” of Israeli settlements, as if the presence of Jewish towns and villages in the West Bank in what is the heart of the historic homeland of the Jews is the cause of the conflict. But as Netanyahu later pointed out, Abbas, who has spoken in the past about “63 years” of Israel “occupying Palestinian land,” that ignores the fact the conflict between Jews and Arabs was raging for half a century before the Six-Day War in 1967 when Israel came into the possession of the West Bank.

The Israeli cut to the heart of the problem when he concluded by asking why Abbas had spent the last three years doing his best to evade peace negotiations. If his true intent was merely to create a Palestinian state, he could have had one before Netanyahu took office in 2008. Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu’s predecessor, offered Abbas such a state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and a share of Jerusalem. But Abbas walked away from that offer just as his predecessor Yasir Arafat walked away from the state he was offered by Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001.

That is why this UN circus initiated by the Palestinian leader is nothing more than a charade intended to bolster his standing at home and to avoid the necessity of engaging in U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Israel. The Palestinians don’t want to negotiate; they want the world to impose a dictat on Israel that will not guarantee the security or the rights of the Jewish state or even to agree to finally end the conflict.

Abbas could have, as Netanyahu suggested, met with the Israeli today in New York if he wanted. But the Palestinian has no interest in such talks or in peace if it means he will have to give up the right of Arab refugees to swamp it. One needn’t be a partisan of Netanyahu’s to understand there is no moral equivalence between their respective positions. One man lied, and the other told the truth.

Fisking Abbas' speech at the UN

How many lies can fit into one speech?

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 insit 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...

Lie - Abbas himself admitted his family left voluntarily and never saw an Israeli soldier.

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 Jerusalemquadrupled 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

He is knowingly lying about what (nonbinding) UNGA resolution 194 says.

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 theWashington 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.

 Anything to avoid compromising.

Debunking the Palestine Lie

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has launched an international campaign to achieve recognition by the United Nations for an independent Palestinian state. Abbas and his international supporters claim that only Israel (with the United States) stands in the way of this act of historical justice, which would finally bring about peace in the Middle East.

This video debunks the Palestinians' claim and shows that Abbas has been lying about the origins and history of the conflict. Palestinian leaders have rejected partition plans that would have given them much more land for their independent state than the Jews were offered for theirs. Rather than being the innocent victims of a "dispossession" at the hands of the Israelis, the Palestinians rejected reasonable compromises and instead pursued their aim of getting rid of the only Jewish state in the world.