These are notes Alan Stein used for a talk at AACI in Netanya on March 19, 2017. It's a variation of a talk "Inconvenient truths the anti-Zionists don't want you to know" (http://primerct.blogspot.co.il/2016/10/inconvenient-truths-anti-zionists-dont.html) which he gave at the University of Connecticut in October, 2016.
In October, I gave a version of this talk at the University of Connecticut in Waterbury, Connecticut, where I lived for nearly 40 years. That was shortly after our mayor had gotten arrested. I told my audience I felt there was a special connection between Waterbury and Netanya. Waterbury is a little bit like Chicago. The first mayor I knew in Waterbury, Ed Bergin, got arrested. He got lucky; he didn't get convicted. The second mayor I knew, Joey Santopietro, got convicted and served time. The third mayor I knew, who I also had as a student at the University of Connecticut, Phil Giordano, has been in jail since 2003 and has about 16 years to go on his sentence.
Meanwhile, a good friend of mine from Waterbury moved to Tsfat a year and a half ago. By coincidence, now the Tsfat mayor has been arrested.
And another friend, from a suburb of Waterbury, bought an apartment in Ashkelon. Another coincidence, now the mayor of Ashkelon has been arrested.
I'm getting afraid Israel will start discouraging aliyah from Connecticut.
In Waterbury, I spoke to a general audience about the inconvenient truths the anti-Zionists didn't want them to know. Here, we know them, but I'm talking about them anyway because while we take them for granted, and generally take the anti-Israel bias in the media for granted, we shouldn't.
Those of us living in Israel are often in the best position to debunk the lies told about Israel and get across those inconvenient truths.
Hence the title of this talk: "Getting across the truths the anti-Zionists find inconvenient … and don’t want people to know.”
I'll go into some of them, in some detail. I've also prepared a "brief" list. You'll probably think of others and we can spend some time commiserating.
But mostly I want to encourage you to do your part, reading newspapers - from here, mostly online - and responding, especially when you see unfair items about which you can bring your perspective, from living in Israel, and can write with authority. Letters to newspapers, in talkback forums, on Facebook, on Twitter, whatever venue you're comfortable. None of us can do everything, but we all can do something.
And make sure you're on the CAMERA and HonestReporting mailing lists.
CAMERA
HonestReporting
http://www.honestreporting.com
And if you're not already, give me your email address so I can put you on the PRIMER-Israel mailing list. I send out alerts when I become aware of items to which responses from Israelis like us can be particularly useful.
PRIMER-Israel
Today, I'll take for about a half hour to describe some instances of irresponsible, factually challenged newspaper items, briefly list a small subset of inconvenient truths - after all, I'm a mathematician - and document a few of them in more detail. I'll make sure to leave time for questions and discussion.
Not long ago, there was an Associated Press story about meetings a year before, meetings including then American Secretary of State John Kerry, Jordan's King Abdullah, Egypt's President el-Sissi and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Here are some of the headlines:
MetroWest Daily News: "Ex-officials: Leader spurned peace offer"
Boston Globe: "Israeli leader rejected secret peace plan"
Hartford Courant: "Ex-officials: Netanyahu nixed secret peace deal"
Waterbury Republican-American: "Israel spurned secret peace deal"
Reading the story, it was clear there was no peace plan, the was no peace deal, and there certainly wasn't a peace offer.
And then, a few days later, there was an article in the Jerusalem Post by Herb Keinon that made it clear that there was some common ground among Abdullah, el-Sissi and Netanyahu, but it was Kerry, not Netanyahu, the put the kibosh on everything.
Incredible! Isn't it? But stuff like that happens just about every day. Indeed, it happened again yesterday.
One week ago, Jeff Jacoby published an op-ed on anti-Semitism in the Boston Globe. It wasn’t about Israel. I keep a tally of pro- and anti-Israel opinion pieces in the Boston Globe and didn’t even include it. Here’s the op-ed, with the relatively insignificant parts that even remotely related to Israel highlighted.
Boston Globe
From left and right, anti-Semitism on rise
By Jeff Jacoby, GLOBE COLUMNIST
This weekend, Jews the world over celebrate the festival of Purim, a highlight of which is the public reading of the biblical book of Esther. In 10 fast-moving chapters, it recounts the first recorded attempt at a Jewish genocide. The Persian emperor Ahasuerus (known to historians as Xerxes I) allows himself to be persuaded by Haman, a powerful courtier, that the Jews are a disloyal and disobedient minority who ought to be eradicated. The emperor signs an edict authorizing Haman and his followers "to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children, in one day.'' But the plot is foiled thanks to court intrigues involving Mordechai, the leader of the Jewish community in the imperial city of Shushan, and the courage and faith of Esther, the young Jewish heroine who becomes Ahasuerus's queen.
On the Jewish calendar, Purim is a joyful day. Families distribute gifts of food, alms are lavished on the poor, children (and even adults) wear costumes - and at every mention of Haman's name during the reading of Esther, the congregation breaks out in a raucous din of boos and noisemakers.
It's easy to celebrate Purim with hilarity when Jews feel safe and welcome, and in modern times there is nowhere on Earth they have felt safer and more welcome than the United States.
Last month, the Pew Research Center released the results of a survey showing Jews to be the most warmly regarded religious group in America. It was Pew's second such survey in three years, and both times the finding was the same. "We love our country, and America loves us right back,'' wrote David Suissa, the publisher of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, after the Pew numbers came out. Jews, who know only too well what it means to be a hunted minority, have been blessed to find in America a degree of benevolence, respect, and freedom unparalleled in their long and precarious history.
But Purim arrives this year amid an alarming surge in anti-Semitic menace.
Since January, Jewish community centers and organizations nationwide have been targeted with anonymous bomb threats - at least 140 such threats to date. At Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Rochester, N.Y., hundreds of gravestones have been toppled or smashed. In Evansville, Ind., a gun was fired through the window of synagogue classroom.
During the recent election cycle, Internet trolls from the so-called alt-right unleashed repugnant attacks on Jewish journalists who questioned or criticized the rise of Donald Trump, often suggesting that they prepare to die in a new Holocaust. Equally horrific anti-Semitic eruptions have come from the left, especially on college campuses, where virulent hostility toward Israel often boils over into undisguised hatred of Jews.
Thus the paradox: In the nation where Jews are more welcomed than ever, animosity toward Jews is more palpable than ever.
To many on the left, the upwelling of anti-Semitic incidents and rhetoric is plainly connected with Republican politics. Trump's strong appeal to white nationalists, the Jew-baiting memes and tropes that showed up in his ads and social media, and his seeming unwillingness until quite recently to explicitly condemn anti-Semitism - while Trump may harbor no personal ill will toward Jews, he has too often enabled, and pandered to, those who do.
To many conservatives, meanwhile, it goes without saying that contemporary anti-Semitism is overwhelmingly a product of the hard left, which seethes with bitterness toward the Jewish state. The anti-Zionist boycott campaign, the Israel "apartheid'' slander, the ominous atmosphere in academia - all of it has had the effect of moving bigotry from the fever swamps on the fringe ever closer to the mainstream.
Both camps make a legitimate point. Jew-bashers can be found on the left and the right; often it is the only thing they have in common. In our hyperpolarized political atmosphere, it isn't surprising that anti-Semitism has become one more excuse for partisans to point fingers at each other. But history's oldest hatred has never been limited to one party or ideology or worldview.
Anti-Semitism is an intellectual sickness, a societal toxin that is endlessly adaptable. Jews have been tortured and tormented for not being Christian and for not being Muslim. They have been brutally persecuted for being capitalists, and just as brutally persecuted for being Communists. They have been hated for being weak and easily scapegoated - and hated for being strong and influential. Jews have been killed for their faith, for their lifestyle, for their national identity, for their "race..'
A key teaching of the Book of Esther is that once the plague of Jew-hatred gets in the air, almost any environment can nourish it. Another is that Jew-hatred does not subside on its own. It must be confronted, denounced, and defeated.
"We love our country, and America loves us right back.'' That has been manifestly, wonderfully true for decades, but will it continue to be? Elsewhere, the post-Holocaust taboo on overt Jew-hatred has long since crumbled. Can that now be happening in the United States? Pray this Purim that the answer is no. For if America succumbs to the anti-Semitic derangement, it isn't only Jews who will suffer.
Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeff_jacoby.
You can see, there was very little relating to Israel.
The Boston Globe didn’t publish any letters about the actual content of the op-ed, but yesterday published no fewer than three letters totally misrepresenting those small portions of the op-ed and using them as an excuse to viciously attack Israel.
The first letter:
Boston Globe
There's room to protest Israel
Hate crimes shouldn't be lumped together with legitimate protest
Jeff Jacoby ("From left and right, anti-Semitism on rise,'' Opinion, March 12) distorts the issue of the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States. By equating the unprecedented rise in physical and verbal attacks on Jewish institutions since the elections with criticism of Israel, he sows confusion and distracts from the real threats facing American Jews, Muslims, immigrants, and people of color.
By attacking the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, Jacoby implies that attacks on people based on their religious affiliation are equivalent to criticisms of a nation's policies, practices, and laws.
As Joseph Levine, professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, wrote recently in response to anti-BDS legislation: "Israel is a state, not an ethnic or religious category, while being Jewish is precisely an ethnic-religious category. . . . States that violate rights can be legitimately targeted by boycotts and sanctions, while ethnic-religious identities cannot. That was the principle underlying the BDS movement against apartheid South Africa . . . and underlies the legitimacy of the BDS movement to defend Palestinians against the actions of the Israeli state..'
Yes, the desecration of cemeteries and the threats to synagogues and schools is egregious anti-Semitism. No, challenging Israel's violations of international law and human rights is not anti-Semitism.
Marc Gurvitch
Jamaica Plain
The writer is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace-Boston.
The second letter:
Jeff Jacoby points his pen at both the traditional anti-Semitism of right-wing bigots and what he describes as more recent anti-Semitism from the "hard left,'' which he implies is the result of an "anti-Zionist boycott campaign,'' "Israel 'apartheid' slander,'' and some undefined "ominous atmosphere in academia..'
Jacoby offers nothing to indicate which portion of the hate crimes is attributable to these hard-lefties. Without any supporting statistics, he is lumping hate crimes against Jews with the very legitimate boycotts of companies that profit from the land, labor, and colonization of the occupied West Bank and the very accurate use of the term apartheid for the segregation and second-class citizenship to which Israel subjects its Arab citizens.
Brown and Lois Pulliam
Bedford
The third letter:
An anti-Zionist's appeal to the right: Do not commit hatred in my name
I am one of those anti-Zionists Jeff Jacoby deplores. I find the actions of the government of Israel toward Palestinians horrific, and I advocate boycotts, divestment, and sanctions as tools to support Palestinian rights.
But I am not an anti-Semite. I abhor the painting of swastikas, the calling in of bomb threats, and the desecration of cemeteries. I urge others: Do not do these things in my name or in the name of anti-Zionism. If you oppose the actions of Israel, speak up against them. But do not resort to violence or threats. The Jews you hurt by such acts are not your enemies.
I call on those on the right to join me in a clear condemnation of anti-Semitism.
Ken Olum
Sharon
I think they dost protest too much
The question is, what can we do? What should we do?
I think we should all do what we can do, what we feel most comfortable ... but maybe sometimes a little uncomfortable ... doing.
We can talk to people. Some of us, when we visit outside Israel, to our former hometowns, can speak, at synagogs, at churches, at mosques - yes, at mosques, if we can get invited - schools and colleges, at civic groups. We all have personal stories we can tell, to humanize the situation.
We can write. To newspapers. To radio and television stations. On social media, Facebook, Twitter, discussion groups, newspaper comment areas.
You don't have to be fanatical about it, the way I am. But we can all do something.
And when we do, we can look for opportunities to make use of those inconvenient truths, the ones the anti-Zionists want to hide, the ones they lie about.
Okay. Now I'll list a handful, and then go into detail about others. We all know them all. But the people we need to bring over to our side, the undecided - not the ones who hate us, but the ones who the anti-Zionists are trying to fool - don't know them. And many of the people who are on our side don't know them either, and need to be reminded they they are supporting the good guy, Israel.
•Zionism is simply the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.
•Anti-Zionists deny the right of the Jewish people to our own state.
•Denying that right to the Jewish people, while promoting it for others, is anti-Semitic.
•Until relatively recently, the people today calling themselves Palestinians were insisting they weren't.
•The articles in the PLO Charter calling for the destruction of Israel have never been removed.
•Taken together, Israel and the disputed territories take up less than a quarter of what constituted Palestine at the time of the British Mandate.
•Historically, Jerusalem has never held much interest for Arabs or Muslims except during those times when it was controlled by others.
•Jerusalem has been at the heart and soul of the Jewish people since King David made it his capital about 3,000 years ago. Every Passover, Jews all over the world end their Seders with the chant בשנה הבאה בירושלים - "Next Year in Jerusalem."
•The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 declares, as official United States policy: "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.
•The term "West Bank" is a relatively new one. Historically, that area, the heartland of the Jewish kingdoms in Biblical times, was referred to as Judea and Samaria, or Palestine, or southern Syria.
•Only a handful, perhaps 50,000, of the so-called Palestinian refugees are really refugees. The youngest of the refugees are now 68 years old and have no recollection of ever living in what is now Israel.
•Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is in the thirteenth year of his four year term. He is no moderate, has shown no inclination to make peace with Israel and has neither the ability nor the authority to do so even if he wanted.
•More than 95 percent of the Arabs in the disputed territories have lived under their own government for more than two decades.
•The Christian community is increasing and thriving in just one country in the Middle East: Israel. It's being decimated in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas-run Gaza. Under the Palestinian Authority, Bethlehem has turned from a Christian city into a Muslim city.
•The proportion of civilian casualties in the Gaza wars has been amazingly low compared to the norm for post-World War II conflicts. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties." Israel has been criticized by international military leaders for setting a standard their countries can't possibly match.
Now I'll go into a few other inconvenient truths, in more depth - as our very limited time permits - with some documentation, including historical texts and the words of Palestinian Arab leaders.
•The Palestinian Arabs have shown far more interest in there not being a Jewish state than in having one of their own.
The PLO was established in 1964, while the West Bank was part of Jordan. Rather than promoting a separate Palestinian Arab state, the PLO was established to destroy Israel. This goal was enshrined four years later in the PLO Charter. It's sobering reading, although far less so than the Fatah and Hamas charters. Among its provisions:
The PLO "aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine."
"The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine."
AND
"Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. Thus it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase."
In their fundamental covenants, the Palestinian Arabs clearly say they reject the existence of Israel, but do not call for their own state.
•Mahmoud Abbas has admitted he's responsible for the continuation of the conflict.
In his own words, spoken in Ramallah on October 15, 2010:
[click]
"If we showed flexibility on these issues the peace agreement would have been signed a long time ago."
•Mahmoud Abbas has also told his people he will never compromise on any of the key issues.
As quoted in the Palestinian Authority's own newspaper, Al-Ayyam, on September 7, 2010:
"If they demand concessions on the rights of the refugees or the 1967 borders, I will quit. I can't allow myself to make even one concession."
•Abbas clearly rejects the very concept of a two-state solution, vigorously insisting he will never acknowledge Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
•Abbas even bluntly told President Obama he would not commit to an "end of conflict" - in other words, even if he signed some agreement with Israel, the conflict would continue.
Peace requires concessions, by both sides.
Israel has made enormous concessions. Benjamin Netanyahu may be considered "right wing," but he's offered concessions, such as offering the Palestinian Arabs a state, Yitzhak Rabin insisted he would never make.
Mahmoud Abbas may be called "moderate," but he has yet to make a single significant concession; he's still clinging to the same demands Arafat was making in 1993. It's one thing to start negotiations with extreme demands; I thought only my mother-in-law, may she rest in peace, could refuse to budge for more than two decades. I was wrong.
•Abbas demands ethnic cleansing.
For example, on Christmas Day, 2010, in Ramallah, he said:
"We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won't agree to the presence of one Israeli (meaning Jew) in it."
How's that for the Christmas spirit!
•Mahmoud Abbas was a prime instigator of the wave of knifings, shootings and vehicular attacks that "spontaneously" started about a year and a half ago.
On September 16 last year, he proclaimed "Al-Aksa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They (meaning the Jews) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem."
Praising Muslim women who harass Jews on the Temple Mount, he said "Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah’s will."
•Arabs in Israel comprise nearly a quarter of the population and have full, equal rights.
Of course there's some discrimination; I challenge you to name a single country in which there's no discrimination. I also challenge you to name a country, other than Israel, giving equal rights to a minority which in significant measure is loyal to the nation's enemies.
Arabs participate in every area of Israeli civil life. They're doctors, lawyers, teachers, police. They're in the Knesset, the parliament. Majalli Wahabi, an Israeli Druze, actually served as Acting President for a time in 2007. George Karra, an Israeli Arab Supreme Court Justice, convicted President Moshe Katzav and sent him to prison.
Think about that: an Israeli Arab sent the president of Israel to prison!
When it comes to legal discrimination, if anything, it's the Jews who suffer. Jews are compelled to serve in the army. They don't have a choice. Arabs have a choice. They may serve if they wish, but they don't have to.
•The BDS movement is anti-Zionist and thus inherently and irredeemably anti-Semitic.
Omar Barghouti, the most prominent of the founders of BDS, has said:
"Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
Anna Baltzer, a frequent speaker at "Tree of Life" events, was even more blunt, saying, quote:
"“We need to wipe out Israel.” unquote.
•While Mahmoud Abbas may refuse to make peace with Israel, may defame and slander Israel at every opportunity, when push comes to shove he knows Israel is his only friend.
In April last year, Abbas' brother, who lives in Qatar, was in critical condition with cancer. Where did Abbas make sure he went to get the best medical care? Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv, where the doctors had saved his brother-in-law's life with a delicate heart operation six months before, and where his wife underwent leg surgery in 2014.
Ismail Haniyeh is even more extreme than Abbas. Haniyeh was the chief Hamas terrorist in charge of Gaza. But he wasn't too proud to send his granddaughter for treatment at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv in 2013. In 2014, he sent both his mother-in-law and his daughter there, one shortly before the war he launched and the other shortly after.
Haniyeh is no longer in charge of Gaza. He's been replaced by Yehya al-Sinwar, one of the terrorists freed in exchange for Gilad Shalit. Compared to al-Sinwar, Haniyeh was a moderate.
•The "illegally occupied territories" aren't even occupied. They are disputed territories and Israel has a strong legal claim to them.
At the San Remo Conference in 1920, following World War I, Britain was assigned a mandate over Palestine - which then comprised all of what is today Israel, Jordan and the disputed territories. The mandate called for Britain to prepare for the reestablishment of the Jewish homeland, including the "close settlement" of the land by the Jewish people. This actually included the "East Bank," the 77-78 percent of Palestine east of the Jordan River which Britain separated from the rest, renamed Transjordan and gave to the Hashemites.
The decisions made at the San Remo Conference were confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922, and incorporated into the founding documents of the United Nations. That makes them international law.
So, under international law, Israel has claim to all of the disputed territories and building in those territories is not only not illegal, but encouraged.
•The "1967 borders" were never borders.
Article II of the 1949 armistice agreement with Jordan stated "no provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations."
In plain language, the armistice lines were specified to have no political significance.
References to "1967 borders" are factually wrong; no borders existed.
Insisting on "negotiations based on the 1967 borders" is actually an insistence on the violation of that signed agreement! It's also an insistence on the violation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
Resolution 242 was adopted November 22, 1967, exactly five years after the assassination of President Kennedy. Its provisions called for:
"Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" in conjunction with the "termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
So, according to this binding Security Council resolution, any Israeli withdrawal awaits a peace agreement and must not be a total withdrawal to the temporary armistice lines. The Security Council itself has given legitimacy to an Israeli presence in the disputed territories until that time.
Here in Netanya we're only about nine miles from the armistice line and the Arab town of Tulkarm, which is already under the control of the Palestinian Authority. We know we're not taking back Tulkarm, so the secure borders, as called for in the resolution, are unfortunately an impossibility, but the goal should be to make them as close to secure as reasonably possible.
•The Palestinian Arab leadership accepted the Israeli presence in the disputed territories and depends on it.
They agreed to it in the Oslo Accords and Mahmoud Abbas knows that he wouldn't last a week if it wasn't for the Israeli military maintaining security.
Abbas may demand an Israeli withdrawal, but he stakes his life on Israel not caving in to that demand.
My final three inconvenient truths:
1. We keep hearing that the Palestinians deserve a state of their own. There is actually an "Encyclopedia of Stateless Nations." Most people know of the Kurds and the Tibetans, but there are literally hundreds of others, almost all with a far longer and more peaceful history than the Palestinian Arabs. None have repeatedly rejected statehood the way the Palestinian Arabs have. Every one of those national groups is arguably far more deserving of statehood than the Palestinian Arabs.
When my wife and I bought an apartment in Israel, we decided we needed to sell our private home in Waterbury and move to a condo in Massachusetts nearer our daughter. We joined the nearest synagogue, Temple Israel of Natick, which has a "Rabbi Laureate" you may have heard of, Harold Kushner, of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" fame. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, I was in the first row, right in front of Rabbi Kushner, when he gave his sermon and said:
"I would remind you that for almost twenty years, from 1948 to 1967, the Palestinians had a state of their own on the West Bank and half of Jerusalem, including the Old City and the Temple Mount."
Today, for most practical purposes, they have three states: the Palestinian Authority in Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria, Hamastan in Gaza, and Jordan.
Now, when Jews say "Jordan is Palestine," people tend to dismiss it as propaganda. But it turns out that Mahmoud Abbas - remember, he calls himself the president of Palestine, even though there is no Palestine - agrees with Rabbi Kushner.
Less than two years ago, on June 2, 2015, Abbas said
"Jordan and Palestine are one people living in two states."
There are two basic reasons the Palestinian Arabs get so much undeserved attention: They are the world's most successful practitioners of terrorism ... and their target has been the world's only Jewish state, us.
2. Israel is the front line state in the fight against fanatical, Islamist terrorists. Every method used by those terrorists against the United States, against France, against Britain, was first used against Israel. Had the civilized world stood solidly with Israel in the past, we might not be suffering from today's outbreak of terrorism. The first, essential step in defeating terrorism around the world is standing with Israel.
3.
Israel stands with those who value human rights.
Israel stands with those who value freedom of the press.
Israel stands with those who value the rights of gays.
Israel stands with those who value the rights of women.
Israel stands with those who value diversity and multiculturalism.
Israel stands with those who believe children should grow up and not blow up.
Israel exemplifies the very values true liberals cherish most, while Palestinian Arab society rejects those same values.
Rabbi Kushner said, in his Rosh Hashanah sermon: "We were privileged to see the rebirth of a Jewish nation in the ancestral Jewish homeland. Be grateful that you were privileged to live in the age of the Third Jewish Commonwealth."
We are not only privileged to live in this age, but to live in the Third Jewish Commonwealth.
In my years of involvement with the Arab-Israeli conflict, I've rarely read a news story, or a letter to the editor, or a presentation by someone anti-Israel, that wasn't tainted by what I'll euphemistically call false information.
We, who live in Israel and know Israel and its history and the efforts it has made to reach peace and the nature of the enemies we face, have the ability and the obligation to promote our story in a way nobody else can.
On that note, thank you for listening. I'm eager to hear your questions, with the usual qualification: questions, not long-winded statements, with one exception: statements about some of the many other truths I haven't mentioned this morning.
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