Israeli official: We must refute Palestinian occupation myth

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said that Israel needs to debunk the myth that the Israelis are occupiers of a Palestinian land and stressed that uprooting Jews from their homes is ethnic cleansing.

Speaking on Wednesday at the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said that Israel needs to “refute the myth of occupation. The term is both legally and historically incorrect. The prime minister was right in referring to the uprooting of Jews as ethnic cleansing. Gone are the days when transfer of Jews was possible.”

She was relating to comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September in which he slammed the Palestinians and the international community for insisting on a Palestinian state that would be ethnically cleansed of Jews. He rejected international criticism of Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria, equating it to “ethnic cleansing” of Jews and insisting the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are not an obstacle to peace.

Hotovely said that the key to peace with the Palestinians was a fundamental change in the Palestinian educational system.

“Whoever wants to see a future in which peace emerges between the sides, needs to invest in education today. This is an investment in the future and the effort will be well worth it in the long run. It is possible,” said Hotovely, pointing to Japan and Germany serve as examples of such success. “After the Second World War, great efforts were mounted to foster democratic values through educational reform. These efforts bore fruit and we can learn much from that experience,” she said.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) educational system currently poisons the minds of Palestinian children by educating them to hate Israel and Israelis in addition to terror-promoting messages. They even use cultural mediums such as school plays to imbue such messages.  Rather than promoting peace, the Palestinian educational system continues to glorify terrorists and promote death and destruction.

Hotovely called on the international community to “work together once again and invest in the Palestinian educational system and in the future of Palestinian children. Israeli children are raised on values of tolerance, innovation and entrepreneurship. Palestinian children are raised to hate and murder Jews. The situation is very tragic and it is high time we change it.”

“More than 22 billion dollars were spent by the international community on the Palestinian Authority in the last two decades. It is time to monitor what is being done with these vast sums of money and to invest resources effectively in the young generation, by fostering values which will enable them to lead better lives,” she stressed.

By: Aryeh Savir, World Israel News