On September 22, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, delivered his first speech before the United Nations General Assembly since retaking office. In his address, he spoke of a “new Middle East” and held up a poster which incorrectly depicted “Israel” in 1948 and the territory it held, he went on to speak on how the region could look and made a series of inflammatory, ahistorical, claims. These assertions, which parry with much of Israel’s official creation story narratives, deserve to be addressed.
Following a US-Iran prisoner swap, which was enacted prior to the recent Saudi-Israeli normalization developments, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, took to the stage of the United Nations and proposed a “credible nuclear threat” against Iran, while preaching for the implementation of “peace”. Failing to comment on the substantial informal agreement struck between Washington and Tehran, the Israeli Premier’s speech focused on the subjects of normalization regionally with the Israeli regime and Iran, amongst a few other topics that were far less focused on.
During the course of his speech, the Israeli Prime Minister lashed out at the Palestinians and Iranians and raised up a number of posters that featured Middle East maps. On one side, the map showed Israel’s depiction of the situation facing the Zionist regime in 1948 and the other, encompassing a number of Arab State’s having normalized, in an attempt to represent the geographical shift in the surrounding nations’ position on Israel. What the Western media and UN have failed to point out, however, is the false history represented on the maps shown, and, until now, Netanyahu’s major claims have not been fact-checked. The need for doing so is paramount, as the claims made by the Israeli PM are staples of Tel Aviv’s propaganda.
The Palestinian VETO Over Israeli-Arab Peace
Claim: Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that the idea of Arab Nations refraining from signing normalization deals with Israel — until the Palestinians have a peaceful settlement that results in an independent State — represents an immoral VETO that is wielded by the Palestinian people and their leaders. Netanyahu claims that historically this is what held back normalization and that the Palestinians will benefit from expanding the circle of normalization.
Reality: To begin with, historically speaking, the idea that the Palestinian people, or their representatives, were the primary impediment to peace and reconciliation between Israel and the Arab States, is flatly false. The historic premise for the Arab Nation’s refusing normalization has its roots in the 4th Arab League conference that was held in Khartoum, Sudan. There, the Arab nations signed onto the “Three No’s Resolution”; no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel. This resolution was adopted in the aftermath of the June 1967 — or ‘6-day’ — war, which was started by an Israeli air-strike campaign [Operation Focus] against Egypt and resulted in the illegal occupation of the Egyptian Sinai, Syrian Golan Heights, and the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. The purpose of the resolution was to implement a shared set of measures that would lead to the reclaiming of the territories that Israel had occupied.
At the heart of the Arab World’s struggle for independence was the question of Palestine, which was made even more prominent with the expulsion of around 850,000 Palestinians from their homes between 1947-8. Prior to the creation of Israel, Britain had occupied Palestine and placed it under its own mandate.
In 1935, the Arab Revolt erupted in opposition to the British, this occurred after years of smaller uprisings against attempts by the newly formed Zionist movement, to assert its control over Holy Sites in Jerusalem, with the issue of Al-Aqsa Mosque taking center stage. In the Islamic faith, the third holiest site is Al-Aqsa, which the Palestinian leadership in the early 1920s to 30s had made the central theme of their resistance to British occupation and Zionist ambitions to create a Jewish State inside Palestine. The 1935 Arab Revolt had roped in the attention of the Arab and Muslim Worlds, with some of the most prominent Arab figures, such as Iraqi General Fawzi Qawuqji, having entered into the uprising.
When the Zionist militias, in 1947, drove some 350,000 Palestinians from their homes and into exile, this placed a massive diplomatic, logistical, and financial hurdle on the surrounding Arab nations, most of which had just received their independence from France and Britain. In 1948, when the Zionist militias that were infamous for their international acts of terrorism had been led to victory over the defeated Palestinian resistance — which had already been wiped out in 1939 by the British — and the Zionist leadership declared the independence of a Jewish State in Palestine, the Arab nations banded together what armed forces they could muster and attacked. The partition resolution that was presented by the United Nations in 1947 as the British left, proposed that Israel be created in 55% of historical Palestine and that the 33% of newly arrived Jewish refugees take that land. However, the Zionist movement ended up taking over 78% of the land, defeating the Arab fighting forces everywhere except from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
After the war in 1967, the Arab States had adopted a platform of rejection — publicly, yet some Arab nations maintained secretive relations — towards the existence of Israel. This was not only because of the historic injustices that were committed against the Palestinians, but the aggression of the Zionist regime against surrounding nations as well. When the Palestinian movement, which came under the banner of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), initiated their joint armed struggle and sought for an independent State, the Arab public naturally gravitated towards their cause, as did most of the Global South; which interpreted the Palestinian cause as a just cause against the primary agent of Western imperialism in the Middle East.
For the Arab leaders, not only were they following in line with the beliefs of their people, but they also sought to use the Palestinian issue as a means to secure the return of their own lands and extract concessions from the Israelis and their backers in the West. In 1979, following the failure to defeat Israel and reclaim its occupied territories in 1973, the Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, signed onto a normalization deal with Tel Aviv under the auspices of former US President Jimmy Carter. Sadat managed to receive the occupied Sinai back from the Israelis and was viewed as a disgrace to the region, as Syria and the Palestinians had received nothing. Anwar Sadat was eventually assassinated.
In 1993, the PLO was in its weakest position and signed onto its own normalization deal with the Israelis, which was supposed to result in the return of the Palestinian occupied territories, something that still hasn’t occurred. In 1994, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan signed onto a normalization deal of its own. By this time, however, the Israelis had also occupied Southern Lebanon in 1982, after kicking the PLO out of the country and murdering upwards of 20,000 people. This war birthed the armed group and political party called Hezbollah, which would eventually force the Israelis to withdraw from Southern Lebanon in 2000 and later became the first Arab force to defeat Israel on the battlefield in 2006.
In the year 2000 began the Second Intifada (Palestinian Uprising), to which the Arab and Muslim world responded with the “Arab Peace Initiative”, which essentially promised normalization from all in return for Israel withdrawing from all occupied territories — Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian — and allowing for the creation of an independent Palestinian State in 22% of historical Palestine. After almost 30 years of failed attempts to negotiate a final settlement that would see Israel depart from the occupied territories, the Arab Nations in the Gulf decided to initiate the normalization agenda we see today. The UAE and Bahrain went first, later helping to force Morocco and Sudan to do the same. Now Saudi Arabia seeks to follow suit, which will work to benefit the US’ Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) that opposes China’s Belt and Road Initiative through creating a new trade route to link Asia to Europe.
The reason why the Arab nations refrained from normalization was never to do with a Palestinian VETO, and the PLO — now run by the US-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) — has betrayed the Palestinian cause and turned it into a cash cow for a small group of families. The only ones keeping the Palestinian cause alive today are the Palestinian fighters in the West Bank, the armed groups in Gaza, and the regional resistance, aided heavily by Iran and spearheaded by Lebanese Hezbollah. The Arab Gulf nations normalized ties privately long ago (it is now becoming formal) in order to help the political ambitions of US politicians and economic endeavors to the Gulf nations and Israelis.
Israel In 1948
Claim: The Israeli PM held up a map of Israel in 1948, which included the totality of the land held by Israel today in historical Palestine, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Reality: In 1948, not only had Israel violated the UN partition plan that had only afforded 55% of the land to them, but they also had failed to take East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. In 1980, Tel Aviv officially annexed East Jerusalem, which the international community unanimously rejected at the United Nations.
In short, what the map shows, is that Israel seeks to hide the reality because a map that shows Israel as smaller than it is today, proves that they have usurped more land than they had back in 1948. So, instead of showing the real map of 1948, which excludes Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it includes them all.
Israeli-Arab Normalization Will Bring Peace Regionally
Claim: Benjamin Netanyahu speaks about his vision for a new Middle East, as one which will bring together the region for the better and claims that normalization will create peace.
Reality: The first thing we need to look at when analyzing this claim, is the conditions of each Middle Eastern nation post-normalization. Egypt was the first nation to normalize ties with Israel — today, the country is in ruins, as with the vast majority of its people. With ever soaring poverty,inflation, and now the drying up of foreign currency, the life of the average Egyptian is far from the standard, and is continuing to fall. Egypt’s people have suffered under oppressive dictator after oppressive dictator, now falling under the thumb of UAE-Saudi-Kuwaiti backed coup leader General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In the case of Jordan, where the living standards are somewhat better, the position of the average Jordanian has also not improved following the nation’s decision to normalize ties with Israel, and this state of harmonious living regionally has not occurred. In the case of the Hashemite Kingdom it is important to keep in mind that the vast majority of the country’s population are Palestinian refugees.
In the case of the UAE, the nation was already very wealthy and a tourist hub, there was no dramatic change in having secured a normalization deal with Israel, other than the potential for future projects that will aid in diversifying their economy away from oil dependency. For Morocco, the average Moroccan is not enjoying the fruits of normalization and any improvement is coming primarily from the investments of the West and China in the country. Israeli normalization has placed Morocco on the verge of another conflict with neighboring Algeria. For Bahrain, the situation there has not changed, the British installed Sunni dictators that oversee the majority Shia population are just as rich as before and the standard of living was not affected by Tel Aviv. As for Sudan, well, there isn’t really a State that exists any longer, as the situation is the worst we’ve witnessed in a long time, if ever. This is not the direct doing of Israel, but the normalization deal certainly did no favors.
If the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) normalizes ties with the Israelis, this could destroy the Chinese brokered rapprochement between the KSA and Iran. The US-Israel agenda in West Asia is set to combat and destroy Iran and its allies, which essentially means pitting Israel and its Arab allies against Iran and its Arab allies. The KSA normalization would set up the perfect Cold War playing field in the region, which could quickly turn into an all out regional war of annihilation. Normalization is about destroying the Palestinian cause and cementing the Israeli occupation of Syrian lands, while causing conflict between the Iranian allied nations and those allied with Israel.
Iran Is The Reason Why There Is No Peace In West Asia
Claim: Israel’s PM stated that Iran is the true cause of instability in the region and that it is akin to a curse, opposed to the blessing of normalization between Arab States and Tel Aviv. He made the allegation that the only thing holding back peace is the shared threat of Iran.
Reality: The current Iranian government, ushered in following the 1979 Islamic revolution, has been involved in only a single war with one of its neighbors after it was attacked, against Iraq. While the Islamic Republic maintains a wide web of allies and militia groups regionally, there is no reason to believe that it cannot coexist regionally. The most recent example of this notion has been the Chinese-brokered restoration of ties with its long time foe Saudi Arabia. Despite the efforts of Riyadh, to destabilize Iran’s government and to incite violence through extensive funding to opposition groups — considered by Iran to be terrorist groups like the MEK — and media outlets, most recently in 2022 surrounding the protest/riot movement that erupted in reaction to the death of Mahsa Amini, Tehran has proven capable of reconciling its differences with its neighbor.
In order to analyze the claim that Iran is the primary regional impediment to peace, we need only look at a few basic questions: How many country’s has Iran attacked since 1979? What was the state of the region prior to 1979? Is Iran the most aggressive player regionally?
To answer the first question, Iran has not attacked any country to initiate a war without having been attacked first since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The only real war that Tehran has entered into was the infamous Iran-Iraq war, which was initiated by former Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, who had launched the war against Iran in order to claim territory and this offensive was done with the blessing, in addition to the arming, of the United States. If we look at Iran’s military activities in Afghanistan, this was clearly conducted in tandem with a wider US effort against the Taliban inside the country and was conducted after attacks which led to it conducting a military operation to protect its border territory. As for Syria, where Iran receives massive criticism for its involvement, it was officially invited by the Damascus government and this was a war that not only encompassed the entire region, but most of the international community’s major players, making the intervention nothing of an anomaly. In the case of Yemen, where Iran backs the government of Ansarallah and its armed wing, this came in response to a brutal Saudi-led war on the country. As for its support for the militias inside Iraq, they only arose to begin with in order to combat the emergence of Daesh, and if it wasn’t for Iran’s interference the country would still be plagued by the terrorist group.
The above characterizations of Iran’s actions regionally are not to say they do not serve a larger Iranian foreign policy initiative, but all of this does not represent an Iranian initiated agenda of aggression, but rather of response. As a result, Tehran has taken advantage of the situation to strengthen its own position in West Asia. Additionally, Iran supports Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian armed groups like Hamas, the PFLP and PIJ, which are all groups that have national liberation agendas that specifically focus on Lebanon and Palestine. The goal of the armed parties in Lebanon and Palestine are to defeat Israel and to force Western imperialists to leave the region alone. For the Israeli Zionist government specifically, Iran does therefore pose an existential threat, but that threat is not extended to the rest of the region.
Since the foundation of the Zionist movement, there has been non-stop conflict in the region, as Western powers have divided, bombed, and economically devastating the Middle East. The common denominator in all the chaos ensuing regionally has been Israel, which is why the vast majority of the Arab public despise it. Israel has attacked every single country surrounding it, multiple times, it maintains a system of Apartheid and an ethnically exclusive Jewish-supremacist state model. Backing Tel Aviv’s existence and countless unprovoked aggressions against its neighbors is the United States of America, which has caused the mass exile of tens of millions from their homes in West Asia and the butchering of over 6 million people in its so-called “war on terror”. Israel frequently bombards Syria without justification and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just advocated for a nuclear threat to be imposed against Iran. To place the blame for the regions instability on Iran, would be to completely ignore all evidence to the contrary.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) Must Except Israel As A Jewish State
Claim: Netanyahu’s speech included within it the notion that the Palestinian Authority has to accept Israel as a Jewish State in order for their to be peace.
Reality: The Palestinian Authority (PA), which has now taken over the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), already recognizes Israel’s existence. It did so in 1993 with the signing of the Declaration of Principles, as part of the Oslo Accords. In fact, former PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat, accepted the existence of Israel back in 1988m, and in 1993 accepted Israel as having a right to a State in 78% of historical Palestine as a concession for the creation of a Palestinian State in the occupied territories.
Legally speaking, if the PA is to accept Israel as a “Jewish State” it means absolutely nothing. Unlike Iran, which officially calls itself an Islamic Republic, Israel does not give itself the title “The Jewish State of Israel” in any official capacity. Therefore, the idea of the PA declaring its recognition of Israel as a Jewish State, would mean it would be doing something that not even Israel does for itself on the international stage.
On the other hand, the Israeli government has never accepted a Palestinian State. There is no recognition for a State of Palestine from Tel Aviv, at all, and the only thing they have ever recognized is the existence of the PLO, but not even the Palestinian people. The equivalent to this notion, that the PA must accept Israel as a Jewish State as a precondition to peace, is the US government asking indigenous communities to recognize it as a Christian State prior to entering into dialogue on land disputes. This excuse did not get in the way of the Oslo Accords or previous rounds of negotiations, it is simply an excuse for Tel Aviv not to have to engage in further discussions on the creation of a Palestinian State.
The PA’s Antisemitism Prevents Peace
Claim: PA President Abbas is preventing a peaceful solution for the Palestinians due to his anti-Semitic statements, such as his recent assertion regarding why Adolf Hitler killed Jewish people during the Holocaust.
Reality: The current PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, was implanted in his position by the US government. During the Second Intifada, Washington worked on forcing the former PA President, Yasser Arafat, to implement major changes in the Ramallah based Palestinian National Authority, which included creating the position of PA Prime Minister. As Washington’s man in the occupied territories, Mahmoud Abbas filled the position of PA Prime Minister, before going on to head the ruling Fatah Party following the death of Arafat. Abbas was elected as PA President in 2005, which was the last Presidential election ever held in the Palestinian occupied territories. He now rules as the unchallenged dictator of the West Bank.
Mahmoud Abbas has a long history of anti-Jewish comments and holocaust revisionism, yet this has never bothered the US government when backing the PA’s mini-dictatorship. If we are to also look on the Israeli side, there are near daily genocidal and racist comments from members of the government, not to mention the pogroms and massacres carried out against Palestinians.
The PA’s Pay To Slay Policy
Claim: Benjamin Netanyahu claims that the Palestinian Authority has a “pay to slay” policy, where they incentivise Palestinians to kill Israelis and pay them money for doing so.
Reality: This claim has been used frequently by Israeli government representatives, in order to attempt to demonize the Palestinian Authority and claim that it supports killing Israelis. The truth is that there is no such thing as a “pay to slay” policy, it simply does not exist.
The way that Israeli politicians and paid propagandists attempt to justify the claim, is not in the existence of such a PA policy, since this does not exist, but rather they argue that the PA pays the families of those who have killed Israelis. While the Palestinian Authority often pays a sum to families who have lost a loved one due to Israeli violence, whether a civilian or a fighter, they do not offer money to people who kill Israelis. The sum is to compensate a family who has lost a loved one, they do not pay Palestinians who kill Israelis and are still alive, for example. In fact the PA has issued public condemnations of such attacks on Israelis on several occasions.
Another reason the Palestinian Authority would give funds to the family of a Palestinian who kills an Israeli, is when they are imprisoned by the Israeli occupation authorities. For instance, if there is a father who shoots an Israeli soldier or is involved in an armed group that plotted to kills soldiers or settlers, the PA will pay the family in order for them to continue to have an income and sustain life. Often the funds offered are not large and certainly would not incentivize many to carry out attacks to the death for this purpose. As an anecdotal example, when the father of a family that I am friends with inside the occupied West Bank was arrested by the Israeli occupation forces in 2017, for allegedly throwing stones towards soldiers, his wife was not capable of paying for the expenses involved with their newborn baby, so I felt compelled to help. In the end, he was released from prison after being held in administrative detention and was never charged with stone throwing as was originally claimed.
Nowhere in any of the speeches by PA officials will you see the advocacy of violence towards Israelis as a means of combating the ongoing illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. In fact, they consistently advocate non-violence privately and publicly. The PA even uses its security forces in order to thwart Palestinian armed attacks against Israeli settlers and soldiers. There are countless cases of the PA security forces (PASF) protecting Israeli settlers and handing them back over to the Israeli army when they illegally enter Palestinian Authority areas in the West Bank. The PA actively coordinates with the Israeli military on security matters, never to protect Palestinians, but instead to help the Israeli army arrest Palestinians who are part of armed groups that seek to kill soldiers. The PA provides intelligence information on Palestinians, that they spy on, in order to help Israel in its missions to kill and capture them. In addition to this, every time the Israeli military launches an operation or raid in territory that the PA legally has the right to security control over [Area A of the West Bank] the PASF withdraw and allow them to do whatever they choose.
The speech that Netanyahu delivered at the UN general assembly, was replete with contradictions, distortions, and outright lies, while claiming to seek peace, he advocated the threat of nuclear annihilation against Iran and began to insight hatred, spreading lies about the Palestinian people and Palestinian Authority.
The “nations” imagine a vain thing.
The true Zionists are descendants of the man named Israel and his 12 sons. The fake ones are the political Zionists who set up the Jewish state called Israel in 1948. True Zionists keep the commandments of GOD, and the commandments of Jesus, the Son of GOD. The fake Zionists do not!
The ghost of the U S ship Liberty passes by. If not for the US, where would Israel be? Truly the Neighborhood Bully.