In my post yesterday, I mentioned Mahmoud Abbas’ ugly speech to the UN. Of course the votes of all the representatives were predetermined, but the juxtaposition of Abbas’ remarks to the affirmative votes points up the international hypocrisy surrounding Israel and the Palestinians, as well as a striking ignorance of history.

Abbas began by describing the recent operation in Gaza, whose purpose was to end the missile bombardment of southern Israel and which was carried out with care and precision unprecedented in military history — certainly with far more care than has been employed by NATO in its operations in Libya and elsewhere — as “Israeli aggression,” and referred to “men, women and children murdered along with their dreams, their hopes, their future and their longing to live an ordinary life and to live in freedom and peace.”

He does not, of course, mention the hundreds of short and long-range missiles aimed at the civilian population of Israel before and during the war, a war crime which would have become a bloody atrocity as well had it not been for Israel’s ability to protect its people (albeit at great expense). Later he even suggests that the operation was in response to his UN initiative, and not to the rockets falling on Israeli towns!

He refers several times to Palestinian children, while he well knows that rockets were launched at Israel from residential locations in Gaza and near to schools, thus making human shields out of them.

Then he turns to the primal source of Palestinian resentment, the nakba, in full historical revisionist mode:

The Palestinian people, who miraculously recovered from the ashes of Al-Nakba of 1948, which was intended to extinguish their being and to expel them in order to uproot and erase their presence, which was rooted in the depths of their land and depths of history. In those dark days, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were torn from their homes and displaced within and outside of their homeland, thrown from their beautiful, embracing, prosperous country to refugee camps in one of the most dreadful campaigns of ethnic cleansing and dispossession in modern history.

An account closer to the truth would be that the Palestinian Arabs viciously attacked the Jewish pre-state communities, because the prospect of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine was unacceptable to them. Anti-Jewish pogroms inspired by Nazi collaborator al-Husseini escalated into war, at which point much of the educated and wealthy Arab leadership left Palestine for the duration, leaving the rest of the population to their own devices. After the end of the British Mandate and the declaration of the Jewish state in May 1948, the Palestinian Arabs were joined by their ‘friends’ from the neighboring Arab nations.

The Arab nations had no interest in an independent Palestinian state — they wanted to dismember Palestine and annex the territory. To this end, they encouraged Palestinians to leave their homes, adding to those who fled to avoid fighting or were frightened by atrocity propaganda. When they lost the war, the Arab nations forced Palestinian refugees on their territory into refugee camps, and ever since have prohibited them and their descendants from being repatriated to anywhere but Israel.

It is true that there were cases — in particular some hostile villages located above the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — where Arab residents were forced out of their homes by Jewish forces. But the numbers were small compared to those that left of their own accord.

Regarding the “depths of history,” the majority of today’s ‘Palestinian people’ is descended from Arabs that migrated to Palestine between about 1830, with the Egyptian Muhammad Ali’s campaign to conquer Syria, through the Mandate period, when they were recruited to work on construction projects by the  British, emigrated from Syria due to political unrest or drought, or were attracted by the economic development wrought by the Zionists.

Again it is true that there are some Arab families whose history in the region went back much farther. But it wasn’t a “beautiful, embracing, prosperous country.” As Mark Twain described it in 1869, it was a desperately poor and disease-ridden place, heavily taxed by its Ottoman Turk rulers.

Before.

A convoy of bulldozers arrived on Tuesday morning at the outskirts of the Arab village Al-Mofkra near the town of Avigail and demolished a mosque that had been built illegally. The mosque was built by the villagers, members of the Hamada clan, in violation of a court settlement and as a challenge against legal construction in Avigail, Jewish Voice reports.

The mosque demolition followed a Regavim movement’s appeal to the Supreme Court, after the movement’s field coordinator, Oved Arad, had determined that the Arabs built the mosque illegally. These same Arab villagers had gone even further and continued to build and pave the mosque despite the explicit prohibition by the judges.

At the hearing on the petition a month ago, the Supreme Court justices urged the Civil Administration to demolish the mosque as soon as possible. President of the Supreme Court Justice Grunis even gained some notoriety at the time, when he joked that illegal structures in Judea and Samaria should be “killed when they’re young.”

The Regavim movement released a statement saying “the law should be kept regarding the Palestinians, too. The demolition of the mosque is a warning to the residents of Al-Mofkra and the entire South Hebron Hills, that they must obey the law and build only in designated areas.”

Regavim officials said they “will continue to document Palestinian delinquency, and each illegal construction will be handled in the judicial and public arenas.”

My wife forwarded to me this morning an email from our friend Jill from Oakland, Calif. Jill asked: “What do you and Yori think about a 2 state solution? I am very interested in your opinions.” All love, Jille.

Hi Ya, Jill!

The 2-state solution – which seems an obvious idea, what could be more logical than a case in which two people are disputing ownership of the same land – they should split it – has been proposed and tried several times:

In 1936, a British fact finding committee recommended it, and the publication resulted in an Arab rebellion that spread across the Middle east, flamed by Nazi support.

In 1947, the UN voted in favor of just such a plan, resulting in immediate hostilities, developing into the 1948-49 war in which local Arabs and invaders from 5 Arab states attempted to annihilate the Jews of Palestine.

In 1994, the Oslo Accords to split the land resulted in several years of the worst terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

In 2000, the Camp David agreement negotiated by Clinton between then Israeli PM Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat resulted in the Second Intifada, once again, rivers of blood.

Remember what Albert Einstein said about the definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

Mind you, I’m not branding the Arabs in this conflict as the bad guys and the Jews as angels. Israel, for reasons of stupidity, greed, chauvinism – you name it – has missed as many opportunities as the Arabs have to resolve the problem in ways that would be beneficial to everyone living here. But what is the common theme in all the past abysmal failures to turn that very logical 2-state solution into anything other than a bloody mess?

It requires a straight forward, honest and sincere acceptance of a Jewish state in some recognized borders in the area somewhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. So far, every single Arab leader who actually supported this position openly and bravely — was found by an assassin’s knife or bullet or car bomb.

Mahmoud Abbas, the current President of the Palestinian Authority, has been cleverly playing a double game, avoiding an actual recognition of an Israeli state with full rights, but appearing as a man of peace and of law, while the other half of the Palestinian nation, the one in Gaza which is ruled by Hamas, is vowing to eliminate the “Zionist entity” by fire. One hand offers an illusive peace, the other promises – and delivers – death to the Jews.

I’ve lived for almost sixty years and learned at least one thing: There are no spontaneous, popular movements, demonstrations, or eruptions of violence. If those things happen, it means someone wanted them to happen and was willing to pay, be it the U.S., Europe, Iran, the Saudis, the Egyptians, Israel.

The fact is no one actually wants a democratic, independent Palestinian state. Everybody wants and badly needs hordes of Palestinians vying for such a state but never getting one. When they’re in a dynamic state, they can be used – by everyone, including Israel. And each time a Palestinian leader tries to actually go seriously about having a state – he or she meet a bullet.

In my opinion, the best thing for the region would be a Jewish, Democratic state from the river to the sea, with equal rights for everybody. It exists as Israel right now, where some 20 percent of the citizens are non-Jews, mostly Muslim and Christian Arabs. They vote and get elected (11 Knesset seats are held by Arabs), many of them serve in the military, go to university and work as professionals. On Shabbat and Jewish holidays, the Israeli medical system is run almost exclusively by Arabs. Arab municipalities are thriving.

They all recognize that they’re living in a Jewish state. They all bitch about discrimination. They all have a zillion anecdotal stories about how tough it is to live as an Arab minority in a majority Jewish state. But very few of them would rather live in, say, Syria, or Iraq, or Iran, or even Egypt. You may not know this, but Palestinians are kind of the Jews of the Arab world – despised and discriminated against. You may recall that, back in 1991, after the American Desert Storm effort restored the Kuwaiti royal family, the first thing they did was to throw 400 thousand Palestinians out to the desert, punishing all of them for the few who had collaborated with the invading Iraqis.

As was to be expected, shortly after the start of the ceasefire, Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza are beginning to push the goal posts, to test just how far they can challenge Israel’s commitment to securing the Gaza Strip borders, both on land on at sea.

From day one following the ceasefire, Gaza Arabs have been taking advantage of the reported loosening of some restrictions regarding how close to the border fence they were allowed to get, and attempted to cut through the fence and infiltrate into Israeli territory. This included one case of an Arab who made it through the fence and attacked 39-year-old Yael Matzpun who was sleeping in her home with her 4-year-old daughter. The world has since hailed the fact that the Israeli woman was able to repel her attacker, and alert security forces that killed him.

It appears that the IDF has since decided to increase its watch over Gaza.

This has obviously upset the other side.

Two Arabs were injured on Saturday by Israeli gunfire near the border fence in eastern Gaza, according to the Ma’an news agency, and Hamas is accusing Israel of violating the Egyptian mediated ceasefire.

An IDF spokeswoman said that “a few Palestinian rioters approached the security fence and in order to distance them soldiers acted in accordance with IDF rules of engagement.”

To remind you, those rules of engagement have been revised after Operation Pillar of Defense, and any firing by Israeli soldiers at Arabs nearing the border fence must be pre-approved by the regional headquarters.

Also on Saturday, the Israeli navy stopped 13 Arab fishermen and detained them off the coast of Gaza, according to Ma’an.

Mahfouth Kabariti, head of the a Gaza-based Palestinian association of fishing and sea sports, asserted that the boats were within the range of six nautical miles that Israel is said to have agreed on in the Egypt-brokered ceasefire last Wednesday.

An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma’an that three boats had “deviated from the official designated fishing area.”

“Navy forces acted in accordance with the rules of engagement and called on the boats to return to the designated area,” she said. “When they failed to comply, they were taken to Ashdod port and transferred into the custody of the security forces.”

Last week, the Israeli navy detained more than 20 fishermen who were later released.

On Friday evening, 21-year-old Mahmoud Jaroun was hit by a gunshot to the pelvis, and was evacuated to Abu Yousif An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, before medics announced his death around midnight. According to Ma’an, 11 Arabs altogether sustained wounds by Israeli fire on Friday along the borders between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

The Gaza Strip’s Hamas government described the death of Jaroun, as well as the Israeli navy’s seizure of Arab fishermen, as violations of the ceasefire mediated by Cairo.

“We have discussed this with Egyptian officials, so they guarantee a cessation to those violations,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

The Islamic Jihad military wing released a statement saying that “ongoing and flagrant violations of the truce (by Israel) will undermine the deal and force factions to respond in a suitable manner.”

Increased Arab access to the Gaza fence and to fishing waters heavily patrolled by Israel were reportedly among conditions set by Hamas for the ceasefire.

Police foiled a possible terror attack in Ma’aleh Adumim on Thursday evening after noticing a suspicious vehicle trying to drive into the city of Ma’aleh Adumim, just outside of Jerusalem.

The police stopped the car which had no plates, and arrested the Arab driver (40), a resident of the Shomron, who said he had planned to commit a terror attack in Maaleh Adumim as part of an agreement to end a feud with another Arab from the town of Azariyah, which is near Ma’aleh Adumim.

No explosives or weapons were found in the vehicle.

On November 29, 1947 the United Nations voted in a plan for the partition of the British Mandate territory of Palestine. The plan came to be called the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine or United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181.

The plan was approved by the United Nations General Assembly by 33 votes to 13, with 10 abstentions.The plan would have partitioned the territory of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with the Greater Jerusalem area, including Bethlehem, coming under international control.

As we all know, the Arab countries, instead of taking the opportunity to build yet another Arab state, decided to attack and try to destroy Israel in the following May of 1948. The Arabs lost, and Israel began to expand back into its natural and historical borders, which continued on in 1967.

The Partition Plan wasn’t actually something to celebrate about, as previous international decisions, most notably the San Remo agreement and Balfour Declaration, had designated all of the Land of Israel for the Jewish People, and the decision of November 29th, actually stripped away significant parts of our country from us.

But still, for those alive at the time, it meant international recognition with practical applications under international consensus and law for creating a Jewish State. and they were willing to take whatever they could get.

In Hebrew, the 29th of November is more commonly referred to as “Kaf-Tet B’November”.

At times, complicated issues are most clearly understood in simple terms. Speaking before the Knesset in 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who at the time was the opposition leader) captured, in two brief sentences, that which lies at the heart of the ongoing, centuries-old Arab-Israeli conflict: “The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms, there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms, there would be no more war.”

Indeed, how does one peacefully coexist with those whose singular obsession is that one should not exist at all? Can people who simply wish to live in peace do so while surrounded by those who view them as, in the words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “a cancerous tumor” – “the most detested people in all humanity” whose very nation must be “wiped out from the map”?

But according to the burgeoning worldwide Islamic caliphate, it’s not just Israel, the “Little Satan,” that must face inhalation. So too must America, the “Big Satan,” be destroyed: “And God willing, with the force of God behind it,” Ahmadinejad once promised, “we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.”

A nuclear-armed Iran is perhaps months away. It is folly most grave to believe that this Islamic regime – a regime that holds there can be no greater honor than to destroy both Israel and America via nuclear suicide bombings – won’t deploy such weaponry at the earliest possible opportunity.

Yet today’s anti-Semitic axis-of-the-willfully-blind – the liberal intelligentsia, rank-and-file “progressives” and that elusive creature; the “moderate Muslim” – inexplicably, if not unwittingly, rally behind the principal Islamic cause: Death to the infidels (Koran 9.5).

“Free occupied Palestine!” they drone, while either disregarding the long history of deadly Arab aggression in the region or laboring under obtuse ignorance of it.

By “occupied Palestine,” of course, Arabs and Arab sympathizers reference lands won by Israel in its defensive 1967 Six-Day War when it devastated the armies of neighboring Syria, Jordan and Egypt as those warring nations characteristically made ready to “wipe Israel from the map.”

By seizing the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River, Israel had gained a defensive stronghold crucial to its very survival. Still, many of these territories remained very much occupied – and do to this day – by thousands of Arabs who now fall under Israeli governance.

Therein lies the struggle.

So in truth, Israel no more occupies this fictional “Palestine” than do Californians “occupy” Sacramento.

Yet imagine the Mexican government launching dozens of rockets each day, for years, into Los Angeles neighborhoods, intentionally targeting innocent American citizens.

Or visualize a Mexican suicide bomber with full government authority strolling into a crowded Toys “R” Us in suburban Bakersfield, ripping himself and dozens of women and children to shreds.

Picture a quiet, unassuming woman cleverly disguised as an expectant mother boarding a San Francisco trolley and blowing it up along with scores of innocent passengers.

Do you not think the international community would forcefully condemn such horrific acts of terror? Do you not think America would respond with that level of force necessary to eliminate the threat? Would it not have an absolute right – indeed an absolute duty to do so?

Of course it would.

Yet despite the recent fragile cease-fire that Hamas violated within hours, this is exactly what Israelis face each day. This is their reality.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – with Iran’s full economic and military backing – have been attacking innocent Israeli citizens in this very fashion for years, recently ramping up such attacks.

The only wonder is that Israel has shown such remarkable restraint in its response.

“Iran has turned Gaza into an outpost of their nation,” Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. recently told a group of Christian leaders in a special briefing convened by Liberty Counsel. “More than 5.5 million of our citizens are now under threat of missile attack, and over 1,300 missiles have been fired at us since we took action against Hamas.”

No reasonable, peace-loving person should have any sympathy whatsoever for the Iranian government, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority – all guilty of serial war crimes – even as we all mourn the tragic loss of innocent Arab lives in Gaza and anywhere else it occurs. So do the Israeli people. So does the Israeli government.

Anet Haskia is not the typical mom of a soldier serving in the Israel Defense Forces. But Haskia, a Muslim Arab who grew up in a mixed Arab-Jewish city in the north, is breathing a little easier this week.

For Haskia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision not to enter the Gaza Strip last week was “brave and right.”

The mother of three children, with a 20-year-old IDF combat soldier, Haskia told Tazpit News Agency that “many Israeli soldiers’ lives were saved thanks to that decision.”

“Going into Gaza would have yielded success for the Hamas terrorists. Israel did what it had to do for the time being to stop the rocket attacks, and played it smart.”

Haskia who was born and raised in Acre (Akko), a mixed Arab-Jewish city in the Western Galilee in northern Israel, is openly vocal about her support for the Jewish state of Israel.

“I am proud to live in Israel,” she says. “I am even prouder for the fact that both my sons have served as soldiers for this country.”

“If I were living in Gaza, I would have no rights as a woman under Hamas,” explained Haskia. “And you can’t expect anything different—Hamas is a terror organization, they treat people like animals with no regard to human life. They will never hold democratic elections like we do in Israel.”

“I’m open about these truths,” adds Haskia. “The Arab MKs in the Israeli Knesset don’t represent me. The extremist left-wing in Israel also doesn’t represent me and others in my community, who share my beliefs. Those corrupt politicians just contribute to hate, incitement and lies.”

“When an IDF soldier is killed in combat, not one Arab MK will stand up and offer his condolences to the bereaved family,” she exclaims. “These Arab MKs enjoy democratic rights but don’t appreciate them.”

Anet explains that her attitude toward the Jewish state as a member of the Arab minority stems from the fact that she was raised in a home that “respected both Hebrew and Arabic speakers.”

“When I grew up in Akko, we had good relations between Jewish and Arab families.”

“I realized early on that I wanted my children to advance in Israeli society. They studied in a private Jewish school on a kibbutz and were exposed to a different mentality. It was not an easy road, but I taught my children to always be proud of their identity and not to cry and whine like our politicians.”

During Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense, Haskia did not just sit worried over what may happen to her son – the proud mom did her share to help Israel as well. “For more than 12 years, Hamas has been firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and all you see are photos of Gaza in the media. And some of those photos are fakes,” Haskia pointed out.

“I noticed many times in Arab media that ‘Gaza’ photos of bleeding civilians were actually photos from other Arab conflicts in the Middle East— Syria and Iraq for example. They were being used to incite hatred against Israel, so I started to post these fake photos and their origins on my Facebook wall.”

Haskia, however, has political ambitions as well. “I want to be part of Israeli politics some day and make a difference by representing my people. There are many people who are too scared to speak up, who love Israel like I do and have done well here. They want a future where their children will not fall to hatred and incitement, but overcome that. I want to be their voice,” she concludes.