The sixth lie is that the reason we have this increase is not only a surge in settlements, it’s the stagnation in the peace process. Well, some of the worst terrorism that Israel has experienced in its history occurred when the peace process was at its peak. We’ve had terrorism when there was a peace process. We’ve had terrorism when there was no peace process. We’ve had terrorism when there was an Israel. We’ve had terrorism when there was no Israel. We’ve had terrorism when there were settlements. We’ve had terrorism when there were no settlements, when we didn’t even control Judea and Samaria.
The real reason we have this terrorism is not because the terrorists are frustrated in the peace process. They’re frustrated because there’s a State of Israel and that frustration will continue.
The seventh myth is that Abbas is a moderate. Abbas does not send his security forces to attack us, this is true. And there is ongoing cooperation; that is true too. So on one hand, Abbas does what I’ve just described, but on the other hand, he is a steady inciter. He incites all the time. He and his Fatah partners and the official websites of the Palestinian Authority incite day in and day out on those social networks. And to put a fine point on it, he said the other day, “I welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.” Are these the words of a moderate? He glorifies these killers.
He hasn’t condemned a single one of the 30 terrorist attacks on Israelis over the last month. And I think that people who call public squares in the name of mass murderers should be condemned. I haven’t heard a word of condemnation, practically not a syllable of condemnation for this irresponsible behavior of Abbas. And I think what we should tell Abu Mazen is: Stop lying, stop inciting.
The eighth big lie is that only international observers will restore calm on the Temple Mount. The last thing we have to do is to take the most explosive square kilometer on earth and put there the General Assembly of the United Nations. That is not a force for moderation. Israel enforces the status quo and we should tell the truth, affirm Israel’s proven commitment to the status quo and hold President Abbas, Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel accountable for their lies and incitement. That is what is producing this violence.
The ninth lie is that the violence is erupted continually because there’s no Palestinian state. Palestinians have repeatedly refused to accept a nation-state for themselves. They’ve repeatedly refused to accept it if it means accepting a nation-state for the Jewish people alongside it. That was and remains the core of the conflict – the persistent refusal to recognize Israel in any boundaries.
Now I spoke to you about my grandfather. After he came here in 1920, we had the surge of the attacks at that year. In 1921, the Jewish community in Hebron, who had been there for millennia, was massacred – no provocation, no reasons. In 1936 to 1939, massive attacks by Palestinians on the Jewish community here, throughout the coast – in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, elsewhere. There were no settlements there, no territories, no desire even for a Palestinian state. And this continued, of course, into 1947, ’48, when the Palestinians rejected a partition for a Jewish state and a Palestinian state – no territories then, a state offered to them.
And then it continued in the attacks against us, terrorist attacks by the Fedayeen and others in 1956. And in 1967, those attacks, the desire to destroy Israel continued despite the fact that the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza were firmly in Arab hands. So it couldn’t have been the reason for our attacks. Now we’re talking about a century, half a century – from 1920 to 1967, that’s 47 years – where the attacks, the attacks are going against us one after the other. Half a century and it’s clearly not the core of the conflict. The core of the conflict was the desire to destroy the Jews anywhere, without a state, and with a state without the territories and without settlements.