I was recently in Cotonou for a 24-hour layover. Cotonou is the largest city of the small west African nation of Benin, and has become a secondary hub for emerging airline RwandAir. Taking advantage of its growing network, I booked a RwandAir ticket from Dakar, Senegal to Kigali, Rwanda via Cotonou. The transit stop included accommodation provided by the airline.

What is there to do in Cotonou? A quick Google search indicated that the closest attraction to the hotel was on the beach: an ‘amusement park’ called Air de Jeux Plage Erévan. This ‘park’ appeared to include a large-looking aircraft, so I decided to check it out. Little did I know the airframe was a historic Lockheed L1011 TriStar, full of amazing clues about its long and varied history around the world. //

The first thing that grabbed my attention upon entering was a bronze plaque posted next to the forward door. The registration number, serial number and owner’s details were all meticulously detailed. The aircraft bore Sierra Leonian registration 9L-LFB, and last operated for Air Rum. So much for any trouble working out the aircraft’s history.

Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel from February 1969 to June 1974. The following is an op-ed she wrote for The New York Times in 1975.

To be misquoted is an occupational hazard of political leadership; for this reason I should like to clarify my position in regard to the Palestinian issue. I have been charged with being rigidly insensitive to the question of the Palestinian Arabs. In evidence of this I am supposed to have said, “There are no Palestinians.” My actual words were: “There is no Palestinian people. There are Palestinian refugees.” The distinction is not semantic. My statement was based on a lifetime of debates with Arab nationalists who vehemently excluded a separatist Palestinian Arab nationalism from their formulations.

When in 1921 I came to Palestine – until the end of World War I a barren, sparsely inhabited Turkish province – we, the Jewish pioneers, were the avowed Palestinians. So we were named in the world. Arab nationalists, on the other hand, stridently rejected the designation. Arab spokesmen continued to insist that the land we had cherished for centuries was, like Lebanon, merely a fragment of Syria. On the grounds that it dismembered an ideal unitary Arab state, they fought before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and at the United Nations.

When the Arab historian Philip K. Hitti informed the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that “there is no such thing as Palestine in history,” it was left to David Ben-Gurion to stress the central role of Palestine in Jewish, if not Arab, history.

As late as May 1956, Ahmed Shukairy, subsequently head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, declared to the United Nations Security Council, “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” In view of this, I believe I may be forgiven if I took Arab spokesmen at their word.

Until the 1960’s, attention was focused on the Arab refugees for whose plight the Arab states would allow no solution though many constructive and far-reaching proposals were made by Israel and the world community.

I repeatedly expressed my sympathy for the needless sufferings of refugees whose abnormal situation was created and exploited by the Arab states as a tactic in their campaign against Israel. However, refugee status could not indefinitely be maintained for the original 550,000 Arabs who in 1948 joined the exodus from the battle areas during the Arab attack on the new state of Israel.

When the refugee card began to wear thin, the Palestinian terrorist appeared on the scene flourishing not the arguable claims of displaced refugees but of a ghoulish nationalism that could only be sated on the corpse of Israel.

I repeat again. We dispossessed no Arabs. Our toil in the deserts and marshes of Palestine created more habitable living space for both Arab and Jew. Until 1948 the Arabs of Palestine multiplied and flourished as the direct result of Zionist settlement. Whatever subsequent ills befell the Arabs were the inevitable result of the Arab design to drive us into the sea. Had Israel not repelled her would-be destroyers there would have been no Jewish refugees alive in the Middle East to concern the world.

Now, two years after the surprise attack of the Yom Kippur War, I am well aware of the potency of Arab petrobillions and I have no illusions about the moral fiber of the United Nations, most of whose members hailed gun-toting Yasir Arafat and shamefully passed the anti-Semitic resolution that described Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, as racist.

But though Israel is small and beset, I am not prepared to accede to the easy formula that in the Arab-Israeli conflict we witness two equal contending rights that demand further “flexibility” from Israel. Justice was not violated when in the huge territories liberated by the Allies from the Sultan, 1 percent was set aside for the Jewish homeland on its ancestral site, while in a parallel settlement 99 percent of the area was allotted for the establishment of independent Arab states.

We successively accepted the truncation of Transjordan, three-fourths of the area of historic Palestine, and finally the painful compromise of the 1947 partition resolution in the hope for peace. Yet though Israel arose in only one-fifth of the territory originally assigned for the Jewish homeland, the Arabs invaded the young state.

I ask again, as I have often asked, why did the Arabs not set up a Palestine state in their portion instead of cannibalizing the country by Jordan’s seizure of the West Bank and Egypt’s capture of the Gaza Strip? And, since the question of the 1967 borders looms heavily in the present discussions, why did the Arabs converge upon us in June 1967, when the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Sinai, the Gaza Strip and old Jerusalem were in their hands?

These are not idle questions. They go to the heart of the matter – the Arab denial of Israel’s right to exist. This right is not subject to debate. That is why Israel cannot by its presence sanction the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization at the Security Council, a participation in direct violation of Resolutions 242 and 338.

We have no common language with exultant murderers of the innocent and with a terrorist movement ideologically committed to the liquidation of Jewish national independence.

At no point has the P.L.O. renounced its program for the “elimination of the Zionist entity.” With startling effrontery P.L.O. spokesmen admit that their proposed state on the West Bank would be merely a convenient “point of departure,” a tactical “first stage” and finally, a combatant “arsenal” strategically situated for the easier penetration of Israel.

I am often asked a hypothetical question: How would we react if the P.L.O. agreed to abandon its weapon, terror, and its goal, the destruction of Israel? The answer is simple. Any movement that forswore both its means and its end would by that fact become a different organization with a different leadership. There is no room for such speculation in the case of the P.L.O.

This does not mean that at this stage I disregard whatever national aspirations Palestinian Arabs have developed in recent years. However, these can be satisfied within the boundaries of historic Palestine.

The majority of the refugees never left Palestine; they are settled on the West Bank and in Jordan, the majority of whose population is Palestinian. Whatever nomenclature is used, both the people involved and the territory on which they live are Palestinian.

A mini-Palestine state, planted as a time bomb against Israel on the West Bank, would only serve as a focal point for the further exploitation of regional tensions by the Soviet Union.

But in a genuine peace settlement a viable Palestine-Jordan could flourish side by side with Israel within the original area of Mandatory Palestine.

On July 21, 1974, the Israeli Government passed the following resolution: “The peace will be founded on the existence of two independent states only – Israel, with united Jerusalem as its capital, and a Jordanian-Palestinian Arab state, east of Israel, within borders to be determined in negotiations between Israel and Jordan.”

All allied problems can be equitably solved. For this to happen the adversaries of Israel will have to stop devising overt schemes for her immediate or piecemeal extinction.

There are 21 Arab states, rich in oil, land and sovereignty. There is only one small state in which Jewish national independence has been dearly achieved. Surely it is not extravagant to demand that in the current power play the right of a small democracy to freedom and life not be betrayed.

The weight of an average adult passenger and carry-on bag will be increased to 190 pounds in the summer and 195 pounds in the winter – that’s up 12% from 170 pounds and 175 pounds, AirInsightGroup noted of the new FAA standards. Airlines would have to increase the average weight for female passengers and carry-ons from 145 pounds to 179 pounds in the summer and from 150 pounds to 184 pounds in the winter, according to the standards, while the weight for males with carry-ons will go up from 185 pounds in the summer to 200 pounds and from 190 pounds to 205 pounds in the winter.

The FAA suggests air carriers compete these surveys every 36 calendar months, according to the advisory circular. Passenger’s weight is also said to remain confidential, according to the FAA guidance.

It’s unclear when travelers may be expected to step on the scale at airports or asked about their weight. The FAA did not immediately return a request for comment.

On the Palestinians & Violence
“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”

“We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.”

“A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.”

“It was not as if there was a Palestinian people in Palestine and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”

“We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs - We have no place to go.”

“I guess we have no choice. Either we do everything that is possible, and may seem to others as impossible, and just give up. Or we do everything that is really impossible and we remain alive. There’s one more basic thing that I think that people outside of Israel must realize, and if they understand and accept that, maybe other things will fall into place.

Just to give you an idea of what Israel is dealing with and why those cheering on Hamas are on the side of absolute evil, I submit to you the following video.

In an attempt to minimize civilian casualties in its ongoing war with terrorists, Israel warns Gazan citizens where they’re going to strike next. The Israeli Defense Force phoned one man in an effort to have him evacuate him and his family before they bombed a Hamas target.

IDF is heard pleading with the man to evacuate so that he and his children don’t die, but the Gazan made it clear that he wants him and his children to die so that it can be used against Israel:

Gazan man: You want to bomb? Bomb whatever you want.

IDF: No, brother. We need to do everything we can so you don’t die.

Gazan man: We want to die.

IDF: But you have a responsibility for children’s lives.

Gazan man: If the children need to die then they’ll die.

IDF: God forbid. God forbid. What do you want? To die?

Gazan man: This is how we reveal our cruelty. //

Golda Meir (Prime Minister of Israel from February 1969 to June 1974): “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”.

“They asked us for language and we gave them language when they asked us for it,” Weingarten said. Yeah, no, that’s not normal. It’s normal to get stakeholder opinion. It isn’t normal for an administration to ask for language and then take it “nearly verbatim.” The fact that she doesn’t see the issue with it means it’s something they’ve likely been doing for a while and they’ve had outsized influence except in the “last administration.”