Dear Friend of Israel, Friend of FLAME:
As expected, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a harsh, hateful speech at the U.N. last Friday, in which he also made formal his bid for a unilateral declaration of statehood for Palestine. Abbas' words were surprising only because they were so blunt about the the P.A.'s underlying assumptions about Israel and the Jews.
While we at FLAME have warned that the Palestinians do not really seek a peaceful two-state solution, Abbas himself made clear that he has no respect for Jewish rights to any part of Palestine. First, he charged that Arabs have been under occupation in Palestine for 63 years---not since the 1967 war in which Israel took control of Gaza and the West Bank, but long before that, ever since the day of its birth in 1948. In other words, all of Israel "occupies" land that belongs to the Arabs. Appropriately, Abbas continually referred to Israel as a colonial power, effectively denying any Jewish roots in Palestine.
While Abbas is "only" requesting that the U.N. declare a state based on the pre-1967 cease-fire lines, get this: The P.A. has made clear over recent days that even once a state is declared, hundreds of thousands of descendents of Palestinian refugees currently living in Gaza and the West Bank---45% of its population---would not become citizens of Palestine, but rather would remain refugees until they are allowed to return to their ancestors' "homelands" inside Israel. In other words, what's ours is ours and what's yours is ours.
As a clarifying side note, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told the Associated Press last week that Abbas is guilty of treason for seeking recognition for a state with pre-1967 borders. "The Palestinian people do not beg the world for a state . . . States liberate their land first and then the political body can be established," he said. Recall that just a few months ago, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas signed a merger deal in Cairo.
Abbas also called Israel a racist state, ignoring the fact that more than a million Arabs live in Israel and that the PA recently declared no Jews will be allowed to live in a future Palestine. The capper in Abbas' speech---if we needed more proof that his ultimate goal is conquest of the Holy Land---was his statement that the Palestinians will never accept a Jewish state. Forget the fact that the Palestinian state will be designated as Islamic, whose governance will be based in Sharia law.
It's important when you speak with friends and colleagues that they understand the ulterior motives of Arab Palestinians---not a peaceful two-state solution, but utter destruction of the Jewish state. As you know, many liberal-minded Americans falsely project their good intentions on the Palestinians. This week's FLAME HOTLINE gives you a great set of facts you can use to explain the duplicity of the Palestinian Authority.
Take a minute to review this short, but powerful article by commentator Jeff Jacoby on the true reasons the Palestinians don't yet have their own state. Then take a minute, if you will, using the Forward to a Friend button below, to pass along this week's FLAME Hotline to your friends, family, and colleagues.
Finally, we encourage you to write to President Obama right now, and let him know that you oppose unilateral Palestinian statehood. Urge him to cut aid to the U.N. and cut aid to the Palestinian Authority. Please write the President this minute, while you have this Hotline front and center. Give just five minutes to put teeth in your support to Israel.
Thanks.
Best Regards,
Jim Sinkinson
Vice President, FLAME
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FLAME has been calling for an end to U.S. taxpayer support of the Palestinian Authority and its new partner, Hamas, for months now. In fact, with your help, we've been publishing an expose of this alarming, unlawful waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars in magazines and newspapers, including college newspapers, that reach more than 10 million readers monthly. If you haven't yet, I recommend you review this position paper now: "Why Should the U.S. Fund the Terror Group Hamas?" In addition, this piece is being sent to every member of the U.S. Congress. If you agree that this kind of public relations effort on Israel's behalf is valuable, I urge you to support us. Remember: FLAME's powerful ability to influence public opinion comes from individuals like you, one by one. I hope you'll consider giving a donation now, as you're able---with $500, $250, $100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To donate online, just go to http://www.factsandlogic.org/make_a_donation.html. Now more than ever we need your support to ensure that Israel gets the support it needs---from the U.S. Congress, from President Obama, and from the American people.
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A Palestinian state? Don't count on it
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, September 21, 2011
If the Palestinian Authority genuinely desired international recognition as a sovereign state, Mahmoud Abbas wouldn't have come to New York to seek membership in the UN General Assembly [last] week. There would have been no need to, for Palestine would have long since taken its seat in the United Nations.
Were Palestinian statehood Abbas's real goal, after all, he could have delivered it to his people three years ago. In 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state on territory equal (after land swaps) to 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, with free passage between the two plus a capital in the Arab section of Jerusalem. Yet Abbas turned down the Israeli offer. And he has refused ever since even to engage in negotiations.
"It is our legitimate right to demand the full membership of the state of Palestine in the UN," Abbas declared in Ramallah on Friday, "to put an end to a historical injustice by attaining liberty and independence, like the other peoples of the earth."
But for the better part of a century, the Arabs of Palestine have consistently said no when presented with the chance to build a state of their own. They said no in 1937, when the British government, which then ruled Palestine, proposed to divide the land into separate Arab and Jewish states. Arab leaders said no again in 1947, choosing to go to war rather than accept the UN's decision to partition Palestine between its Jewish and Arab populations. When Israel in 1967 offered to relinquish the land it had acquired in exchange for peace with its neighbors, the Arab world's response, issued at a summit in Khartoum, was not one no, but three: "No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel."
At Camp David in 2000, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians a sovereign state with shared control of Jerusalem and billions of dollars in compensation for Palestinian refugees. Yasser Arafat refused the offer, and returned to launch the deadly terror war known as the Second Intifada.
There is no shortage in this world of stateless peoples yearning for a homeland, many of them ethnic groups with centuries of history, unique in language and culture. Kurds or Tamils or Tibetans — whose longstanding quests for a nation-state the world ignores — must find it maddening to watch the international community trip over itself in its eagerness to proclaim, again and again, the need for a Palestinian state. And they must be baffled by the Palestinians' invariable refusal to take yes for an answer.
It is no mystery, however. The raison d'être of the Palestinian movement has never been the establishment and building-up of a sovereign Palestinian homeland. It has always been the negation of a sovereign Jewish homeland. That is why well-intended proposals for a "two-state solution" have never come to fruition, no matter how earnestly proposed by US presidents or UN secretaries-general. That is why the basic charter not just of Hamas but even of Abbas's supposedly moderate Fatah vows to continue the "armed struggle" until "the Zionist state is demolished." And that is why Abbas and other Palestinian leaders insist that a Palestinian state would be explicitly Arab and Muslim, but adamantly refuse to acknowledge that Israel is legitimately the Jewish state.
The goal of the Palestinian movement has always been the negation of the Jewish state. Both Fatah and Hamas feature logos that depict crossed weapons imposed against the map of Israel.
"Palestinian nationalism," Edward Said told an interviewer in 1999, "was based on driving all Israelis out." Sadly, it still is.
Last week, to kick off its campaign seeking UN recognition as a state, the Palestinian Authority staged a highly publicized march to the UN offices in Ramallah, where a letter was delivered for Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Officials named Latifa Abu Hmeid to lead the procession and hand over the letter. "She was chosen," reported the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, "because she is a symbol of Palestinian suffering as a result of the occupation."
What the paper did not mention is that Abu Hmeid is the mother of four murderers, whose sons are serving a total of 18 life sentences for their involvement in multiple terrorist attacks. According to Palestinian Media Watch, this is not the first time Abu Hmeid has been honored. Last year, the Palestinian Authority awarded her "the Plaque of Resoluteness and Giving," and a government minister publicly extolled her virtues: "It is she who gave birth to the fighters, and she deserves that we bow to her in salute and in honor."
It is this grotesque and bloody culture that Palestinian leaders want the UN to affirm as worthy of statehood. The wonder is not they make the request, but that anyone thinks it should be granted.
