Mahmoud Abbas distorts history

The prime minister has slammed Fatah's dictator for his distortion of history in the op-ed the New York Times had the gall to publish:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu criticized Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, following the op-ed he published earlier in the day in The New York Times.

“The article is a blatant distortion of historical facts which are well-known and documented,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “The Palestinians were the ones who refused the partition plan for two states while the Jews had agreed.”

Netanyahu was referring to Abbas’ claim in his article that “the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.”

Abbas conveniently omitted the rejection of the partition plan by the Arab world and the fact that most Arabs living in Israel left because they were told to do so by their leaders, who promised them that they would return after Israel was quickly annihilated.

Netanyahu also mentioned that Abbas skipped over the Arab nations' attacks on the young Jewish state following its declaration, saying that “Arab armies aided by Palestinian forces were the ones who attacked the Jewish state in order to destroy it. Yet all of this is not even mentioned in the article.”

Netanyahu added that “we can conclude from the article that the Palestinian leadership sees in the establishment of a Palestinian state a means to continue the conflict with Israel instead of ending it.”

But that's just it. The whole tactic is merely a means to weaken and delegitimize Israel. And they're going to have start waking up and recognizing that fact.