"Now, primitive societies, barbaric societies, societies that, in the beginning of the 21st century, enslave women, mutilate them, deny human rights to their own citizens, promote terror worldwide and promote the most absurd doctrines – these societies can acquire nuclear weapons, missiles, rockets. This is new and this is a great, great danger to East and West alike."
Ever hear of the Conference on the Future of the Jewish People? Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke there on Friday.
.... Herzl was right about many things. He was right about the need for a Jewish state and the need for a Jewish army to defend the state – like all states – against impending attacks. He was right about the dangers that loomed on the horizon. He was right that the restoration of the Jews, of Jewish sovereignty, in the Holy Land was not merely an age-old fantasy, but a practical goal that could be achieved in the present. But Herzl, I think, was too optimistic about the impact that the Jewish state would have on anti-Semitism.
He believed that the rebirth of the Jewish state would gradually put an end to anti-Semitism, and many of the early Zionists enthusiastically agreed with him. They thought that the establishment of a Jewish state would be an antidote to the age-old hatred of the Jews. And the irony is that over a century later, many now believe that the Jewish state is the cause of that hatred, and of course both these views are wrong. The Jewish state is neither the cause nor the cure for anti-Semitism.
The establishment of Israel and the remarkable return of the Jewish people to their homeland did not end hatred towards the Jews. It merely redirected it. The old hatred against the Jews as a people has been transformed into a new hatred against the Jewish state. In fact, the decades following the Holocaust, during which it was unacceptable to say certain things about Jews, can now be clearly seen as a notable exception, rather than a new norm. Over the last few decades, we have witnessed a return of that phenomenon that long marked our history: the demonization of Jews, the singling out of Jews, the denial of rights to Jews and Jews only.
What was once true of the Jewish people is now true of the Jewish state. In too many quarters in the international community, Israel is guilty until proven guilty. But while the Jewish state did not end the hatred towards the Jews, it provided the Jews the means to defend themselves against that hatred, and after 2,000 years of powerlessness, after being subjected to every evil under the sun, the Jews now have the power to defend themselves, and this remains the single greatest transformation of the Jewish condition in modern times....
On Iran:
.... Iran is vying for the leadership of militant Islam. It continues on its path towards developing nuclear weapons and its bid for regional hegemony. In addition to its threats to annihilate Israel, and its denial of the Holocaust, Iran is confronting the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq; it is taking over Lebanon; it is dominating Gaza; it is establishing beachheads in Arabia and in the Horn of Africa; and it sends its tentacles into South America as well.
This is what Iran is doing without a nuclear weapon. Imagine what it will do with one. Imagine what its proxies will do under a nuclear umbrella. The international community, led by the United States, must constantly make clear in both word and deed that it will not permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons....
On making peace with Misc. Arabs:
.... The establishment of a formal peace treaty does not guarantee that the peace will last. You need security arrangements for two purposes: one, to ensure that the peace lasts; and second, to protect yourself if it doesn’t. In order to protect yourself, you have to ensure that we don’t have a repeat, for the third time, of a situation where we left, we vacated territory and Iran walked in. It walked into Lebanon, it walked into Gaza. We cannot allow Iran to walk into the hills dominating Tel Aviv and encircling Jerusalem....
The conclusion I reach is not that we should not advance towards peace. It is that that peace arrangement must have, built into it, arrangements on the ground – concrete security arrangements that prevent this mistake from reoccurring a third time.
You'll want to read it all. http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/PMSpeaks/speechjewish221010.htm
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