PM NETANYAHU'S SPEECH AT THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
29/09/2014
Photo by Avi Ohayon, GPO
[Transcription]
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 see. 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 hope 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.
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’s 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 Meshaal, 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's charter makes clear,
Hamas’s 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.
That’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as
thousands of Americans were murdered on 9/11.
And that's why its leaders condemned 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;
• Ash-Shabab in Somalia;
• Hezbollah in Lebanon;
• An-Nusrah in Syria; •
The Mahdi Army in Iraq;
• And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen,
Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.
Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi'ites. Some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the 7th century.
Others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the 9th century.
They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they
even kill each other in their quest 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 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 to power eight decades ago.
The Nazis believed in a master race.
The militant Islamists believe in a master faith.
They just disagree about who among them will be the master… of the master faith.
That’s what they truly disagree about.
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
Muhammad Ali Ja'afari. And he clearly stated this 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 Rouhani 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. To say that Iran doesn't practice terrorism is like saying Derek
Jeter never played shortstop for the New York Yankees.
This
bemoaning of the Iranian president of the spread of terrorism has got to
be one of history’s greatest displays of doubletalk.
Now, Some
still 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 elections 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 Rouhani and Zarif 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'etre…
A global mission which is tied to our very reason of 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 the
capacity of thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. This would
effectively cement Iran's place as a threshold military nuclear power.
In the future, at a time of its choosing, Iran, the world’s most
dangerous state 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 pick-up 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
the chemical weapons in Syria, including the possibility that they would
fall into the hands of terrorists.
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 charm and all the smiles will suddenly disappear. They’ll just
vanish. It's then that the ayatollahs will show their true face and
unleash their aggressive fanaticism on the entire world.
There
is only one responsible course of action to address this threat: Iran's
nuclear military capabilities must be fully dismantled.
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.
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.
Yet Israel also faced another challenge. We faced a propaganda war.
Because, in an attempt to win the world’s 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 casualty. 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, always to enable Palestinian civilians to
evacuate 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.
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.
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.
Israel's soldiers deserve not condemnation, but admiration. Admiration from decent people everywhere.
Now here’s 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.
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 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.
Ladies and Gentlemen, As Israeli children huddled in bomb shelters and
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system 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.
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 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 human shields. Use them again and again and
again.
You know why? Because sadly, it works. By granting
international legitimacy to the use of human shields, the UN’s 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 interest. 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
independent courts and where women, gays and minorities live in a
genuinely free society.
The Human Rights… ( that’s an oxymoron,
the 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 the world’s oldest 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's 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 for 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.
We will expose their lies against us in the court of public opinion.
Israel will continue to stand proud and unbowed.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Despite the enormous challenges facing Israel, I believe we have an 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: 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,
agriculture,
in transportation,
in health,
in energy,
in so many fields. I believe the partnership between us can also help
facilitate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. 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 is occupying a
foreign land.
The people of Israel are not occupiers in the Land of Israel.
History, archeology 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, Israel's withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza created two
militant Islamic enclaves on our borders from which tens of thousands
of rockets have been fired at Israel. These sobering experiences
heighten Israel's security concerns regarding potential territorial
concessions in the future. Those security concerns are even greater
today. Just look around you. The Middle East is in chaos. States are
disintegrating.
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% of our
population. 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’s 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. Yet despite all that has happened, some
still don't take Israel’s security concerns seriously. But I do, and I
always will.
Because, as Prime Minister of Israel, I am
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 waver in fulfilling that
responsibility. I believe that with a fresh approach from our neighbors,
we can advance peace despite the difficulties we face.
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 have used the fertile minds of our people to turn Israel
into a global center of technology and innovation. 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.
Isaiah, our great prophet of peace, taught us nearly 3,000 years ago in Jerusalem to speak truth to power.
לְמַעַן צִיּוֹן לֹא אֶחֱשֶׁה וּלְמַעַן יְרוּשָׁלִַם לֹא אֶשְׁקוֹט
עַד-יֵצֵא כַּנֹּגַהּ צִדְקָהּ וִישׁוּעָתָהּ כְּלַפִּיד יִבְעָר. 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's light a torch of truth and justice to safeguard our common future.
Thank you.
.
.
http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Speeches/Pages/speechUN290914.aspx .
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![AKUKO- #UWA.
MUSLIMS ARE CRUCIFYING CHRISTIANS WHO REFUSE TO CoNVERT TO THE RELIGION OF PEACE.
Aug 4th, 2014 @ 12:03 pm:
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
From the #Quran:
“The punishment of anyone who fights against Allah and His apostle and do mischief in the land is to be killed or crucified or to have their hands and feet from opposite ends or be banished from the land.” (Quran: The table spread – Sura 5:33)
Won’t convert? Won’t pay your fine for being an infidel?
You have 4 punishments options: public execution (Qatl), crucifixion (Salb) and amputation of one hand and one foot from opposite sides (Yuqata’ Aydihim wa-Arjulihim) or exile (Nafy).
At Christian Post:
Christians ‘Crucified Again’ for Refusing Islam
To the awe of its readership, a recent Daily Mail article reports that the “jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant [ISIL],” [ISIS] which is currently entrenched in Raqqa, Syria, “publicly crucified two Syrian rebels in northeastern Syria in revenge for a grenade attack on members of their group.”
While the Daily Mail is to be commended for exposing these barbaric acts-along with posting photos of the crucified-it nonetheless minimized their significance, in two important ways:
1) by repeatedly saying things like “even al-Qaeda is distancing itself from ISIL,” and so implying that the act of crucifixion is some wild aberration that even the poster-child of jihadi terror, al-Qaeda, wants nothing to do with it;
and 2) ignoring the much “sexier” story that Christians in Syria are also being crucified simply for refusing to embrace Islam (as opposed to the rather mundane but politically more correct story of Islamic jihadis crucifying each other in the context of vendetta killings). [A link to hideous photos HERE. Don't click, if you don't have a strong stomach.]
Consider the atrocities earlier committed in Ma’loula, Syria, an ancient Christian village where the inhabitants still spoke Aramaic, the language of Christ.
According to recent Arabic news media, “a Syrian nun testified to the Vatican news agency that some Christians in Ma’loula were crucified for refusing to convert to Islam or pay jizya” (tribute subjugated Christians are required to pay to their Islamic conquerors in order to exist as Christians, per Koran 9:29).
Incidentally, they were crucified by the al-Qaeda linked Nasra Front (so much for Daily Mail’s portrayal of al-Qaeda “distancing” itself from the apparently “extra-extremist” ISIL for crucifying its victims).
Sister Raghad, the former head of the Patriarchate School in Damascus who currently resides in France, told Vatican Radio how she personally witnessed jihadi rebels terrorize Ma’loula, including by pressuring Christians to proclaim the shehada-Islam’s credo that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger-which, when uttered before Muslim witnesses transforms the speaker into a Muslim, with the death penalty for apostasy should the convert later “renege” by returning to Christianity.
According to the nun, those Christians who refused to embrace Islam were killed in atrocious and violent ways that cannot be described. If you want examples, they crucified two youths in Ma’loula for refusing to proclaim Islam’s credo, saying to them: “Perhaps you want to die like your teacher [Christ] whom you believe in? You have two choices: either proclaim the shehada or else be crucified. One of them was crucified before his father, whom they also killed.”
In fact, according to earlier media reports from October 2013, soon after Ma’loula fell to the jihadis, one “shaky voiced” elderly Christian man had reported that he heard the invading jihadis shouting, “Convert to Islam, or you will be crucified like Jesus.”
It is, of course, a documented fact that some Christians in Ma’loula were put to death for refusing to convert to Islam, such as Minas, an Armenian man, while other families succumbed to pressure and converted to Islam at the tip of the sword.
But it is not clear whether the two crucified Christians mentioned by the nun are among the three men in Ma’loula who, according to Asia News, “refused to repudiate their religion” and thus “were summarily executed in public”-so many and varied were the barbaric acts, including beheadings, rape, and infanticide during the rebel occupation, not to mention the other massacres in other Christian regions the mainstream media failed to report on.
These three were declared martyrs by the Syrian Greek-Catholic Church, or as Patriarch Gregorios III explained to Pope Francis in a meeting: “Holy Father, they are true martyrs. Ordered to give up their faith, they proudly refused. Three others however gave in and were forced to declare themselves Muslim, but later returned to the faith of their ancestors.”
For his part, and according to a May 3rd Arabic report, Pope Francis recently said, “I wept when I saw reports saying that Christians were being crucified in some non-Christian countries.”
The fact is, crucifixion is a prescribed form of punishment in the Koran (5:33) and occurs throughout the Islamic world with much greater frequency than suggested by the Daily Mail. For example:
Iraq, June 2008: A Canadian parliamentary committee heard about how “militant Muslims” were crucifying Christian children [children] in order to terrorize Christians into fleeing Iraq: “Since the war began in 2003, about 12 children, many as young as 10, have been kidnapped and killed, then nailed to makeshift crosses near their homes to terrify and torment their parents.”
Ivory Coast, May 2011: Two Christian peasant brothers were “brutally crucified” on “the example of Christ” by Muslim forces accusing them of being supportive of the ousted Christian president. One died, while the other survived: “The pair were badly beaten and tortured before being crudely nailed to cross-shaped planks by their hands and feet with steel spikes.”
Egypt, August 2012: Multiple media agencies reported that during one uprisal against Islamist president Muhammad Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood operatives crucified some protesters on trees. Earlier, a Salafi MP in Egypt called for the penal codification of crucifixion.
Yemen, August 2012, a video of a man crucified on the accusation of spying for the U.S. appeared on video. A sign placed above his head quotes Koran 5:33: “The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off from opposite sides, or be exiled from the land.
That is their disgrace in this world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.”
Of course, if one delves into Islamic history, one learns that crucifixions were extremely common. For example, Witnesses For Christ: Orthodox Christian Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period 1437-1860 lists crucifixion as one of the many forms thousands of Christians were executed by the Muslim Turks.
And in her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described how in the early twentieth century in the city of Malatia, she saw 16 girls crucified, vultures eating their corpses: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands,” wrote the Armenian survivor. “Only their hair blown by the wind covered their bodies.”
Prescribed in the Koran itself, crucifixions are as old as Islam and, with the global revival of the latter, are returning with increased frequency. And, although it is more politically correct to report on jihadis crucifying other jihadis-other terrorists or “spies”-the fact is, many more innocent Christians are being crucified again, including simply for refusing to embrace Islam and thus renounce Christ.](https://scontent-a-mxp.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/p296x100/10492083_770606936330773_1193257874912905696_n.jpg?oh=961d63e23ced0e2edb891b663498f519&oe=54B4392B)
![AKUKO- #UWA.
PM NETANYAHU'S SPEECH AT THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
29/09/2014
Photo by Avi Ohayon, GPO
[Transcription]
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 see. 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 hope 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.
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’s 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 Meshaal, 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's charter makes clear, Hamas’s 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. That’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered on 9/11.
And that's why its leaders condemned 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;
• Ash-Shabab in Somalia;
• Hezbollah in Lebanon;
• An-Nusrah in Syria; •
The Mahdi Army in Iraq;
• And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen,
Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.
Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi'ites. Some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the 7th century.
Others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the 9th century.
They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they even kill each other in their quest 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 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 to power eight decades ago.
The Nazis believed in a master race.
The militant Islamists believe in a master faith.
They just disagree about who among them will be the master… of the master faith.
That’s what they truly disagree about.
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 Muhammad Ali Ja'afari. And he clearly stated this 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 Rouhani 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. To say that Iran doesn't practice terrorism is like saying Derek Jeter never played shortstop for the New York Yankees.
This bemoaning of the Iranian president of the spread of terrorism has got to be one of history’s greatest displays of doubletalk.
Now, Some still 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 elections 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 Rouhani and Zarif 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'etre…
A global mission which is tied to our very reason of 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 the capacity of thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. This would effectively cement Iran's place as a threshold military nuclear power. In the future, at a time of its choosing, Iran, the world’s most dangerous state 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 pick-up 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 the chemical weapons in Syria, including the possibility that they would fall into the hands of terrorists.
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 charm and all the smiles will suddenly disappear. They’ll just vanish. It's then that the ayatollahs will show their true face and unleash their aggressive fanaticism on the entire world.
There is only one responsible course of action to address this threat: Iran's nuclear military capabilities must be fully dismantled.
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.
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.
Yet Israel also faced another challenge. We faced a propaganda war. Because, in an attempt to win the world’s 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 casualty. 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, always to enable Palestinian civilians to evacuate 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.
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.
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.
Israel's soldiers deserve not condemnation, but admiration. Admiration from decent people everywhere.
Now here’s 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.
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 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.
Ladies and Gentlemen, As Israeli children huddled in bomb shelters and Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system 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.
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 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 human shields. Use them again and again and again.
You know why? Because sadly, it works. By granting international legitimacy to the use of human shields, the UN’s 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 interest. 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 independent courts and where women, gays and minorities live in a genuinely free society.
The Human Rights… ( that’s an oxymoron, the 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 the world’s oldest 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's 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 for 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.
We will expose their lies against us in the court of public opinion.
Israel will continue to stand proud and unbowed.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Despite the enormous challenges facing Israel, I believe we have an 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: 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,
agriculture,
in transportation,
in health,
in energy,
in so many fields. I believe the partnership between us can also help facilitate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. 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 is occupying a foreign land.
The people of Israel are not occupiers in the Land of Israel.
History, archeology 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, Israel's withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza created two militant Islamic enclaves on our borders from which tens of thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel. These sobering experiences heighten Israel's security concerns regarding potential territorial concessions in the future. Those security concerns are even greater today. Just look around you. The Middle East is in chaos. States are disintegrating.
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% of our population. 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’s 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. Yet despite all that has happened, some still don't take Israel’s security concerns seriously. But I do, and I always will.
Because, as Prime Minister of Israel, I am 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 waver in fulfilling that responsibility. I believe that with a fresh approach from our neighbors, we can advance peace despite the difficulties we face.
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 have used the fertile minds of our people to turn Israel into a global center of technology and innovation. 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.
Isaiah, our great prophet of peace, taught us nearly 3,000 years ago in Jerusalem to speak truth to power.
לְמַעַן צִיּוֹן לֹא אֶחֱשֶׁה וּלְמַעַן יְרוּשָׁלִַם לֹא אֶשְׁקוֹט עַד-יֵצֵא כַּנֹּגַהּ צִדְקָהּ וִישׁוּעָתָהּ כְּלַפִּיד יִבְעָר. 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's light a torch of truth and justice to safeguard our common future.
Thank you.
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http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Speeches/Pages/speechUN290914.aspx
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