United Nations bedazzled by Abbas word wizardry

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's speech to the UN General Assembly last week contained a concoction of half-truths and outright lies that everyone listening to him should question.

Here are some prize porkies:

1. "The question of Palestine was one of the first just issues brought before the United Nations from the time of its inception, and yet it remains unresolved until this moment"

Abbas failed to mention that it has remained unresolved since then because:

(i) The Arabs did not accept the 1947 UN Partition Plan to partition western Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State – whilst the Jews did.

(ii) The Arabs – instead - unsuccessfully sent six Arab armies to invade Palestine in May 1948 to rout the newly declared Jewish State – Israel - and drive its Jewish population into the sea

(iii) Jordan and Egypt successfully drove out and permanently expelled the Jewish population living in the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria (later termed "the West Bank") - keeping those areas Jew-free from 1948 until 1967

(iv) No attempt was made between 1948 and 1967 to create the Palestinian state Abbas says he will now accept. That opportunity has been well and truly missed.

2. Abbas described the Palestinian Arabs as "a people that had lived peacefully in their land and made genuine intellectual, cultural and humanitarian contributions to mankind."

Abbas was gilding the lily.

(i) The Arab riots in Jerusalem in 1920, the Hebron massacre of the Jewish community in 1929 and the Arab riot between 1936 and 1939 give the lie to his claims.

(ii) No genuine intellectual, cultural and humanitarian contributions have been made to mankind by the Palestinian Arabs – unless airline hijackings, suicide vests, and indiscriminate targeting of Jews is what Abbas had in mind