PM Netanyahu left for the UN to address the General Assembly and meet with heads of state. His main objective is to counter Abbas’s hate and lies.
Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas. (Photo: Issam Rimawi/Flash90)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left on Sunday for the United Nations, where he is scheduled to address the 193-nation UN General Assembly and meet with heads of state.
Netanyahu’s primary objective at the UN is to counter the hateful incitement and deceit voiced by Palestinian Authority Head Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) during his address to the GA.
“After the Iranian president’s deceptive speech and Abu Mazen’s inciteful speech, I will tell the truth of Israel’s citizens to the entire world. In my UN General Assembly speech and in all of my meetings I will represent the citizens of Israel and will – on their behalf – refute the slander and lies directed at our country,” Netanyahu affirmed before leaving Israel. “I will tell the truth about our state and about the heroic soldiers of the IDF, the most moral army in the world.”
Speech of Allegations and Lies
Abbas addressed the UN on Friday, accusing Israel of planning mass-scale genocide against the Palestinian people. “In this year, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Israel has chosen to make it a year of a new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people… I have addressed you in this hall during similar days in 2012 and cautioned that the colonial occupying power was preparing for a new Nakba (catastrophe) against the Palestinian people, and I appealed to you: Prevent a new Nakba. Support the establishment of a free and independent State of Palestine now.”
Abbas further accused Israel of hindering any chance for a peace agreement and threatened to seek Israel’s prosecution over war crimes allegedly committed during Operation Protective Edge at the International Crimes Court (ICC). “There is an occupation that must end now. There is a people that must be freed immediately. The hour of independence of the state of Palestine has arrived,” he concluded.
‘Deeply Disappointing’
Abbas’s speech drew harsh condemnation by Israeli leaders as well as in the US.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman told IDF Radio that Abbas was no partner in peace. “Abu Mazen has succeeded in exhausting everyone, not only the Israelis but the entire international community. He is not a partner for anything.”
Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon said that Abbas’s speech proved that “he is a person who is involved in the dispersion of lies and incitement against the State of Israel. Abu Mazen is not a man of peace and is not really interested in an agreement.”
The United States slammed Abbas’s speech as well, saying that it was “offensive” and undermined peace efforts. “President Abbas’s speech today included offensive characterizations that were deeply disappointing and which we reject,” stated State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
While in the US, Netanyahu will meet with US President Obama, UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It will be the first meeting in over a decade between the prime ministers of Israel and India.
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Author: Aryeh Savir
Staff Writer, United with Israel