Endangers Israel and Mideast Stability
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States, strongly condemned President Obama’s Mideast speech given today promoting and supporting the establishment of a Hamas/Fatah/Iran terrorist state on the Auschwitz 1967 indefensible armistice lines. This state would almost surely become a Hamas/Iran terror state threatening Israel and further destabilizing the Mideast. President Obama has dealt Israel a severe diplomatic blow, which harms all those who care about peace and fighting terrorism.
President Obama is either extraordinarily naïve or extraordinarily hostile to the Jewish state of Israel, despite his claims of commitment to Israel’s security. One cannot claim to care about a neighbor’s young children while renting out rooms to child predators.
It is breath-taking, shocking and frightening that at a time when the Nazi-like terrorist group Hamas (a proxy of Iran), whose charter calls for the murder of every Jew (Article 7) and Israel’s destruction (Article 12), merges with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah, forming a unity government, Obama can now call for a PA state and on the ’67 indefensible lines yet. Obama was recently given a Noble Peace Prize; he should now receive the Nobel War Prize for increasing the likelihood of a Mideast war and endangering Israel’s very existence.
After the Hamas-Fatah signing ceremony this month in Cairo Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said Hamas would never recognize Israel’s right to exist and never abandon liberating all of Palestine.
Hamas Minister Fathi Hamad said, “the Jews have become abhorred and loathed outcasts…whenever we achieve something against the Jews, the world applauds us…hatred for Jews is on the rise…people who hate the Jews…will support us.”
President Obama is now supporting a racist, Jew-hating Hamas/Fatah state.
And it gets even uglier and more frightening.
Yunis al Astal, a member of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Parliament said on Hamas al Aqsa TV (May 11, 2011), “the Jews being brought to Palestine is a divine plan that gives the Arabs the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang…the Jews are more dangerous than all of the world’s lethal birds of prey, dangerous reptiles and lethal bacteria combined.”
And Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah is hardly comforting. Abbas said, “we will not ask Hamas to recognize Israel,” and refuses to change the Fatah Charter calling for terrorism and Israel’s destruction. This week he publicly praised those who attacked Israel, from Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza – as well as those who participated in violent demonstrations saying “their blood was not spilled in vain” and that “they died for the Palestinian people’s rights and freedom.”
Abbas promotes the speeches of hateful clerics appointed by the PA justifying suicide bombings and Jew-killing. PA posters glorify suicide bombers. We see official full day programs honoring terrorists, calling them devoted brothers and heroes. We have seen the PA president and prime minister visit terrorists or the homes of suicide bombers’ families, mourning and praising them. We recently saw the Fatah Conference named in honor of Amin Al-Hindi, mastermind of the Munich Olympics terrorist operation.
We have even seen the PA honor Muhammad Fadlallah, responsible in the Hizballah bombing that claimed the lives of 242 U.S. servicemen in 1982. How can Obama support a state whose regime glorifies killers of Americans and Israelis?
We see PA programs and hear PA videos extolling terrorism. We witness scores of schools, streets and sports teams named after terrorists. We have even seen U.S. aid money used to pave a street named after Saddam Hussein. We see PA laws requiring a death sentence for anyone selling land to a Jew. We see a Fatah emblem that drapes all of Israel in a keffiyah next to a rifle and Yasser Arafat.
We have not seen any PA maps, official stationery or school atlases that even show Israel within any borders. We have not seen the PA acknowledge the Jewish religious and historical claim to the land, to Jerusalem, or even to the Western Wall, the holiest of Judaism’s sites. To the contrary, we have seen these repeatedly denied by high PA officials. We have not seen terrorist groups outlawed, as required under the Oslo agreements.
Both Hamas and Fatah have vehemently protested a proposal by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) to include a small unit on the Holocaust as part of the human right curriculum in its schools in the West Bank and Gaza.
Both Fatah and Hamas said the proposal to teach students about the Holocaust was a “provocative act”, with Fatah expressing its opposition to teaching the “enemy’s false claims and lies.”
Hamas alleged it would amount to a “cultural crime” and would pave the way for normalization of ties with Israel, saying: “they [UNRWA] want us to accept the tales and lies to win sympathy.”
And only two days ago in the New York Times Abbas published an Op-Ed filled with vicious anti-Israel lies, where he explicitly proclaimed that a Palestinian state will be formed not to have peace with Israel but to more effectively continue the war against Israel. He wrote “Palestine’s admission to the U.N. would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal mater, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”
Polls show that 90% of Palestinians under 25 and 75% over 25 don’t accept Israel’s existence. Only 13% of Palestinians support educating Palestinian children for peace. Another poll informs us that 85% of Palestinians don’t want peace if it means compromise on borders or settlements or Jerusalem or the Israel-destroying ‘right of return.’ This very month a PEW poll shows 68% of Palestinians support suicide bombing. This terrifying incitement works.
Jewish settlements that encompass only 5% of the West Bank are not the problem. There were no Jewish communities in the West Bank before 1967, yet there was no peace or acceptance of Israel. We do not believe that peace can be built by creating a Palestinian state that is Jew-free. We have therefore been deeply concerned to hear Mr. Abbas and his officials say on more than one occasion that not even one Jew will be permitted to live in a Palestinian state.
The ZOA is also deeply concerned that most Christians have been driven from Bethlehem because their lives have been made miserable under PA rule. Christians in Gaza have also fled rather than live under Hamas. A PA united with Hamas, with this record behind it, indicate that establishing a Palestinian state at this time would likely create a terrorist state, further destabilizing the Middle East.
Yet President Obama mindlessly and shockingly ignores all this vile hatred, vile actions, and continuing threats. The last thing the world needs, Mr. Obama, is another Islamist terrorist state.
As Israeli MK Avi Dichter, former Israeli Minister of Security, wrote on May 13 in the Washington Times, “A primary goal of Hamas is to rebuild the West Bank terrorist network that Israeli security services have dismantled over the past decade. Hamas particularly desires this territory because of its proximity to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and other Israeli cities.
“Under the new Palestinian unity government, Hamas will have ease in implementing its West Bank desires. The group will infuse Judea and Samaria with a jihadist culture reminiscent of the Second Intifada, in which hundreds of Israelis were murdered and thousands wounded.
“Israel must prevent this at all costs.
“Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, we have not received quiet but rather thousands of rockets and mortars fired into our civilian towns. If Hamas is allowed to expand into the West Bank, it will create another terrorist base – this time bordering Jerusalem and Israel’s central Tel Aviv region.”
As Congressman Allen West (R-FL) of Florida said today, “Today’s endorsement by President Barack Obama of the creation of a Hamas-led Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders, signals the most egregious foreign policy decision his administration has made to date, and could be the beginning of the end as we know it for the Jewish state.
“America should never negotiate with the Palestinian Authority – which has aligned itself with Hamas. Palestine is a region, not a people or a modern state. Based upon Roman Emperor Hadrian’s declaration in 73 AD, the original Palestinian people are the Jewish people.
“It’s time for the American people to stand by our strongest ally, the Jewish State of Israel, and reject this foreign policy blunder of epic proportions.
“President Obama has not stood for Israel or the Jewish people and has made it clear where the United States will stand when Palestine attempts to gain recognition of statehood by the United Nations. The President should focus on the real obstacle to security – the Palestinian leadership and its ultimate goal to eliminate Israel and the Jewish people.”
ZOA President Morton A. Klein said, “President Obama’s speech simply rewards terrorism and the PA refusal to negotiate until they receive everything upfront.
“This unprecedented move and blunder will not make the Palestinians any more supportive of Israel, any less inclined to violence against Israel, and any less inclined to work for Israel’s destruction, and any less hostile to the West.
“President Obama has severely harmed Israel’s interests and America’s interests.
“Today, we are ashamed of and frightened by America’s policy regarding Israel. The ZOA prediction several years ago that President Obama will become the most hostile president to Israel ever, has come true.
“Helen Thomas, Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abuneimah, J Street, and George Soros, and every anti-Semite in America, are surely thrilled by this speech. “All those who love peace, justice, and Israel – are not.”
We urge friends of Israel and enemies of Islamist terrorism to contact your Members of Congress to fight against Obama’s anti-Israel policy.