At a ceremony in Yerushalayim commemorating the 109th anniversary of the death of the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said Thursday: “Peace is founded on security, not goodwill. Without security we will not be able to defend ourselves and any peace we have will unravel.”
“We remain faithful to Herzl’s vision: to establish here an exemplary state, a modern state, a state that is rooted in our land, the Land of Israel, but also a state that above all is able to give the Jews what was lost to them in their years of exile – the ability to defend themselves, by themselves, against any threat.”
“The tarnishing of Israel, the description of us as rejecters of peace, as pursuers of war, as a dark state that aspires to conquest, rather than as an enlightened state that fights like no other democracy in the world, a state that fights like no other state in the world in the most enlightened way imaginable against the desires to destroy it. All the charges against us are overdone, exaggerated and absurd, but they still take hold.”
Read the full speech here.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Yerushalayim on Thursday to discuss a renewal of the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians.
A political source said Thursday that, according to intelligence information, Abbas is willing to sit down with Netanyahu, but doesn’t intend to go forward with talks. “He wants to talk, and then reintroduce Palestinian demands,” the source added. “They want to pursue the unilateral track with the UN, with no intention of making any hard or concrete decisions.”
{Matzav.com Israel News Bureau}
May those guys be pushed into irrelevance before “the ability to defend themselves by themselves against any threat” brings about what we know it will R”L.