Netanyahu speaks for truth, not for applause

Great article at JPost.com today.

Some highlights:

The issue, he said, is the Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state within any borders.

They do not acknowledge Jewish history, he said. “I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That’s like accusing America of Americanizing Washington. You know why we’re called ‘Jews’? Because we come from Judea,” he said.

He contrasted Israel’s record on minorities, particularly Arabs, with that of the Palestinian statements regarding Jews.

Israel, Netanyahu said, protects the rights of it minorities, including its Arab citizens, whereas the Palestinians have said that they won’t allow Jews to live in their state, he said.

“They’ll be Jew-free — Judenrein. That’s ethnic cleansing,” Netanyahu said.

 

“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,” he retorted.

Israel has a history of making peace offers to the Palestinians that have been rejected with dangerous consequences, he said.

In 2000, instead of accepting a “sweeping peace offer” Palestinians launched terror attacks that claimed a thousand Israeli lives.

In 2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza, only to have Hamas fire thousands of rockets against Israel from the very territory that it had just left.

“We left Gaza hoping for peace. We didn’t freeze the settlements in Gaza, we uprooted them.”

“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,” he said.

“We did exactly what the theory says: Get out, go back to the 1967 borders, dismantle the settlements,” said Netanyahu.

All that happened, he said, is that Iran used Hamas to get rid of the PA in Gaza.

 

“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,” he said.

 

Netanyahu attacked the UN for its poor record on Israel, calling it the “theater of the absurd.”

“It doesn’t only cast Israel as the villain, it often casts real villains in leading roles,” said Netanyahu.

He reminded the UN that Libya under the leadership of Muammar Gaddafi had chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights and that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had headed the UN 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 UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world’s security,” the prime minister explained.

The UN, Netanyahu said, has condemned Israel more than any other country, even though it is “the only true democracy in the Middle East.”

 

Now, Netanyahu said, “they have decided that the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest place, is occupied Palestinian territory.”

He recalled how the rabbi of Lubavich had once told him that the UN was a “house of many lies,” but that even there in the darkest place, the “light of a single candle can be seen far and wide.”

He said that he had come to speak the truth and not to win applause.