Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to address the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem while speaking before the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
Netanyahu, who noted that the UN’s entrenched bias against Israel made it a poor venue for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking efforts, instead invited Abbas to speak directly to the Israeli people in their capital:
President Abbas spoke here an hour ago. Wouldn’t it be better if instead of speaking past each other we were speaking to one another? President Abbas, instead of railing against Israel at the United Nations in New York, I invite you to speak to the Israeli people at the Knesset in Jerusalem. And I would gladly come to speak to the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah.
Netanyahu also blasted various organizations within the UN for their demonstrated bias against Israel, calling the UN Human Rights council a “joke” that annually “condemns Israel more than all the countries of the world combined.” He pointed out that the only country condemned by the UN’s Commission on Women this year was Israel, “where women fly fighter jets, lead major corporations, head universities, preside twice over Supreme Court, and have served as Speaker of the Knesset and PM,” while UNESCO recently “denied the 4,000 year connection between the Jewish people and its holiest site, the Temple Mount.” The UN, Netanyahu observed, had gone from “moral force” to “moral farce.”
Despite this pervasive bias, Netanyahu predicted that the world body’s hostility toward Israel will change as governments around the globe are “rapidly changing their attitude toward Israel.” He said that Jerusalem now has formal relations with 160 countries, twice the number it had just 30 years ago when he served as Israel’s ambassador to the UN.
Nations are realizing that Israel offers others “ingenuity in agriculture, in health, in water, in cyber and in the fusion of big data, connectivity and artificial intelligence – that fusion that is changing our world in every way,” Netanyahu continued.
Specifically pointing to Israel’s expanding ties with Africa, he observed that governments worldwide “know that Israel can help them protect their peoples, can help them feed them, can help them better their lives.” Beyond Africa, countries like “China, India, Russia, [and] Japan” have come to realize that “despite Israel’s small size, it can make a big difference in many, many areas that are important to them,” he said.
But the biggest transformation in Israel’s diplomatic relations has been in the Arab world, Netanyahu said. Building on the peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, which are “anchors of stability,” other Arab nations are realizing “that Israel is not their enemy. They recognize that Israel is their ally. Our common enemies are Iran and ISIS. Our common goals are security, prosperity and peace. I believe that in the years ahead we will work together to achieve these goals, work together openly,” he added.
Netanyahu also hailed Israel’s “most cherished alliance” and “deepest friendship” with the United States, which he called “the most powerful and the most generous nation on earth.” He emphasized that one expression of this friendship is the role that the U.S. plays in defending Israel at the UN. He recalled that the Obama administration only used its veto at the UN Security Council one time — in February 2011, to shoot down an anti-Israel resolution. Obama himself said later that year, “peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations.”
Netanyahu predicted that the era of automatic condemnations of Israel at the UN was coming to an end. After asserting that Israel won’t allow the UN to dictate Israel’s security or the terms for negotiations between Israel and the PA, Netanyahu called for direct talks with the Palestinians. “The road to peace runs through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not through New York,” he said.
While expecting a revolution in attitudes at the UN, Netanyahu indicated that he did not see any such change brewing in the PA. He observed that Abbas denounced the Balfour Declaration, the UK’s commitment to establish a Jewish state in mandatory Palestine, in his own UN General Assembly speech an hour earlier. “He’s preparing a lawsuit against Britain for that declaration from 1917. That’s almost 100 years ago – talk about being stuck in the past,” Netanyahu said. “The Palestinians may just as well sue Iran for the Cyrus Declaration, which enabled the Jews to rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem 2,500 years ago. Come to think of it, why not a Palestinian class action suit against Abraham for buying that plot of land in Hebron where the fathers and mothers of the Jewish people were buried 4,000 years ago?”
That Abbas still attacks a century-old document reflects the Palestinians’ continued refusal to recognize the historical and moral rights of Jews to live autonomously in their own homeland, which were recognized by the UN when it supported the establishment of a Jewish state in 1947. “This remains the true core of the conflict, the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize the Jewish state in any boundary,” he said. While he acknowledged that the issue of settlements must be addressed, he said that this should be in the framework of final status negotiations. “Israel is ready, I am ready to negotiate all final status issues,” he added.
He observed that as Palestinian leaders refused to come to terms with the past, they have been “poisoning the future” with incitement. He noted that Palestinian children grow up seeing tributes to terrorists who carried out gruesome attacks, hear Palestinian officials praise the killing of Israelis, and learn that the PA pays generous salaries to terrorists and their families. “This is child abuse,” Netanyahu said. “Imagine your child undergoing this brainwashing. Imagine what it takes for a young boy or girl to break free out of this culture of hate. Some do but far too many don’t. How can any of us expect young Palestinians to support peace when their leaders poison their minds against peace?”
Netanyahu called on Abbas to “finally confront hatred and work with me to establish peace between our two peoples,” and issued the invitation for the Palestinian leader to speak in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu concluded by acknowledging the different challenges facing Israel and the region, including Palestinian terrorism and the Islamic State. However, he noted that the greatest threat “remains the militant Islamic regime of Iran.” Iran promises to destroy Israel while actively destabilizing other countries in the Middle East, sponsoring terrorist groups, and testing ballistic missiles in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. “The threat Iran poses to all of us is not behind us, it’s before us,” he said. “With the nuclear constraints on Iran one year closer to being removed, let me be clear: Israel will not allow the terrorist regime in Iran to develop nuclear weapons – not now, not in a decade, not ever.”
In the end, Netanyahu predicted that Israel would make peace with all of its neighbors and marveled at how far the Jewish state has come since its founding.
I’ve seen what Israel has accomplished. In 1948, the year of Israel’s independence, our population was 800,000. Our main export was oranges. People said then we were too small, too weak, too isolated, too demographically outnumbered to survive, let alone thrive. The skeptics were wrong about Israel then; the skeptics are wrong about Israel now.
Israel’s population has grown tenfold, our economy fortyfold. Today our biggest export is technology – Israeli technology, which powers the world’s computers, cellphones, cars and so much more. …
The future belongs to those who innovate and this is why the future belongs to countries like Israel. Israel wants to be your partner in seizing that future, so I call on all of you: Cooperate with Israel, embrace Israel, dream with Israel. Dream of the future that we can build together, a future of breathtaking progress, a future of security, prosperity and peace, a future of hope for all humanity, a future where even at the UN, even in this hall, Israel will finally, inevitably, take its rightful place among the nations.
[Photo: Kobi Gideon / GPO ]