Benjamin
Netanyahu , prime
minister of Israel, spoke to the United Nations of Monday, September
29, 2014. His speech was on the subject of terrorism and the Islamic
militants. The whole of his speech is printed below but important
points are highlighted.
Most
of us today did not experience World War II. It was a terrible time
with countries such as France and England having major cities
destroyed. Estimates are from fifty to eighty million
people
were killed in that war. And what caused this war? Fanaticism. Hitler
decided his way was the best way and set out to conquer the world,
leaving a swath of destruction behind him in terms of people and
property.
Today
we are faced with fanaticism from the Islamic Militants. Throw in the
nuclear capabilities card and it is a grave danger we should not take
lightly. They believe in killing to get their way. And they believe
that "they are right", and use it as a validation to kill.
Hitler was a psychopath. A psychopath is someone who does whatever he
wants, whenever he wants, because this is what he wants... whether it
harms others or not.
We
saw the twin towers go down in New York with the Pentagon crashed
into with another airplane on the same day. That took the lives of
(according to Wikipedia) approximately 3000 people. That's a small
start to what would happen in World War 3. You think the Islamic
Militants wouldn't have been absolutely delighted to bring an atomic
bomb on board each of those planes? Netanyahu's speech is stating
that we must see what is ahead of us. Ignoring these facts,
underestimating their strength, will lead to only our downfall.
Why
am I writing about this...am I Jewish? No. I am agnostic from a
christian background. But I do believe in the dangers of nuclear.
There are positive aspects of nuclear...but there are many more
dangerous aspects which might bring down humanity. Hitler was ignored
for years by America before we finally joined World War II. Let us
not ignore the dangers from the Islamic Militants as outlined by
Netanyahu. I think it was one of the great speeches of the 21st
century.
Transcript
of Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the 2014 UN General Assembly
PRIME
MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Thank you, Mr. President. Distinguished
delegates, I come here from Jerusalem to speak on behalf of my
people, the people of Israel. I've come here to speak about the
dangers we face and about the opportunities we seek. I've come here
to expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my
country and against the brave soldiers who defend it.
Ladies
and gentlemen, the people of Israel pray for peace, but our hopes and
the
world’s hopes for peace are in danger because everywhere we look
militant Islam is on the march. It’s not militants. It’s not
Islam. It’s militant Islam. And
typically its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one:
Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds. No creed, no faith, no ethnic group
is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of
the world.
You
know the famous American saying, all politics is local? For
the militant Islamists, all politics is global, because their
ultimate goal is to dominate the world. Now, that threat might
seem exaggerated to some since it starts out small, like a cancer
that attacks a particular part of the body. But left unchecked, the
cancer grows, metastasizing over wider and wider areas. To protect
the peace and security of the world, we must remove this cancer
before it’s too late.
Last week, many of the countries represented here rightly applauded President
Obama for leading the effort to confront ISIS, and yet weeks before,
some of these same countries, the same countries that now support
confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They
evidently don’t understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the
same poisonous tree.
ISIS
and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to impose
well beyond the territory under their control. Listen to ISIS’
self-declared caliph, Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi.
This is what he said two months ago: A day will soon come when the
Muslim will walk everywhere as a master. The Muslims will cause the
world to hear and understand the meaning of terrorism and destroy the
idol of democracy. Now listen to Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas.
He proclaims a similar vision of the future: We say this to the West
-- by Allah you will be defeated. Tomorrow our nation will sit on the
throne of the world.
As
Hamas’ charter makes clear, Hamas’ immediate goal is to destroy
Israel, but Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a
caliphate. Hamas shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant
Islamists, and that’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the
streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered in 9/11, and
that’s why its leaders condemn the United States for killing Osama
bin Laden whom they praised as a holy warrior.
So
when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas
is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.
And what they share in common all militant Islamists share in common.
Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al-Shabab in Somalia, Hezbollah in Lebanon,
Al-Nusra in Syria, the Mahdi army in Iraq, and the Al-Qaida branches
in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.
Some
are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shiites, some want to restore a
pre-medieval caliphate from the seventh century, others want to
trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the ninth century.
They operate in different lands, they target different victims and
they even kill each other in their battle for supremacy. But they
all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever-expanding
enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no
tolerance, where women are treated as chattel, Christians are
decimated and minorities are subjugated, sometimes given the stark
choice, convert or die. For them, anyone can be considered an
infidel, including fellow Muslims.
Ladies
and gentlemen, militant Islam’s
ambition to dominate the world seems mad, but so too did the global
ambitions of another fanatic ideology that swept into power eight
decades ago. The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant
Islamists believe in a master faith. They just disagree who
among them will be the master of the master faith. That’s what they
truly disagree about. And therefore, the question before us is
whether militant Islam will have the power to realize its unbridled
ambitions.
There
is one place where that could soon happen -- the Islamic State of
Iran. For 35 years, Iran has relentlessly pursued the global
mission which was set forth by its founding ruler, Ayatollah
Khomeini, in these words. “We
will export our revolution to the entire world until the cry ‘there
is no god but Allah’ will echo throughout the world over.” And
ever since, the regime’s brutal enforcers, Iran’s revolutionary
guards, have done exactly that.
Listen
to its current commander, General Mohammad Ali Jafari. And he clearly
stated his goal. He said “Our imam did not limit the Islamic
revolution to this country, our
duty is to prepare the way for an Islamic world government.”
Iran’s
President Rohani
stood here last
week and shed crocodile tears over what he called the globalization
of terrorism. Maybe he should spare us those phony tears and have a
word instead with the commanders of Iran’s revolutionary guards. He
could ask them to call off Iran’s global terror campaign, which has
included attacks in two dozen countries on five continents since 2011
alone.
You
know, to say that Iran doesn’t practice terrorism is like saying
Derek Jeter never played shortstop for the New York Yankees. This is
-- this bemoaning by the Iranian president of the spread of terrorism
has got to be one of history’s greatest displays of doubletalk.
Now,
some argue that Iran’s global terror campaign, its subversion of
countries throughout the Middle East and well beyond the Middle East,
some argue that this is the work of the extremists. They say things
are changing. They point to last year’s election in Iran. They
claim that Iran’s smooth-talking president and foreign minister,
they’ve changed not only the tone of Iran’s foreign policy but
also its substance. They believe that Rohani and Zarif
(generally/genuinely ?) want to reconcile with the West, that they’ve
abandoned the global mission of the Islamic Revolution. Really?
So
let’s look at what Foreign Minister Zarif wrote in his book just a
few years ago:
We
have a fundamental problem with the West, and especially with
America. This is because we are heirs to a global mission which is
tied to our raison d'être, a global mission which is tied to our
very reason for being.
And
then Zarif asks a question -- I think an interesting one. He says:
How come Malaysia -- he’s referring to an overwhelmingly Muslim
country -- how come Malaysia doesn’t have similar problems? And he
answers: Because Malaysia is not trying to change the international
order.
That’s
your moderate. So don’t
be fooled by Iran’s manipulative charm offensive. It’s designed
for one purpose and for one purpose only: to lift the sanctions and
remove the obstacles to Iran’s path to the bomb. The
Islamic Republic is now trying to bamboozle its way to an agreement
that will remove the sanctions it still faces and leave it with a
capacity of thousands of refugees -- of centrifuges, rather -- to
enrich uranium. This would effectively cement Iran’s place as a
threshold military nuclear power. And in the future, at the time of
its choosing, Iran, the world’s most dangerous regime, in the
world’s most dangerous region, would obtain the world’s most
dangerous weapons. Allowing that to happen would pose the gravest
threat to us all. It’s one thing to confront militant Islamists
on pickup trucks armed
with Kalashnikov rifles. It’s another thing to confront militant
Islamists armed with weapons of mass destruction.
I
remember that last year, everyone here was rightly concerned about
thechemical
weapons in Syria,
including the possibility that they would fall into the hands of
terrorists. Well, that didn’t happen, and President Obama deserves
great credit for leading the diplomatic effort to dismantle virtually
all of Syria’s chemical weapons capability. Imagine how much more
dangerous the Islamic State, ISIS, would be if it possessed chemical
weapons. Now imagine how much more dangerous the Islamic state of
Iran would be if it possessed nuclear weapons.
Ladies
and gentlemen, would you let ISIS enrich uranium? Would you let ISIS
build a heavy water reactor? Would you let ISIS develop
intercontinental ballistic missiles? Of course you wouldn’t. Then
you mustn’t let the Islamic state of Iran do those things either,
because here’s what will happen. Once
Iran produces atomic bombs, all the charms and all the smiles will
suddenly disappear. They’ll just vanish. And it’s then that the
ayatollahs will show their true face and unleash their aggressive
fanaticism on the entire world.
There’s
only one responsible course of action to address this threat. Iran’s
nuclear military capabilities must be fully dismantled. (Applause.)
Make no mistake: ISIS must be defeated. But to defeat ISIS and leave
Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the
war.
Ladies
and gentlemen, the fight against militant Islam is indivisible. When
militant Islam succeeds anywhere, it’s emboldened everywhere. When
it suffers a blow in one place, it’s set back in every place.
That’s why Israel’s fight against Hamas is not just our fight,
it’s your fight. Israel is fighting a fanaticism today that your
countries may be forced to fight tomorrow.
For 50 days this past summer Hamas fired thousands of rockets at
Israel, many of them supplied by Iran. I want you to think about what
your countries would do if thousands of rockets were fired at your
cities. Imagine millions of your citizens having seconds at most to
scramble to bomb shelters day after day. You wouldn’t let
terrorists fire rockets at your cities with impunity, nor would you
let terrorists dig dozens of terror tunnels under your borders to
infiltrate your towns in order to murder and kidnap your citizens.
Israel justly defended itself against both rocket attacks and terror
tunnels. (Applause.)
Yet
Israel faced another challenge. We faced a propaganda war because in
an attempt to win the world sympathy, Hamas cynically used
Palestinian civilians as human shields. It used schools -- not just
schools; UN schools -- private homes, mosques, even hospitals to
store and fire rockets at Israel. As Israel surgically struck at the
rocket launchers and at the tunnels, Palestinian civilians were
tragically but unintentionally killed. There are heartrending images
that resulted, and these fueled libelous charges that Israel was
deliberately targeting civilians. We were not. We deeply regret every
single civilian casualties.
And
the truth is this: Israel was doing everything to minimize
Palestinian civilian casualties. Hamas was doing everything to
maximize Israeli civilian casualties and Palestinian civilian
casualties. Israel dropped flyers, made phone calls, sent text
messages, broadcast warnings in Arabic on Palestinian television, all
this to enable Palestinian civilians to evaluate targeted areas. No
other country and no other army in history have gone to greater
lengths to avoid casualties among the civilian population of their
enemies. (Applause.)
Now,
this concern for Palestinian life was all the more remarkable given
that Israeli civilians were being bombarded by rockets day after day,
night after night. And as their families were being rocketed by
Hamas, Israel’s citizen army, the brave soldiers of the IDF, our
young boys and girls, they upheld the highest moral values of any
army in the world. (Applause.) Israel’s soldiers deserve not
condemnation but admiration, admiration from decent people
everywhere. (Applause.)
Now,
here is what Hamas did. Here is what Hamas did. Hamas embedded its
missile batteries in residential areas and told Palestinians to
ignore Israel’s warnings to leave. And just in case people didn’t
get the message, they executed Palestinian civilians in Gaza who
dared to protest. And no less reprehensible, Hamas deliberately
placed its rockets where Palestinian children live and play. Let me
show you a photograph. It was taken by a France 24 crew during the
recent conflict. It shows two Hamas rocket launchers, which were used
to attack us. You see three children playing next to them. Hamas
deliberately put its rockets in hundreds of residential areas like
this -- hundreds of them.
Ladies
and gentlemen, this is a war crime. And I say to President Abbas,
these are the crimes, the war crimes, committed by your Hamas
partners in the national unity government which you head and you are
responsible for. And these are the real war crimes you should have
investigated or spoken out against from this podium last week.
(Applause.)
Ladies
and gentlemen, as Israel’s children huddle in bomb shelters and
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense knocked Hamas rockets out of the
sky, the profound moral difference between Israel and Hamas couldn’t
have been clearer. Israel was using its missiles to protect its
children. Hamas was using its children to protect its missiles.
(Applause.)
By
investigating Israel rather than Hamas for war crimes, the UN Human
Rights Council has betrayed its noble mission to protect the
innocent. In fact, what it’s doing is to turn the laws of war
upside down. Israel, which took unprecedented steps to minimize
civilian casualties -- Israel is condemned. Hamas, which both
targeted and hid behind civilians -- that’s a double war crime --
Hamas is given a pass.
The
Human Rights Council is thus sending a clear message to terrorists
everywhere: Use civilians as a human shield. Use them again and again
and again. And you know why? Because, sadly, it works. By granting
international legitimacy to the use of human shields, the UN Human
Rights Council has thus become a terrorist rights council, and it
will have repercussions -- it probably already has -- about the use
of civilians as human shields. It’s not just our interests. It’s
not just our values that are under attack. It’s your interests and
your values.
Ladies
and gentlemen, we live in a world steeped in tyranny and terror where
gays are hanged from cranes in Tehran, political prisoners are
executed in Gaza, young girls are abducted en masse in Nigeria, and
hundreds of thousands are butchered in Syria, Libya and Iraq, yet
nearly half -- nearly half of the UN Human Rights Council’s
resolutions focusing on a single country have been directed against
Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East; Israel, where
issues are openly debated in a boisterous parliament, where human
rights are protected by the -- by independent courts, and where
women, gays and minorities live in a genuinely free society.
The
human rights -- that’s an oxymoron, the human -- UN Human Rights
Council, but I’ll use it just the same. The council’s biased
treatment of Israel is only one manifestation of the return of one of
the world’s largest prejudices. We hear mobs today in Europe call
for the gassing of Jews. We hear some national leaders compare Israel
to the Nazis. This is not a function of Israel’s policies. It’s a
function of diseased minds. and that disease has a name. It’s
called anti-Semitism. It is now spreading in polite society where it
masquerades as legitimate criticism of Israel.
For
centuries the Jewish people have been demonized with blood libels and
charges of deicide. Today the Jewish state is demonized with the
apartheid libel and charges of genocide -- genocide. In what moral
universe does genocide include warning the enemy civilian population
to get out of harm's way, or ensuring that they receive tons -- tons
of humanitarian aid each day even as thousands of rockets are being
fired at us, or setting up a field hospital to aid their wounded?
Well,
I suppose it's the same moral universe where a man who wrote a
dissertation of lies about the Holocaust and who insists on a
Palestine free of Jews -- Judenrein -- can stand at this podium and
shamelessly accuse Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing. In the
past, outrageous lies against the Jews were the precursors to the
wholesale slaughter of our people, but no more. Today, we, the Jewish
people, have the power to defend ourselves. We will defend ourselves
against our enemies on the battlefield -- (applause) -- we will
expose their lies against us in the court of public opinion. Israel
will continue to stand proud and unbowed. (Applause.)
Ladies
and gentlemen, despite the enormous challenges facing Israel, I
believe we have a historic opportunity. After decades of seeing
Israel as their enemy, leading states in the Arab world increasingly
recognize that together, we and they face many of the same dangers,
and principally, this means a nuclear-armed Iran and militant
Islamist movements gaining ground in the Sunni world. Our challenge
is to transform these common interests to create a productive
partnership, one that would build a more secure, peaceful and
prosperous Middle East. Together, we can strengthen regional
security, we can advance projects in water and agricultural, in
transportation and health and energy in so many fields.
I
believe the partnership between us can also help facilitate peace
between Israel and the Palestinians. Now, many have long assumed that
an Israeli-Palestinian peace can help facilitate a broader
rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world. But these days, I
think it may work the other way around, namely that a broader
rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world may help facilitate
an Israeli-Palestinian peace. And therefore, to achieve that peace,
we must look not only to Jerusalem and Ramallah but also to Cairo, to
Amman, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and elsewhere.
I
believe peace can be realized with the active involvement of Arab
countries -- those that are willing to provide political, material
and other indispensable support. I'm ready to make a historic
compromise, not because Israel occupies a foreign land. The people of
Israel are not occupiers in the land of Israel. (Applause.) History,
archaeology and common sense all make clear that we have had a
singular attachment to this land for over 3,000 years.
I
want peace because I want to create a better future for my people,
but it must be a genuine peace -- one that is anchored in mutual
recognition and enduring security arrangements -- rock solid
security arrangements on the ground, because you see, Israeli
withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza created two militant Islamic
enclaves on our borders for which tens of thousands of rockets have
been fired at Israel, and these sobering experiences heightens
Israel's security concerns (regarding ?) potential territorial
concessions in the future.
Now,
those security concerns are even greater today. Just look around you.
The Middle East is in chaos, states are disintegrating, and militant
Islamists are filling the void. Israel cannot have territories from
which it withdraws taken over by Islamic militants yet again, as
happened in Gaza and Lebanon. That would place the likes of ISIS
within mortar range, a few miles, of 80 percent of our population.
Now
think about that. The distance between the 1967 lines and the suburbs
of Tel Aviv is like the distance between the UN building here and
Times Square. Israel is a tiny country. That’s why in any peace
agreement, which will obviously necessitate a territorial compromise,
I will always insist that Israel be able to defend itself by itself
against any threat. (Applause.)
And
yet despite everything that has happened, some still don’t take
Israel’s security concerns seriously. But I do and I always will --
(applause) -- because as prime minister of Israel, I’m entrusted
with the awesome responsibility of ensuring the future of the Jewish
people and the future of the Jewish state. And no matter what
pressure is brought to bear, I will never waiver in fulfilling that
responsibility. (Applause.)
I
believe that with a fresh approach from our neighbors, we can advance
peace despite the difficulties we face. See, in Israel, we have a
record of making the impossible possible. We’ve made a desolate
land flourish, and with very few natural resources, we’ve used the
fertile minds of our people to turn Israel into a global center of
technology and innovation, and peace, of course, would enable Israel
to realize its full potential and to bring a promising future not
only for our people, not only for the Palestinian people, but for
many, many others in our region.
But
the old template for peace must be updated. It must take into account
new realities and new roles and responsibilities for our Arab
neighbors.
Ladies
and gentlemen, there is a new Middle East. It presents new dangers
but also new opportunities. Israel is prepared to work with Arab
partners and the international community to confront those dangers
and to seize those opportunities. Together,
we must recognize the global threat of militant Islam, the primacy of
dismantling Iran’s nuclear weapons capability and the indispensable
role of Arab states in advancing peace with the Palestinians.
All this may fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but it’s the
truth, and the truth must always be spoken, especially here in the
United Nations. (Applause.)
Isaiah,
our great prophet of peace, taught us nearly 3,000 years ago in
Jerusalem to speak truth to power. (Speaks in Hebrew.) For the sake
of Zion, I will not be silent, for the sake of Jerusalem, I will not
be still until her justice shines bright and her salvation glows like
a flaming torch.
Ladies
and gentlemen, let us light a torch
of truth and justice to safeguard our common future. Thank
you. (Applause.)