Students re-enact November 29
Students re-enact November 29Yoni Kempinski

Last Thursday, as Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was presenting his unilateral statehood bid at the United Nations, Israeli students throughout the country gathered for study sessions about the events of November 29, 1947.

It was on this day 65 years ago that the United Nations voted in favor of the partition plan. The resolution recommended the creation of two states, one Arab, one Jewish and granted a small portion of the area, under the British Mandate, to the new Jewish state. It is for this reason that Abbas purposely chose November 29 as the date on which to present his bid for recognition of “Palestine” at the UN.

Thursday’s sessions were organized by the World Zionist Organization and the Zionist Council in Israel and are continuing over the course of the week.

“The youth tend to take the State of Israel for granted because most of them were born here,” said Dr. Avital Laufer, the deputy mayor of Netanya, who led a discussion with students in the city about the significance of November 29 in light of the PA’s move at the UN.

“I remind them that Israel is still a relatively young state and we can’t take it for granted because we have a lot of enemies, inside and outside, that want to destroy the legitimacy of the Israeli State,” she added. “The students must not let it happen.”