 It's a topic that either you're here to come and refresh your knowledge or to learn from the beginning. If you're here to learn from the beginning, it's kind of like taking a jug of water and pouring it into a cup. When I teach this course, I teach it in about 40 hours. I'm going to try to condense that for you a little bit. You going to work tomorrow? But when I do teach it, and I take the whole 40 hours, I can tell you that my students are completely conversant in the Palestinian narrative. The Israeli right-wing narrative and the Israeli left-wing narrative, the nuances, the challenges, the statistics. And I think this year we've graduated at least 100 students that can go out there and speak about Israel in a very comprehensive and knowledgeable way. And that's what I want for you. If this is your first time, you're going to need to learn it a few times before you own it. But this is a conversation we have to have. We have to seek out these conversations. We have to get our story out there. The anti-Israel narrative is very strong, and they come up with new stuff every single day. The last one I heard is that Palestinian men beat their wives because of the pressure of the occupation. It's every day. We have to know our story. We have to know our history. I also want to tell you that at the end of the 40 hours that I teach the chorus and I adore my students, I always end up, I ask them, I want to ask you something. Do you think I'm right-wing or left-wing? And they have no clue. And I'm very proud of that. So I'm going to tell you the story as I understand it from the best election of scholarship. So I'm trying to squeeze in here the religious, the indigenous, legal and moral claim into the narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Like I said, I shortened it a little bit. I'm going to try to do it justice. I'm kind of new with the clicker. So biblical rights, I hope you were here at last week's lecture. Rabbi Breiderwitz went over very completely the biblical claim, and that biblical claim is also the historical claim, the Torah tells of Abraham's journey from one person who discovered God and his dedication to teach the people around him to God's promise to Abraham and to his descendants to make him into a great nation in a very specific place and to fulfill the covenant between God and God and the Jews in that very specific place. And it's not Argentina and it's not Uganda, it's only one place, it's Eretz Yisrael. God said to Abraham, I will make you a great nation. And God said, I will be a God to you and to your offspring after you. We're blood-related in our nationhood. To you and your offspring, I will give the land where you are now living as a foreigner, the whole Knaan shall be your eternal heritage, and I will be a God to your descendants. And we know very well what the parameters, the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael is. There is no question of where God meant for his Jewish people, for his sacred nation to be. Out of the 613 commandments in the Torah, 50 of them can only be fulfilled, 50% of them can only be fulfilled in Eretz Yisrael. And as Jews, we mention Israel, Zion, Jerusalem, and our prayers no less than 50 times a day. I want to talk about indigenous rights, it's very much linked to the biblical story. Indigenous rights means not that you're a native of a place, but that your nation is indigenous to a place. It is the land, it is the genesis on a land of a people's spirituality, religion, culture, and their language, and their blood connectivity that resulted in nationhood. We are the most indigenous people to Eretz Yisrael. You can have two indigenous people to one land. We are the most indigenous that is still around. We have been conquered many, many times. First we conquered the Canaanite tribes as God had told us. We settled the lands, we established our nationality, our spirituality, our culture, our language, our bloodline in Eretz Yisrael, and we were conquered and exiled. Many times we've been exiled and occupied by many, many different captors. But never, never in the history of our exile did we forget where we're supposed to be. And I think that the exile, 586 B.C. from Babylon, from the Babylonians to Babylon is really where we begin the story of Zionism. Where we commit to never forget Zion, that we will always look to that place. That's the place we're going back to. That is our indigenous homeland. So I want to talk for a moment about the name Palestine. The Roman Emperor Hadrian, who the Romans had conquered the Persians, who had conquered the Babylonians, who had conquered the Jews. They renamed Judah into Judea. I'm really precise about language when it comes to this history. And a lot of you insist on calling the West Bank Judea and Samaria. And if you want to be correct, it's Judah and Samaria. Judea was the name given by the Roman conquerors. So Hadrian renamed Judea, the Provincia Judea, to Syria-Palestina in 135. After those nasty Jews revolted for the second time, Hadrian had enough of this. And he renamed Eretz Israel, Syria-Palestina after the Philistines, our arch enemy, our nemesis. He also built a temple to Jupiter over the remains of our Baitamikdash. And really what he was trying to do was erase Jewish memory, which he couldn't do, but he tried. The Philistines were an ancient Greek people who in ancient times conquered a little bit of Eretz Israel that would be around today's Gaza. But they were wiped out in 722 by the Assyrians. Probably the most famous Philistine you'd ever heard of is Goliath. So what is Palestine now? I can tell you that between the end of the Roman Empire and that area between 638 and 1920, there was no ever a political geographic entity called Palestine. Why the name stuck? It really only stuck amongst British academics and archaeologists, but there was never a place called Palestine, not for hundreds and hundreds of years. In fact, under the Ottoman Empire, this is what the map looked like. It doesn't say Palestine anywhere. It doesn't say Israel anywhere either. It was made up of San Jax and Villayets and people felt most connected to Syria, not a place called Palestine, which for the most part they had never heard of. So that was from about 1515 to 1920. That was the map that Eretz Israel looked like. I'm going to go quickly from 1515 to 1914. World War I, the prevalent understanding of war is that you get to keep what you conquer. And Britain was quite sure it was going to reap a lot of booty after this war, and it was trying to set the stage for the territories it was going to come under. It was going to conquer after World War I. And so Britain went to the Arab leader Hussein and said, listen, why don't you fight with me, even though you're in the Ottoman Empire, which is on the other side of the war? Fight against the Ottoman Empire on behalf of the Allies, and in return, when I've won that place, I will give you, I will make you an Arab state or states. I don't know exactly where, but I'm going to make Arabs an independent state or states. And the Arabs hold on to that Hussein McMahon letters the way we hold on to the Balfour Declaration. So really at the same time that the British were wheeling and dealing with the Arabs, they were wheeling and dealing with the Jews. Why don't you fight in Eretz Israel against the Ottomans, and in return, we will make you, we will look at the wording, view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national homeland for the Jewish people, and we'll use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievements of this object. And what an unbelievable moment in Jewish history where the military might of the world was giving some kind of approbation to the Jewish people. But if you look at the wording very carefully, it actually is absolutely meaningless that the British, that the Majesty's government views with favor. I don't know what views with favor really means. The establishment in Palestine, is that all of Palestine, some of Palestine, a street of Palestine, a national home, is that a house or a village or a community for the Jewish people. So, while we're celebrating that the might of the world is backing us up on some level, the wording here doesn't give us very much to hang our hat on, and the rules of war changed completely after World War I. You don't get to keep what you conquer. But I want to show you that the British had set up the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews before the establishment of the state. So, I guess it took Britain by surprise that no longer do you get to keep what you conquer, but there is a League of Nations and international law will be set. And they decided, the League of Nations decided in 1920, that the administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this provisioned frame so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine. Now, we're going to get a little bit more into this legal document. This is different than the Balfour Declaration or the Hussein McMahon letters. They're nice letters. They're not legally binding. What we have now is international law that's legally binding. They also decided to create a system of mandatories. Those would be countries that were developed and could lend their expertise and could tutor these new countries and help them develop into flourishing democracies. It was a sacred trust of the mandate to help, in this case, to help the Jews create a country. And the borders were very specific, ratified in 1923. The borders were, I refer to, as diamond-shaped Israel. You've got to remember that map. That's really important. That's the legal map of the state of Israel. By the way, at the same time, that they conferred on the Jews nationalism in Eritz Yisrael. They also created Syria, Iraq, and Jordan as brand-new Arab states, and we all have the exact same birthday. It's 1920. We're all created on the same day. The British mandate, the British became the mandatory power, that sacred trust to help the Jews develop their country. Their obligations were, number one, to reconstitute the national Jewish homeland. The word reconstitution is very important. It's not to create, it's to create again. It's to bring back what once was, the reconstitution of a Jewish national home. And to work with the Zionist organization to create a Jewish home. That the Zionist organization would be de facto the government working with the British mandates to facilitate Jewish immigration. And I mean, I've narrowed down the document, but it very specifically says Jewish immigration. It doesn't say Arab or Muslim or Christian. This is designated as a Jewish country, and the word country comes up in the mandate for Palestine. It says no land of that diamond shape, Israel shall be ceded, no land shall be given away. And the other peoples living in the new Jewish country will have civic and religious rights, and very specifically not national rights. National rights are reserved for the Jewish people in their reconstituted new Jewish country. And that's our legal case. De facto we build a country before our Declaration of Independence in 1948, and I am really so proud of what the Jews managed to do out of sand and sun. Before 1948 and probably mostly early in the 1920s, the Jews, the Zionists built Technion, that's the MIT of Israel. They built Hebrew University, and they built it very specifically in a place that straddled Jewish and Arab neighborhoods so it could be open to all. They built Hadassah Hospital, also in an area that would straddle Jewish and Arab neighborhoods so it would be open and welcoming to all. Hundreds of kibbutzim, Moshevim, villages, cities, big cities, shipping industry, specifically a port in Tel Aviv and shipping industry business, national health care. Decades before Canada had national health care. National labor unit, a national bank, compulsory and free education. A defense force in a democratic government. So I will tell you that that state of Israel was created long before 1948. But in those years, the British who had the sacred trust to facilitate Jewish immigration to work with the Jewish government to make sure that no land was seeded broke their responsibilities many, many times in that period between 1920 and 1947. So in 1936 to begin with there had already been belligerence between the Arabs and the Jews. Three new countries wasn't enough. They could not tolerate that Palestine would be a Jewish country. And so with Britain's kind of desire to just make this go away they proposed a joint council between the Jews and the Arabs they would sit per capita. Now we were outnumbered by the Arabs and basically they could vote away a Jewish state. Luckily for the Palestinian penchant for absolute rejection of anything Jewish they refused to sit on this committee. Good for us. The British also put down several white papers limiting Jewish immigration. The McDonald white paper specifically in 1939 at the beginning of the Holocaust. Now I would never take blame away from the Nazis but it had not been for the British those millions of Jews would have had somewhere to go. They also proposed in 1936 the Peel Plan which would divide the country of Israel into an Arab state and a Jewish state again breaking their promise no land shall be seeded giving us absolutely indefensible and ridiculous tracts of land that we actually said yes to but fortunately the Arabs said no and I am very grateful for their rejection. The League of Nations of course disbanded in the wake of World War II and out of the ashes grew the United Nations so now they are taking on the mantle of international law and they were very clear in Article 80 that was what was gifted to the Jews and Iraq and Syria and Jordan in terms of mandates would be transferred to the UN so just because the League of Nations went away does not mean our legal right to the land of Israel went away it was brought on by the United Nations the British though had really had enough of the belligerence, the violence between the Jews and the Arabs they had decided several decades into the mandatory power that they really were siding with the Arabs they were also exhausted after two World Wars they were really no longer the military might of the world and they wanted out and gave the whole problem the whole issue over to the United Nations and the United Nations decided to partition the state of Israel into a Jewish country and an Arab country so I take a look at the borders that they proposed we would have all the dust of the Negev we would have actually fertile land around the Sharon area and we would have this coast which is good, it has access to the only fresh water Jerusalem would be an international city but considering the hatred of the Arabs we would never have access we said yes they said no again I'm really grateful they said no again I also can't understand for a nation of lawyers why we said yes if I could go back in time I would say why are you saying yes to this we were supposed to have diamond shaped Israel and no land shall be ceded but they said no every Arab country said no the Arabs within Israel said no we were exuberant this was another watershed moments even if it was half a state we were going to have a state and it was utmost important by 1947 to give a place for those survivors of the holocaust that were still languishing in DP camps whose conditions were better than the concentration camps however with the rejection of the Arabs came the war of independence the country surrounding Israel and Saudi Arabia some help from Sudan brought their forces albeit not their full force to attack Israel in order to destroy it I didn't put the numbers up but I want you to listen to the numbers the war of independence we lost 1% of the Israeli population 6,400 Israelis were killed and 7,000 Arabs were killed it kind of raises a question with all these Arab armies coming to destroy us how come they didn't why didn't they it's a good question but that's another hour lecture now I'm going to call the Arabs and Israel Palestinians they saw this as a catastrophe for many reasons 750,000 Palestinians at the outset of the war got up and left if I were them I would have done the same thing if a war breaks out in Canada damn straight the first thing I'm doing is taking my kids I'm loading up my van and my dog and I'm leaving taking my husband too you're driving what do you mean the truth is that there were Arab villages between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that were expelled by the Jewish forces most of the Palestinians that left never saw a Jewish combatant they were compelled to leave for many different reasons mostly they don't want to be caught up in the middle of a war staying would mean that they were complicit with the Zionists they did not want to stay if that meant that Palestine would be ruled by Hajimina Husayni which was the power of the Palestinian people but hated by many people and they're also promised by the neighboring Arab countries just leave it's only two weeks will flatten the place and you'll go home and they really did expect it would be logical with five armies descending on a new country that they would win they didn't and that was a catastrophe what's interesting is that over 60% of the Palestinians that left because of the war went specifically to those areas of UN Resolution 181 where Israel would be split into a Jewish country and an Arab country they went specifically to those places designated as an Arab country that they rejected so more than 60% of them end up actually in Gaza and Judah and Samaria you might know that as the West Bank many others went to the interior of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon Jordan was the only country to give them citizenship every other country keeps them as today as refugees we won and in terms of diamond shaped Israel we lost some land Judah and Samaria was taken by Jordan Jordan called it the West Bank East, West, it's not the West Bank of Israel it's the West Bank of Jordan Egypt took Gaza, they kept these territories for themselves they did not win it for the Palestinians to create a state they took it and they kept it that's also by the way called the green line because originally those borders were mapped out in green pen almost simultaneously but this population transfer that through the 1950s 850,000 Jews in Arab lands were one way or another kicked out of their country but they had somewhere to go, they had Israel and they did not live as refugees they became full citizens, unlike the Palestinians wherever they happened to find themselves Israel declared its independence in 1948, it's interesting to note that it was a unilateral declaration of independence it wasn't ratified by the UN until 1949 Ben Gourian said we better just do it now before something else happens, let's just declare it if you have the opportunity to read the full document it is such a beautiful declaration in Hebrew it reads like Shakespearean Hebrew if you're conversing Hebrew it is magical but it really reiterates the historical and indigenous right of Israel too, of the Jews to the land of Israel the land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people, their blood their culture, their language, their spirituality here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed here they achieved independence and the culture of national and universal significance here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world and that was worth celebrating the Arab countries around us never relinquished a state of belligerence, Israel understood that it was coming back that those wars were coming back again and going to fast forward a little bit to the 6 day war I'd love to spend an hour just talking about the 6 day war wow Israel knew it was coming mostly because the Arab countries said it was coming Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria the Palestinians all said we are going to annihilate you we will push you into the sea and I think especially after the Holocaust Jews take that pretty seriously Egypt expelled the UN peacekeepers they mobilized 100,000 troops onto the Sinai border 1,000 tanks, 500 heavy guns along the borders Syria and Iraq and Jordan mobilized as well we knew the attack was coming Egypt closed the streets of Turan to Israeli shipping which by the way is a declaration of war and it was quite of an interesting waiting game for the first shot understanding that the person that throws the first shot is somehow responsible for the war it was a tough waiting game Israel knew that if it threw the first shot it would be held accountable for starting a war they even had this idea of floating an empty ship through the streets of Turan so that Egypt would blow it up and then we could counter attack and not afford to absorb the first blow coming from every border and so we struck at Egypt first it was really, militarily it was brilliant a very good friend of ours was a fighter pilot in 67 made one of those six sorties a day the decision was the first thing that Israel has to do because they can't cover air and land at the same time on every border was to take out the Egyptian runways so that the Egyptian planes could not get off the ground then knock out almost every single Egyptian plane now the tank battle begins in the Sinai but the Egyptians have no air coverage Syria had tanks and not much of their air force left either so at the end of a war that lasted six days we like to say it was really six hours I want you to take a look at the territories that we captured in the 60 war so this is Judah and Samaria and this is Gaza so that belongs to the original map of Palestine under the mandate so I will tell you that this is not occupying a land but taking the land that was ours legally I will tell you that taking the Sinai desert is in fact an occupation taking the Golan Heights is in fact an occupation however not every occupation is an illegal occupation international law states that you can keep some land if it is vital to your security we also did commit from the very beginning to exchange land for peace so what are the borders of Israel well the mandate of Palestine outlines the map of Israel diamond shaped Israel and declares that no land shall be ceded so if my point of view the boundaries of Israel is still diamond shaped Israel UNGA resolution 181 Israel into an Arab state and a Jewish state does not constitute law it was a UNGA recommendation not a security council law plus the Arabs rejected it so if I offer you half of something I own and you don't want it it reverts back to the owner that land is still ours however big problem here is that when we took back Judah and Samaria we annexed all of Jerusalem giving the Palestinians living their 67,000 of them full Israeli citizenship if they wanted however almost half a million Palestinians came under military law so while I will tell you that the land is not occupied I cannot say in good faith that the Palestinians were not occupied living under military rule Israeli military rule was not nice and I don't think it's really good for the souls of the Jewish people to be occupiers neither did we set out to be occupiers we did say yes several times to partition the land here take a piece they rejected it and they became under Israeli occupation very unfortunately for them the sixth state war also saw the final finally the reunification of east and west Jerusalem we finally got everything that's holy to us back and we found it in absolute ruins the Kotel was transformed into a garbage dump and a slum 29 synagogues were raised to the ground we found in Jude and Samaria tombstones from the mound of olives were uprooted and used to pave roads and make toilets so I'm glad we got that back so that we could consecrate again our holy spaces I'm going to fast forward to the Yom Kippur war we knew it was calming the Arabs were still declared a state of belligerence but there was a massive intelligence failure it was actually Jordan that tried to war in Israel that Egypt and Syria are going to attack I don't know how I don't know how we missed it we were on this side of the Suez Canal watching the Egyptians mobilize and somehow it didn't register I don't know why the truth of the matter is Egypt was not all in this was not a war that Egypt wanted particularly they wanted back the Suez plus 8 miles into the Sinai they just wanted to restore the honor of the army and the faith of the people in the president so that they wouldn't assassinate him but Egypt wasn't really all in the war really only lasted 20 days and I want you to listen to the numbers again 25,000 Arabs were killed 3,000 Israelis were killed and I'm telling you these numbers because I want to come to the conclusion that which the Arab states did it's not worth going to war with Israel you're not going to win and the first country the most belligerent country was Egypt what Egypt really wanted was to get out from under the USSR to become an ally of the US to have stability to attract Western investments and grow their economy so it wasn't surprising that they came forth to make a piece with Israel what did we win what did we lose it really was a pretty good lasting piece it was a cold piece but it was a lasting piece on a really big border what we had to give them was everything that we had built up in the meantime and that's 1,000 miles of road to oil fields that would have made Israel oil independent for the rest of its life we gave up a buffer zone we gave up security the Egyptians also got $36 billion but we did it we made peace and it was a lasting piece and I want to point out that if people are willing to make a lasting piece it has always been Israel's declaration that it is willing to trade land for peace so now that kind of ends the Arab-Israeli conflict but seeping in in the background is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization become a political force and I want to read a little bit of their charters Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British mandate with the boundaries the Arabs had during the British mandate because they're waving that Hussein McMahon letter is indivisible territorial unit so they're claiming all of diamond-shaped Palestine Israel as Palestinian in 1968 their charter says that only through armed struggle armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine this is the overall strategy not merely a tactical phase they are dedicated to a war with Israel in order to obliterate it not the 181 boundaries not the green line, all of it that's from their word their mouth, their written word and their deed and they have not backed away from that at all in 1974 they changed it up a little bit there's two ways to read this any step taken towards liberation is a step towards realization the United Nations sees this as look at that the Palestinians are willing to negotiate any step it doesn't have to be an armed struggle they're willing to negotiate let's invite Arafat to the UN to speak all Palestinians know that what is embedded here is called the strategy of stages we'll negotiate for something and from that stage we'll get this and from that stage we'll recover all of Palestine the UN brought Yasser Arafat to speak at the UN in 1975 the UN declared Zionism is racism thanks UN the first Intifada broke out in 1987 to 1993 in Judah and Samaria and Gaza this is not surprising so the Palestinians had been living there for 20 years under military occupation and I'll remind you military occupation without going into graphic details is not nice we should have expected an uprising it consisted of striking, demonstrating and violence and Israel responded with Shamir's iron fist and that did not work out well for the Palestinians again so a thousand Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces but another 500 Palestinians were killed by Palestinians so you've got like in Syria not everyone's on the same page and people are vying for leadership and if you might be a collaborator we'll kill you and if you might really be pushing for a Nashashibi government we're gonna kill you and 500 Palestinians were killed by Palestinians I guess really because of the Intifada terrorism works to some degree terrorism really works and it brought Israel to the negotiating table and Oslo was not a peace plan but a roadmap to peace where it was hey let's take five years out and in five years the Palestinians you stop terrorizing us and we will in phases give you autonomy and we'll give you a police force and we'll give you the guns so you can rule yourselves and we will back away slowly and after five years when you haven't killed us and we've given you more territory and we've developed trust then we're gonna talk about the tough issues we can't possibly talk about now and those tough issues would be what will be the borders of a Palestinian state what will be the status of Jerusalem will it be your capital can we share the capital can we repatriate Palestinian refugees it was an idyllic plan I want you to know that at the onset 70% of the Palestinians wanted this 70% of the Israelis wanted this it was a good plan if only and from the announcement of the plan terror began to rain down on Israel and no matter how much it rained down on Israel we kept on giving them more and more autonomy an autonomy meaning not one Jew and not one IDF would be amongst those villages, cities and towns that were gifted to them with autonomy so Israel removed every IDF and every Jewish presence from the major Arab cities Jericho, Ramallah Belechem, Calculia, Tulkaram Janine, Nablus and 450 villages we gave them guns for their police force those guns were turned right around on us and whether you like the plan or not I want to tell you what I like about the plan from Oslo on I don't believe that Israel is an occupying force I don't think that Israel can really soulfully be an occupying force it doesn't want to be an occupying force it's not good for us and I think that Oslo removed that stain here you have autonomy your autonomy can lead to independence all you have to do is not kill us and I think that morally at this point we have the high ground and they blew it again but I feel absolved of being an occupier so with Oslo came horrible horrible terror attacks this became the era of the suicide bombs the buses were blowing up and the pizzerias were blowing up and the Passover satyrs were blowing up and people standing in lines at ATM machines and going to disco techs were blowing up we were giving them land for autonomy we came up with the most clever solution which was the security fence I think 94% of that fence is actually chain link only a little percent of it is that really ugly cement wall that you see the security fence is not nice but it is the most effective and nonviolent strategy of stopping terrorism all you have to do is go through security check now I don't really like going to the airport three hours early either to go through security check but I'm really glad I do and I'm really glad everyone else is checked before I get on that plane so the Palestinians complain that it really hampers their mobility it does the way any security check hampers anyone's mobility take a look at this in areas where there's a fence there is no more terrorism all we have to do is be vigilant about that fence and be careful about who we allow to come through and not come through and there could be no terrorism that's why I put the hummus charter I wanted to mention the first in Tafada going back a little bit sorry to confuse you the first uprising of the Palestinians the Palestinian leadership was nowhere to be found they were based in Tunis not along the borders and it was really a grassroots organic and I think natural uprising but what came to fill that power vacuum in the absence of the Piola was hummus the hummus charter it really reads like the Palestinian charter except that with the destruction the complete and total destruction of Israel and every Zionist creation cultural educational architectural will be replaced with an Islamic State and for some reason this was read as the PLO are now the moderates and hummus is the worst people but ultimately they're talking about the same thing and they start to take hold of the hearts and the souls of of the Palestinian people so you've got competing leadership now amongst the Palestinians and Judah and Samaria and Gaza hummus and what becomes not the PLO after Oslo but the PA forward here and despite the terror we go to the table again this is Prime Minister Barak and Yasir Arifat sit down at Camp David with Bill Clinton and we offer them the ceiling 91% of Judah and Samaria compensated with land swaps 130% of Gaza it's not a mistake that means they get 100% of Gaza plus a third extra of the territory contiguity between Gaza and Jude and Samaria so they could pass through easily when Arifat said no no Bill Clinton laid a blame squarely on the feet of Arifat he said all the guy came with was no he offered nothing in return he made no counter offers all he said was no not surprised that is the history of the Palestinian people to reject any offer unless it's the total annihilation of Israel why Bill Clinton said that and I happen to agree with him Arifat's identity as a Palestinian is founded on the rejection of my identity as an indigenous person to Israel if he agrees to any piece of it what he's doing is giving some recognition to Israel and he personally would have no raison d'etre so as soon as the no came down we've heard the no many times a second into Fatah broke out look at the numbers again 3,000 Palestinians were killed and 1,000 Israelis were killed I bemoan every death of every civilian of every Jew of every innocent person but the numbers are going to keep on indicating when if you go up against the IDF in Mittendrinem we decide to disengage from Gaza why there's 8,000 Jews living in Jewish neighborhoods you might know these neighborhoods as settlements 8,000 Jews living amongst 1.5 million Palestinians that want them dead so the IDF have to be there constantly defending these 8,000 it was a huge huge amount of resources to protect these 8,000 people and Ariel Sharon with the approval of the government of the Knesset decided to completely remove every Jew every IDF from Gaza that Israel would maintain the right to the borders on the ground to survey what's coming in, what's going out we maintain right over the Palestinian airspace we maintained right over the the borders on the water to make sure what was coming in was not aimed at our destruction and as we are disengaging the rocket attacks from Gaza don't stop and they're actually getting worse as their rockets get more sophisticated they're not just hitting steroids although it seems to me that hitting steroids didn't make an impact on too many people in Israel but once it started getting further into Ashkelon and Ashtod and there's a threat in Tel Aviv we went to war three times with Gaza you should look at pictures of Gaza on the internet I cannot understand why they keep going to war with us the devastation is horrible in Gaza the Israel's goal each time in going to war was to just to disable Hamas's ability to launch rockets at Israel and to collapse the terror tunnels it did not want to reconquer it or reoccupy it it wanted to disable it from killing Israelis or threatening Israelis the wars resulted in the death of 2,700 Palestinians and 240 Israelis and if you want to talk about disproportionate force let's get the facts straight proportionate force doesn't mean you kill 10 of us we can kill 10 of you if there is an arsenal that is aimed that is meant for military belligerent purposes it becomes a military target proportional force means how much damage can that military target do is as much force as I can apply to that target even if there's a civilian sitting on that target even if there's 20 kids sitting on that target it's still a military target so disproportionate force doesn't mean we killed more of you and therefore we're bad it's taking away their ability with proportional force to kill us and in the middle of that we go back to the bargaining table President Prime Minister Omer sat with the new president of the PA Mahmoud Abbas and offered him basically exactly what Barak had offered him plus the repatriation of 5,000 Palestinian refugees into Israel proper wherever that may have been they hammered out a deal Barak Abbas said no no let me think about it I'll get back to you and that was the end of the conversation I'm glad they rejected it so I can't I hope I've done a good job you know telling you that biblically from a biblical point of view from a religious point of view from the definition of indigeneity this land is ours that we now have I think I feel I sleep better knowing that they have autonomy and that Israel is not an occupying force I wish for the Palestinians I wish them peace because we're not going to have any peace until they buy into peace I wish for them what Israel has a magnificent flourishing progressive land where all citizens are equal everyone has equal rights all religions are respected I wish that for the Palestinians I wish that they could get to the place where Israel is where we are so abundant that we can give to the world I wish for the Palestinians that for them to want peace I think that however I think giving them an independent state in Jude and Sumerian Gaza would basically mean at this point that they would arm themselves to the teeth with the intent to destroy Israel and then we would have to fight back and they would not win as the numbers would show they would not win they would be devastated and I wish them peace