PARTNERS IN PEACE, MY ASS!

The international community has long been calling for the Israelis and the Palestinians to be partners in peace. All along, Israel has been pressured to cede "land for peace," and that pressure has also come from its only friend, the United States. The international community completely ignores the fact that the final goal of the Palestinians is to "liberate Palestine from the river to the sea," clearly meaning that there is to be no Jewish state.

Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columinst, says that when people on the other side of its borders have homemade rockets, the chances of Israel accepting an independent Palestinian state are zero. Friedman calls for a radical new approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict - a "NATO Trusteeship" for the West Bank and the Gaza strip (ABC This Week, 1-11-09).

About the long-running conflict, columnist George Will says, "Israel is not being provocative. Israel's being is provocative" to a bunch of people who want the Jewish state to go away (ABC This Week, 1-11-09).

If you recall, the Palestinians jumped up and down with joy and danced in the streets to celebrate the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon. They have celebrated every terrorist attack against innocent Jewish men, women and children, whether carried out inside Israel or elsewheres in the world. Time after time, the Palestinians have called for "Death to the Jews." In a recent (1-13-09) Townhall.com column, Dennis Prager described the Palestinians' support for terrorism against the Jews like this:

"It would be quite difficult to find many Palestinians who do not celebrate the deaths of Israeli Jews or non-Israeli Jews. This is not only reflected in Palestinian polls that show majority support for terrorism -- and terrorism means killing innocent Jews -- it is also reflected in Palestinian media, Palestinian schools, and Palestinian mosques that routinely glorify murderers of Jews, and refer to all Jews as monkeys and the like.

Take for example, Palestinian reaction to the 2001 Palestinian terror bombing of a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria in which 15 Jews, five of whom were two sets of parents and their children, were murdered and an additional 130 people were injured, some permanently maimed.

As reported by the Associated Press, a month later, Palestinian university students opened an exhibition that included a grisly re-enactment of that mass murder. The students built a replica of the Sbarro pizzeria, with fake blood, splattered pizza, a plastic hand dangling from the ceiling, and a fake severed leg wearing jeans and a bloody black sneaker.

The exhibit also includes a large rock in front of a mannequin wearing the black hat, black jacket and black trousers typically worn by ultra-Orthodox Jews. A recording from inside the rock calls out: O believer, there is a Jewish man behind me. Come and kill him, paraphrasing a verse in the Koran. It became a popular tourist attraction for Palestinians, to which Palestinian parents took their little children."

Palestinian-Americans, by and large, express the same hatred of Jews. This is especially true of Palestinian students enrolled in our colleges and universities.

In San Francisco, Palestinians demonstrating against Israel's conflict with Hamas carried Arabic signs which read: "Itbach al Yahud" (slaughter the Jews), "Falastin balad'na w'al Yahud qalab'na" (Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs), "ba ruh, ba dam, nafdeek ya Falastin" (with our soul, with our blood, we will cleanse you oh Palestine), "al mawt al Yahud" (death to the Jews).

In Columbus, Ohio, led by an Ohio State University professor, about 300 Palestinians and their supporters protested Israel's attacks on Gaza by chanting, "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea" and "Long live the intifada." The views expressed at the rally were that Israelis are colonialists, illegally there, murderers, and genocidal maniacs.

The international community and peacenicks count on "moderate" Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a peaceful settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Abbas speaks with a forked tongue. When speaking in English to American and European audiences, Abbas says he wants two states, Palestine and Israel, existing peacefully side by side. But whenever he speaks in Arabic to the Palestinians and other Jew-hating Arabs, that is a far cry from what he says. Time after time Abbas has made it clear in Arabic that there can be only one state, and that state is Palestine.

In view of all this, my question is, can Israel rely on the Palestinians as partners in peace? The answer is obvious. Hell no! Partners in peace, my ass! While I often disagree with Tom Friedman's views, I think his proposal of a NATO trusteeship for the West Bank and the Gaza strip is an excellent one. It is the most pragmatic proposal I've heard for resloving this long-running conflict.