2. "Apartheid"
There is no differentiation in types of treatment, quality of treatment or what is provided to the patient. The idea that there could be a differentiation is seen as abhorrent, inappropriate and simply ridiculous.
The baby daughter of a French rabbi was burned after being exposed to acid placed in her carriage.I'm sure it is because of the "occupation."
The 14-month-old girl suffered burns on her back and thighs Monday in the city of Bron, near Lyon, Le Parisien daily reported Wednesday. The baby is not in danger, according to the report.
The acid had been placed inside a carriage that the baby’s grandmother had parked in a communal space inside her apartment building overnight from Sunday to Monday. The grandmother rushed the baby to the hospital after noticing a severe irritation on the baby’s skin after taking her for a walk in the stroller and then bringing her inside.
Police are looking into a possible anti-Semitic motive, perhaps by a neighbor, a police source told Le Parisien. The stroller was taken into police custody as part of the investigation, according to the newspaper.
Aid is not neutral in the midst of conflict. Aid and how it is administered can cause harm or can strengthen peace capacities in the midst of conflicted communities. All aid programmes involve the transfer of resources (food, shelter, water, health care, training, etc.) into a resource-scarce environment. Where people are in conflict, these resources represent power and wealth and they become an element of the conflict. Some people attempt to control and use aid resources to support their side of the conflict and to weaken the other side. If they are successful or if aid staff fail to recognise the impact of their programming decisions, aid can cause harm.This is the larger context of the Oxfam scandal, but it is also the exact problem with the multiplicity of NGOs competing for funding for their Palestinian pets. And that funding very often comes from sources that would otherwise fund people who are far more in need than Palestinians are. As a result, Palestinian NGOs are encouraged to exaggerate the problems that ordinary Palestinians have far beyond reality. I recently documented how a consortium of 70 NGOs in the territories go out of their way to twist basic economic data to make it appear that the Palestinian economy is worsening under "occupation" when, by any measure, it has been improving year over year.
A corruption case involving senior Palestinian Authority (PA) officials who allegedly embezzled part of EU funding for personal gain was revealed by i24NEWS .This is the norm, not the exception, in the PA and with the aid distributed by the EU. There is no insistence on sound accounting and audit of the funds. Palestinians know that their officials are corrupt, as this political cartoon shows:
While the opaque - or "obscure" - links between the PA and foreign donations transmitted by Brussels have already been mentioned in the past, the information obtained by i24NEWS via sources in Gaza and abroad is particularly compromising, especially in regards a particular man.
It is Marwan Darzi, former director of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and head of the Palestinian coordination office in Zone C (an area under Israeli security and administrative control), whose structure receives grants from the EU through international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from Switzerland, France, Belgium and Germany.Even in 2017, Darzi would have taken advantage of his position to travel abroad to the tune of 100,000 euros. Members of his family also participated in these "business trips".
In addition, he would have bought for himself, his family and relatives for more than 60,000 euros of computer equipment through the entry of 3G in the Palestinian territories as he would have bought more than 80,000 euros of clothes and jewelry for his relatives and started repairs to his garden up to 200,000 euros.
According to i24NEWS sources , the office does not report the total amount of donations received through international organizations, even going as low as 70% of their original value.
Indeed, i24NEWS discovered that Marwan Darzi would have benefited from the links between his office and the Palestinian Investment Fund headed by Tareq Abbas, the son of the Palestinian President, accused in the past of embezzling hundreds of millions of euros via organizations and society screen.His name appeared in particular in the scandal of "Panama Papers" of the consulting firm Fonseca.
They would have also benefited from the help of Yaya Rabah, the spokesman of the PA. The latter has recently acquired a luxury jeep without paying taxes, a fraud punishable by imprisonment in the Palestinian territories.
The crisis in relations between Israel and Poland over Warsaw’s desire to ban honest discussion of Poland’s role in the Holocaust has eclipsed every other issue relevant to Israeli-European ties. No air is left in the room to consider, for instance, the physical peril in which the Jews of France now live. No one is talking about Europe’s role in protecting Iran from U.S. sanctions. All anyone can find time to talk about is Poland and its law banning discussion of the truth about the Holocaust.When Angela Merkel started to fail the Jews and Israel
Due to the extensiveness of Polish antisemitism, it would be foolhardy for Israel or Poland to aspire to a long-term resolution of the problem. But in the interest of maintaining mutually beneficial bilateral relations, both sides are going to have to make some difficult accommodations to one another.
Israel is going to have to acknowledge that living with officially supported antisemitism is the price of relations with European states, just as it is the price of doing business with Arab states. Part of this accommodation will involve backing off its efforts to change or abrogate the Polish law.
For its part, the Polish government is going to have to restrain its anti-Jewish reflexes at least publically. To this end, the Polish government should avoid additional antisemitic and fraudulent remarks about the Holocaust and about Jews more generally.
The world is often an unpleasant place. Europe in particular has never kicked its antisemitic habit. It isn’t Israel’s job to transform Europe. It is Israel’s job to secure its interests, and when necessary, to do so in cooperation with governments it doesn’t like that have values it abhors.
With her summer 2015 announcement of the welcoming policy for refugees, German Chancellor Angela Merkel damaged Germany, her party, her image and probably her place in history.Melanie Phillips - “No Liberty, No Equality, No Fraternity: Dealing with the Failure of the West”
She has also caused damage to German Jews and Israel. Until summer 2015 Merkel had a very good record on both these issues.
In November 2005, Merkel became chancellor. In January 2006, she visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2014 she also came to Israel. In the latter year Merkel was accompanied by 16 German ministers to discuss collaboration between the two countries. She had no problem in admitting German guilt toward the Jews. In January 2018 on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Merkel called for a new culture of remembrance in view of the shrinking number of Holocaust survivors.
Merkel’s attitude greatly differed from that of several senior leaders of the Christian Democratic Union’s junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD). Their previous leader, Sigmar Gabriel, currently German foreign minister, is a consistent anti-Israel inciter.
Recently he again accused Israel of apartheid.
Melanie Phillips has never shied away from the battle of ideas. As someone who has lived as both a hero and villain of the social and political Left, her career as a journalist has been marked by controversy over the expression of some relatively uncontroversial ideas. Her fierce independence, and tenacious defense of civil liberties has lead her to becoming one of Britain’s leading voices on a variety of topics like Brexit, the increased threat of radicalization, and how the mainstream media treats Israel. Don't miss it!
Haj Amin el Husseini and Hitler have a friendly chat, 1941 (see: The Mufti and the Führer) |
One of the latest new Palestinian "heroes" is "Martyr" Ahmed Nasr Jarrar - the terrorist who led the terror cell that murdered Rabbi Raziel Shevach, a father of six, in a drive-by shooting on Jan. 9, 2018, near Havat Gilad in the Nablus area.IDF reveals it thwarted attempted Islamic State bombing of Australian flight
Terrorist Jarrar was shot and killed during an exchange of gunfire with Israeli soldiers while resisting arrest near Jenin on Feb. 6, 2018. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Abbas' Fatah Movement has honored him several times, and continues to do so as seen in additional Facebook posts below.
Palestinians have also named sports tournaments after the terrorist. A futsal championship was held in the Nablus area:
"The Martyr Ahmed Jarrar Futsal Championship"
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 12, 2018]
In Gaza too, terrorist Jarrar is a hero with two sports tournaments having already been named after him:
"The Martyr Ahmed Nasr Jarrar Table Tennis Cup" (to be held later this month)
"The Martyr Ahmed Jarrar Handball Cup" (date to be announced)
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 19, 2018]
The following are 10 Fatah posts on Facebook glorifying terrorist Jarrar:
The Israeli army on Wednesday revealed that the Military Intelligence Unit 8200 foiled an Islamic State attempt to bomb a flight from Australia last August.Exclusive: Senior PA official embezzled EU aid money
“The unit provided exclusive intelligence that led to the prevention of an air attack by the Islamic State in 2017 in Australia,” a senior IDF officer said.
“The foiling of the attack saved dozens of innocent lives and proved Unit 8200’s position as a major player in the intelligence fight against the Islamic State,” the officer said, on condition of anonymity.
Wednesday’s revelation was an unusual move for the Israeli army, which generally keeps mum on the operations of the secretive Unit 8200, which is similar to the American National Security Agency, collecting information from electronic communication, also referred to as signals intelligence.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Munich Security Conference that Israeli Military Intelligence “helped prevent dozens of terror attacks in dozens of countries by the Islamic State.” (h/t Yoel)
A top Palestinian official spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid money provided by the European Union on personal expenses like overseas travel, electronics and landscaping, according to information obtained by i24NEWS.
Sources in Gaza, Ramallah and Europe said that Marwan Durzi, the ex-head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in the West Bank and the current head of the Palestinian co-ordination office for Zone C (the part of the West Bank under full Israeli military control) took advantage of his position overseeing grants provided by the EU for humanitarian purposes.
The sources said that in 2017 Durzi was found to have taken 100,000 ($123,000) euros worth of business trips, many accompanied by his family.
He also purchased 60,000 euros ($74,000) of computers, phones and tablets for himself and associates after a 3G communications network was finally established in the West Bank, more than 80,000 ($98,500) euros worth of clothes and jewelry and 200,000 ($247,000) euros on gardening.
Sources said that the office he runs do not keep accurate records of the amount of funds received by the EU, and in some cases reported them to be 70% lower than they actually were. (h/t Yenta Press)
Mahmoud Abbas says there is nothing for him to do.
True, the Palestinian president walked into his meeting with Barack Obama yesterday as the pivotal player in any Middle East peace process. If there is to be a deal, Abbas must (1) agree on all the details of a two-state settlement with the new Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, which hasn't yet accepted Palestinian statehood, and (2) somehow overcome the huge split in Palestinian governance between his Fatah movement, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules Gaza and hasn't yet accepted Israel's right to exist.Of course, during the Obama administration Netanyahu did agree to a two state solution and Israel did freeze settlement construction for nearly a year in order to induce Abbas to negotiate. Instead, he pocketed his gains and still refused to negotiate.
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula.
Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations.
"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."If the people in the West Bank are living a normal life, then the world doesn't need to care much about a meaningless piece of paper that Abbas would ignore anyway. And his active persecution of Gazans, today, show that the world cares more about Palestinians than their supposed leader does.
Egyptian leftist MP Abdel-Hamid Kamal, who represents the governorate of Suez, has submitted an urgent information request on Tuesday asking that Petroleum Minister Tarek El-Molla be summoned to parliament as soon as possible to explain to MPs reports that Israel has signed two agreements to sell gas to Egypt.In response, the Petroleum Ministry tried to downplay the news:
Kamal's request, submitted to parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal, said, "Importing natural gas from Israel would be in violation of Article 139 of the constitution, which states that the main job of the president of the republic is to preserve the people's interests and maintain the independence of the state and the integrity and safety of its land."
"Any gas deal with Israel goes against this article, as Israel is still an enemy of Egypt in practical and de facto terms," argued Kamal, who is affiliated with the leftist Tagammu Party.
Kamal told Ahram Online that "gas deals with Israel pose a big threat to Egypt's internal security and national economy… It gives Israel, an enemy to Egypt, a hand to manipulate Egypt's economy, as dependence on gas imports from the Jewish state for a long period of time will surely be very risky," said Kamal.
“The deal also raises questions about the private Egyptian company Dolphinus: who are [the company’s] owners? Does it have foreign partners, and how were they able to sign a 10-year deal that will do a lot of harm to the Egyptian economy and delay the liquification of Egyptian gas?”
The deal triggered wide-scale reactions in Egypt's economic and political circles yesterday, and was a hot issue on most private TV talk shows on Monday night.
Egypt’s petroleum ministry responded on Monday to news of a massive gas deal between Egyptian private company Dolphinus and Israeli gas firms, saying it makes "no comment on negotiations or deals involving private sector companies over importing or selling natural gas."In an Arabic interview, the minister struck a slightly different tone:
In press statements on Monday evening, Egypt’s petroleum ministry spokesman Hamdy Abdel Aziz said the ministry would deal with any permit or license requests by the private sector in accordance with applicable regulations, in light of Egypt’s strategy of becoming a regional hub for energy.
He added that the government has been taking measures to liberalize the natural gas market, putting in place a regulatory framework that allows private companies to use the national gas grid to trade within approvals and requirements laid down by the Gas Market Regulatory Authority.
The minister stressed that in the case of implementation of this order, Egypt has three conditions before it is accepted, the first is the approval of the government, the second to achieve value added to the Egyptian economy, and the last to find solutions to international arbitration issues outstanding with the other party.Interestingly, Egypt has recently announced that it will start pumping a large gas field itself:
In December, petroleum minister Tarek El Molla said that Egypt will achieve self-sufficiency in natural gas before the end of 2018.One must wonder why the Egyptian firm struck a ten year deal when Egypt claims it will be self-sufficient in natural gas in only two years.
Mammoth gas gield Zohr and the North Alexandria and Nooros fields are expected to increase Egypt's natural gas output by 50 percent in 2018 and 100 percent in 2020, the Ministry of Petroleum said in October.
Now we have further documentation of Obama's official anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism and its reign at the IRS between 2010 and 2017.Britain and Zionism: Did Margaret Thatcher betray Balfour?
The mainstream or leftstream and liberal media barely covered this lawsuit. The Wall Street Journal and FOX did.
One 2010 article in Politico found the right kind of Jew, former IRS Commissioner, Sheldon Cohen who said, "he was skeptical of Z Street's motives in its high-profile lawsuit, rather than pursuing its concerns in tax court. 'They were hardly into the process when they screamed rape – nobody lifted the dress yet," he said, noting that 501(c)3 groups can't advocate for political positions.
Seven years is a long time to be unable to raise funding for educational purposes; it is also a long time in which to launch and maintain a self-defensive lawsuit, one which was immediately punished by the IRS which then froze the Z STREET application. Seven years is a long time to experience the absence of Jewish-American organizational support; the turned backs of Jewish philanthropists is another kind of sorrow and challenge.
British policy toward Zionism and Israel has been a 100-year roller-coaster, from the triumphant Balfour Declaration to the depths of the 1939 White Paper, and back again to Margaret Thatcher — the first British prime minister to visit the Jewish state, and famously pro-Israel.MEMRI: Lebanese Journalist: 100 Years After Balfour Declaration, The Arabs Have Failed Where Israel Has Excelled
Or was she?
Tel Aviv University lecturer Azriel Bermant’s new book “Margaret Thatcher and the Middle East” (Cambridge) draws on recently released British and Israeli government papers to reveal the truth about Margaret Thatcher’s Middle East policy and reassess her famous battles with the Arabists of Britain’s Foreign Office.
Author Elliot Jager’s book “The Balfour Declaration: Sixty-Seven Words – 100 Years of Conflict” (Gefen), explores the myriad of influences and personalities who came together at a pivotal point in history to issue the famous founding charter of the Jewish national home.
The two authors will reflect on the past century of Anglo-Zionist relations at a public discussion, in English, produced with the Sir Naim Dangoor Center for UK/Israel Relations at Mishkenot Sha’ananim on Tuesday, February 27. Tickets are available HERE.
Although Thatcher’s personal sympathies were pro-Israel, when it came to concrete policy “there was very little difference between the way she saw things and the way the Foreign Office saw things,” says Bermant.
Even as UK policy seemed to diverge from Israel’s – opposing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, denouncing settlements, supporting arms and AWACs deals with Saudi Arabia, softening the UK’s rejection of the PLO – Thatcher was still lauded as a great friend.
In a November 25, 2017 article marking the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, published in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Lebanese journalist Karam Al-Hilu compared the meager accomplishments of the Arab world in the past century with those of the rest of the countries of the world, particularly Israel. He noted that Israel's supremacy in the areas of science, economy, society, and politics is the source of its strength as well as the source of the Arabs' failure in confronting it.
The following are excerpts from his article:
"A century after the Balfour Declaration... the Arabs have not managed to build a [a single] state that possesses knowledge, justice, and the economic, social, and human capability for confronting Zionism. One hundred years have been squandered, in all aspects; during them, the Arabs have been confronting Israel while their cultural infrastructure was in crisis – in the areas of knowledge, politics, economy, society, and thought. According to the 2014 [UN] report on knowledge in the Arab world [the Arab Knowledge Report], despite the 500 Arab universities, with an enrollment of nine million students and faculties of 220,000 lecturers, higher education in the Arab world is very meager in scientific research, in its failure to adapt to digital culture, and in its incompatibility with [universal] scientific and human culture. Outlay on scientific research is extremely negligible. Even in Egypt, the Arab country where the [cultural] awakening is the most deeply rooted, [only] 0.43% of the [gross] national product [is allocated to scientific research], versus 4.04% in South Korea and 3.39% in Japan. Therefore, scientists and research output are a rarity in the Arab world, and the research that is published [there] constitutes only 0.8% of the global average. The number of patents registered to the Arabs in the past 50 years does not exceed [the number of those] registered by Malaysia alone.
"Not a single Arab university ranks among the 500 best in the world, while Israel supersedes the Arabs at an astronomical rate, in inventions and in hi-tech export. Israel has completely wiped out illiteracy [among its citizens], while among the Arabs, 23% remain illiterate.
I expected Mr. Abbas to stay for a dialogue, but once again he has run away instead of listening to what we have to say.And here's Nikki Haley's response:
Look what just happened. Mr. Abbas came here put his demands on the table.
Now he expects you to deliver.
This is not the way to achieve peace. You cannot avoid direct negotiations.
Thank you, Mr. President.
It is unfortunate that we are meeting here today;
For the past seven and a half years the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas,
has refused to meet even once with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
He has refused to negotiate peace.
Yet, during that same time, Mr. Abbas has made seven trips here to the United Nations.
Today, once again. rather than driving just twelve minutes from Ramallah to Jerusalem, he has chosen to fly twelve hours to New York to avoid the possibility for peace.
Mr. Abbas.
You have made it clear with your words and with your actions, that you are no longer part of the solution. You are the problem.
What have you done to better the life of a single person in Ramallah or Gaza?
The Palestinians need leadership that will invest in education, not glorify violence.
They need leadership that will build hospitals, not pay terrorists.
They need leadership that will negotiate with Israel and not run away from dialogue.
You just addressed the members of the Security Council and spoke of your commitments to peace. This is what you often do when speaking to international forums.
But when you address your people in Arabic, you convey a very different message.
A few weeks ago, when you spoke to the PLO Central Committee you called the national movement of the Jewish people and I quote “colonialist project that has no connection to Judaism.”
In the same shameful speech, you had the audacity to accuse Jews of supporting antisemitism in order to promote Zionism.
This was not the first time you used such hateful language.
In September 2015, as part of your attempts to delegitimize the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel you said that Jews had no rights to the Temple Mount and other holy sites. And that the Jews, and I quote…“desecrate them with their filthy feet.”
You then went on to incite your people to violence saying, and I quote, “we welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.”
Mr. Abbas,
You inspire a culture of hate within Palestinian society.
You name schools and public squares in honor of terrorists.
You encourage your children to hate by teaching them in school that Jews are descendants of apes.
Just this month, your Fatah faction praised the terrorists who killed Rabbi Raziel Shevach.
And you remained silent and refused to condemn the terrorists who killed a father of six as he was driving home to see his children.
Mr. Abbas, your incitement does not end with rhetoric. You have made it official Palestinian policy to sponsor terrorism.
In 2017, you spent $345 million dollars paying terrorists for killing innocent Israelis.
That is fifty percent of total foreign aid donated to the PA.
This is money you could have spent building forty hospitals.
This is money, you could have used to build 172 schools.
Every year.
Your travel around the world seeking international intervention is an attempt to avoid the hard choices necessary for peace.
You look to every possible forum because you don’t want to actually negotiate with Israel.
Mr. President,
It is unfortunate, but this reckless behavior by Chairman Abbas is nothing new.
It is a pattern he has continued in the spirit of over seventy years of missed opportunities by Palestinian leadership.
We recently celebrated seventy years since the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 181.
For the Jewish people, it represented international recognition of our historic rights to our homeland. We accepted the resolution immediately.
It was not perfect. It did not provide us with all that we deserved.
But it gave us hope for a better future.
Yet, this past November, as Israel celebrated this milestone the Palestinians marked this anniversary with grief and mourning just as they did seventy years ago when they chose to reject it.
Since that moment in 1947 Israelis fought valiantly in too many wars against our enemies intent to destroy our country.
Over time, brave leaders emerged in Egypt and Jordan. Leaders who were willing to negotiate, compromise, and ultimately sign peace agreements with Israel.
But the Palestinian leadership continued to choose conflict over coexistence.
At the Camp David summit, in 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak presented the Palestinians with an unprecedented offer.
What was Mahmoud Abbas’s reaction? To side with Yasser Arafat, claim it was a trap, and reject the proposal.
In 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was elected to chair the Palestinian Authority.
The world hoped he would follow in the courageous footsteps of President Sadat and King Hussein, seek peace with Israel, and forge a better future for Palestinians.
But he let his people down.
Since the day he took office, peace plan after peace plan has been accepted by Israel and rejected by Mr. Abbas.
Israeli leaders have sat with Mr. Abbas time and again. Three different Israeli prime ministers, three different American presidents. But every time there is an inch toward progress…
Mr. Abbas runs away.
In 2007, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the most generous deal since Resolution 181. An almost complete withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and a direct link to the Gaza Strip.
The offer even included a plan to place the Old City of Jerusalem, the gateway to our holiest sites, under international control.
Mr. Abbas’s response was simple: An unequivocal no.
Two years later, Prime Minister Netanyahu did something unprecedented. In an attempt to restart negotiations, he initiated a ten -month freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria.
This was a precondition that no Israeli Prime Minister, not even Yitzhak Rabin or Shimon Peres had ever agreed to. But soon enough, the ten months passed and Mahmoud Abbas was nowhere to be found. He never came to the table. (P)
In 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry opened another attempt at negotiations. Once again Prime Minister Netanyahu was ready to talk. Once again, he was ready to negotiate, despite the years of Palestinian rejections of peace.
Chairman Abbas responded by breaking his commitment to Secretary Kerry. He chose unilateral action joining international conventions. Then he sought peace with Hamas, the internationally recognized terrorist organization, without even demanding that it renounce violence.
Today, as we speak, the current US administration is once again working hard to make progress toward peace. Mr. Abbas, however, is once again looking hard for an excuse.
This time, he claims it was the American announcement about Jerusalem that drove him to reject negotiations. By recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, President Trump simply stated what should be clear to everyone.
Mr. Abbas,
Let me be clear.
For thousands of years Jerusalem has been the heart and soul of our people.
Jerusalem has been our capital since the days of King David.
And Jerusalem will remain the undivided capital of the State of Israel forever.
We will always insist on Israeli sovereignty over a united Jerusalem. But, even fair-minded observers would agree that under any possible agreement Jerusalem will be recognized internationally as our capital.
After all these years of Abbas’s rejectionism, one thing is clear: when we extend a hand,
Abbas extends a fist.
Only when the terrorists of Hamas extend a hand, does Abbas embrace them with open arms and without preconditions.
Mr. Abbas has no even insisted on the basic human gesture of demanding the return of the Israeli civilians and the remains of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul that Hamas is savagely holding.
Mr. President…
Israelis are an optimistic people.
We weathered four bloody wars with Egypt while waiting for a leader like Anwar Sadat to courageously visit Jerusalem.
It took decades of talks with Jordan until the time was right for King Hussein to enter into what he rightly called a “peace of the brave.”
Three times a day Jews in Israel and all over the world turn to Jerusalem, and pray for peace.
We ask the following from God:
שִׂים שָ לוֹם טוֹבָה וּבְרָכָה
חֵן וָחֶֽסֶד וְרַחֲמִים עָלֵֽינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עַמֶּֽךָ
“Grant peace everywhere goodness and blessing, Grace, loving kindness and mercy to us and unto all Israel and all of the world.”
We have no doubt that the day will come when the Palestinian people will also be blessed with leadership that shares these noble aspirations.
This will be a leadership that condemns violence and ends the shameful practice of paying salaries to terrorists. It will be a leadership that educates its people to tolerance instead of peddling in antisemitism. It will be a leadership that recognizes that Israel is and always will be
the national homeland of the Jewish people.
Israel eagerly awaits the day, when this Palestinian leadership will emerge and will bring the hope of a better future for its people and our region.
Thank you.
.@USUN Ambassador Nikki Haley delivers remarks at a @UN Security Council Briefing on the Situation in the #MiddleEast. pic.twitter.com/BnMFQgYy4t— Department of State (@StateDept) February 20, 2018
Thank you, Mr. Secretary-General, for being with us today, as well as to Mr. Mladenov for his briefing.
We are meeting today in a forum that is very familiar to all of us. This session on the Middle East has been taking place each month for many, many years. Its focus has been almost entirely on issues facing Israelis and Palestinians. And we have heard many of the same arguments and ideas over and over again. We have already heard them again this morning.
It is as if saying the same things repeatedly, without actually doing the hard work and making the necessary compromises, will achieve anything.
Beginning last year, we have tried to broaden the discussion, and we have had some success in doing so. I thank my colleagues who have participated in those broader discussions.
One reason we did that is our well-founded belief that the United Nations spends an altogether disproportionate amount of time on Israeli-Palestinian issues. It’s not that those issues are unimportant. They are certainly very important. The problem is that the UN has proven itself time and again to be a grossly biased organization when it comes to Israel.
As such, the UN’s disproportionate focus has actually made the problem more difficult to solve, by elevating the tensions and the grievances between the two parties.
Another reason we have attempted to shift the discussion is that the vast scope of the challenges facing the region dwarf the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As we meet here today, the Middle East is plagued by many truly horrendous problems.
In Yemen, there is one of the worst humanitarian disasters on earth, with millions of people facing starvation. Meanwhile, militia groups fire Iranian rockets from Yemen into neighboring countries. In Syria, the Assad regime is using chemical weapons to gas its own people. This war has taken the lives of over half a million Syrians.
Millions more have been pushed into neighboring Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon as refugees, causing major hardships in those countries.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah terrorists exert ever-more control, illegally building up a stockpile of offensive weapons, inviting a dangerous escalation that could devastate regional security.
ISIS is engaged in an inhumane level of cruelty in much of the region. They’ve been dealt severe setbacks in Iraq and Syria, but they are not completely yet destroyed, and they still pose serious threats.
Egypt faces repeated terrorist attacks.
And of course, there is the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iran that initiates and encourages most of the troubles I just outlined.
These immense security and humanitarian challenges throughout the region should occupy more of our attention, rather than having us sit here month after month and use the most democratic country in the Middle East as a scapegoat for the region’s problems.
But here we go again.
I do not mean to suggest that there is no suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both sides have suffered greatly. So many innocent Israelis have been killed or injured by suicide bombings, stabbings, and other sickening terrorist attacks. Israel has been forced to live under constant security threats like virtually no other country in the world. It should not have to live that way.
And yet, Israel has overcome those burdens. It is a thriving country, with a vibrant economy that contributes much to the world in the name of technology, science, and the arts.
It is the Palestinian people who are suffering more. The Palestinians in Gaza live under Hamas terrorist oppression. I can’t even call it a governing authority, as Hamas provides so little in the way of what one would normally think as government services.
The people of Gaza live in truly awful conditions, while their Hamas rulers put their resources into building terror tunnels and rockets. The Palestinians in the West Bank also suffer greatly. Too many have died, and too much potential has been lost in this conflict.
We are joined here today by Palestinian Authority President Abbas. I’m sorry he declined to stay in the chamber to hear the remarks of others. Even though he has left the room, I will address the balance of my remarks to him.
President Abbas, when the new American administration came into the office last January, we did so against the fresh backdrop of the passage of Security Council Resolution 2334.
In the waning days of the previous American administration, the United States made a serious error in allowing that resolution to pass. Resolution 2334 was wrong on many levels. I am not going to get into the substance now.
But beyond the substance, perhaps its biggest flaw was that it encouraged the false notion that Israel can be pushed into a deal that undermines its vital interests, damaging the prospects for peace by increasing mistrust between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
In the last year, the United States has worked to repair that damage. At the UN, I have opposed the bias against Israel, as any ally should do.
But that does not mean I or our administration is against the Palestinian people. Just the opposite is true. We recognize the suffering of the Palestinian people, as I have recognized here today.
I sit here today offering the outstretched hand of the United States to the Palestinian people in the cause of peace. We are fully prepared to look to a future of prosperity and co-existence. We welcome you as the leader of the Palestinian people here today.
But I will decline the advice I was recently given by your top negotiator, Saeb Erekat. I will not shut up. Rather, I will respectfully speak some hard truths.
The Palestinian leadership has a choice to make between two different paths. There is the path of absolutist demands, hateful rhetoric, and incitement to violence. That path has led, and will continue to lead, to nothing but hardship for the Palestinian people.
Or, there is the path of negotiation and compromise. History has shown that path to be successful for Egypt and Jordan, including the transfer of territory. That path remains open to the Palestinian leadership, if only it is courageous enough to take it.
The United States knows the Palestinian leadership was very unhappy with the decision to move our embassy to Jerusalem. You don’t have to like that decision. You don’t have to praise it. You don’t even have to accept it. But know this: that decision will not change.
So once again, you must choose between two paths. You can choose to denounce the United States, reject the U.S. role in peace talks, and pursue punitive measures against Israel in international forums like the UN. I assure you that path will get the Palestinian people exactly nowhere toward the achievement of their aspirations.
Or, you can choose to put aside your anger about the location of our embassy, and move forward with us toward a negotiated compromise that holds great potential for improving the lives of the Palestinian people.
Putting forward old talking points and entrenched and undeveloped concepts achieves nothing. That approach has been tried many times, and has always failed. After so many decades, we welcome new thinking.
As I mentioned in this meeting last month, the United States stands ready to work with the Palestinian leadership.
Our negotiators are sitting right behind me, ready to talk. But we will not chase after you. The choice, Mr. President, is yours.
Thank you.
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