THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS: AHMADINEJAD IS RIGHT: NATIONS MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN ISRAEL OR IRAN

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

AHMADINEJAD IS RIGHT: NATIONS MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN ISRAEL OR IRAN

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the US to choose between Israel and Iran on Tuesday night, according to Iranian state media.

Ahmadinejad said that for a real change in relations to take place, a choice must be made.

Speaking in Istanbul at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Iranian president said that it was up to US President Barack Obmaa to illustrate his motto of "Change."

"The support of both Israel and Iran can't go hand in hand," he was quoted as saying by IRNA. "No change is made unless great choices are made."

MAHMOUD IS RIGHT.

NETANYAHU SAID AS MUCH IN HIS UNGA SPEECH:

This is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fundamentalism and the weapons of mass destruction, the most urgent challenge facing this body today is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Are the members of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and then gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the sidewalks on the street choking in their own blood?

Will the international community thwart the world’s most pernicious sponsor and practitioner of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do thousands of people who have been protesting and demonstrating outside this hall all of this week. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs, recent signs are not encouraging.

Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here in the United Nations have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired rockets, fired those rockets from Gaza on nearby Israeli cities and citizens thousands of missiles, mortars, hurling down from the sky on schools, on homes, shopping centers, bus stops. Years aft, year after year as these missiles were deliberately fired on our civilians not a single, not one UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks.

We heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It was very painful. We dismantled 21 settlements, really bedroom communities and farms. We uprooted over 8,000 Israelis, we just yanked them out from their homes.

We did this because many in Israel believed that this would get peace. Well, we didn’t get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. But life in the Israeli towns and cities immediately next to Gaza became nothing less than a nightmare.

You see, the Hamas rocket launchers and the rocket attacks not only continued after we left, they actually increased dramatically, they increased tenfold. And again, the UN was silent – absolutely silent.

Well, finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was forced to respond. But how should we have responded?

Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country’s civilian population. This happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II.

During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. I’m not passing judgement, I’m stating a fact. A fact that is the product of the decision of great and honorable men, the leaders of Britain and the United States fighting an evil force in World War II. It is also a fact that Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes directed against the rocket launchers themselves.

Now mind you that was no easy task because the terrorists were fighting missiles, firing their missiles from homes and schools, they were using mosques as weapons depots, as missile caches and they were ferreting explosives in ambulances.

Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas. We dropped countless flyers, they cannot be counted there were so many obviously, countless fliers over their homes, we sent thousands and thousands of text messages to the Palestinian residents. We made thousands and thousands of cellular phone calls urging them to vacate, to leave.

Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy’s civilian population from harm’s way. Yet faced with a absolutely clear cut case of aggressor and victim, who do you think the UN Human Rights Council decided to condemn? Israel.

A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth! What a perversion of justice!

Now, delegates of the United Nations and the governments whom you represent, you have a decision to make: will you accept this farce? Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could be mustered to declare that the earth is flat.

If you had to choose a date when the United Nations began its descent, almost a free fall and lost the respect of many thoughtful people in the international community, it was that decision in 1975 to equate Zionism with racism.

Now, this body has a choice to make, if this body does not reject this bias report it would vitiate itself, it would begin or re-begin the process of vitiating itself from its own relevance and importance. But, it would do something else, it would send a message to the terrorists everywhere, saying: Terrorism pays; all you have to do is launch your attacks from densely populated areas, and you will win immunity.

And then a third thing, in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Let me explain why. When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that even if they don’t stop, that at the very least, Israel would have this gesture, extraordinary gesture for peace, but it would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense if peace failed.

What legitimacy? What self-defense?

The same UN that cheered Israel as we left Gaza, the same Un that promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us –my people, my country – of being war criminals? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. For acting in a way that any country would act, with a restraint unmatched by many. What a travesty!

Ladies and gentlemen, Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report provides a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now, not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow.

Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.