Heckler: "Netanyahu, you're a war criminal!"
Netanyahu: "Now that's chutzpah"
Former PM Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a group of young earnest students today at NYU. Not surprisingly this was not an NYU event, you would hardly expect the morally confused dhimmi leadership (remember the cartoon-less cartoon panel discussion at NYU?) to bring Netanyahu's powerful, moral understanding to their campus.
No, this dynamic and compelling afternoon was put together by the fledgling new group Caravan for Democracy to help students refute the lies and blood libel infecting college campuses nationwide.
Netanyahu is commanding, impressive. forceful -- I can't help but lick my wounds (still) from his illogical loss in the elections. Bibi belonged in that gallery (Olmert looked so out of his league, not worthy - and he proved he was not worthy.) Of course if I had had my way......amd of course I was right.
Remarkable speech.
HERE IS THE FULL AUDIO, Download NetanyahuNYU.wav, a full transcription will follow shortly. He describes the "laws of war." Netanyahu insisted that we not allow lies to permeate.
"Throughout antiquity, the rise of antisemitism which began about 2,500 years ago, through the medieval period, the modern period, all the assaults on the Jews were preceded by the vilification of the Jewish people, by distortions upon distortions, upon distortions, and protecting ourselves is also defending ourselves against lies. And if I had to say one thing one thing on the college campus I'd say fight this battle. STAND UP, DON'T BE AFRAID Be armed with the facts. Be armed with truth."
"This is the most important thing we can do. And you now have ways of doing it because each one of you is a publishing house. You can educate, you can act, you can fight."
A great speech............here Netanyahu speaks of the "war criminal" canard
Re: Iran's nukes weapons
They are not like the Soviets, not like the communists. The Soviet Union
did not put its zealotry above its survival." "Every hear of a Soviet suicide bomber?" Militant Islam produces hordes of
them and they smash into the towers in Manhattan and they smash into the
Pentagon and they were going to now, with their own children, aircraft
coming out of Heathrow. With their own children - this is
pathological." "A suicide regime may not be deter able. We can not bet the future of the
world on the conception of deterrence." "It's very dangerous. YOU DON'T BET THE STORE ON DETERENCE. YOU MAKE
SURE THAT THEY DON'T HAVE IT. And this should unite everybody." I just went through a war with a proxy. We were fighting a proxy of Iran.
I am the opposition leader, I supported my government. I supported the goals
shared by the people of Israel. You should support the goals set forth the
goals by President Bush vis a vis Iran . Everybody, I don't care who you are.
And you know why? Because it's not a question of Iraq -- it's a question of
whether this latter day Hitler has nuclear weapons and that is no longer a
partisan issue. " "Think of the consequences of Iran having nuclear weapons. What happens to
Iraq? Do you think you can stabilize it? Regimes in the Middle East will fall
one after the other. The oil supply will be controlled by Iran. That's the easy
part. It is the severe danger. The real possibility, almost a certainty that
they will use these weapons for the first time since
Hiroshima."
Netanyahu chided us to come together to fight the gathering nuclear storm.
In speaking of the Jewish struggle, he spoke of the Jews' place in history as powerless.
"The [historical] Jew shifting from powerlessness to power. But I refuse to go back to powerlessness. I'd rather repel the slanders than go back and become the victim and I'd rather fight the slander as we fight the other attacks on us."
The crowd disperses after the former PM spoke. The sidewalk is full of this colored chalk ravings.
There were a couple of screaming moonbats but the crowd was hugely supportive. I would have followed the speech with the Netanyahu dinner uptown to finish my previous interview but had to get back for my show . I am sure that Rick at Jewish Current Issues will post on the dinner shortly.
I will have a full transcript of his remarks a/s/a/p. Every word ws brilliant. Not admonishing, cautionary.
"Repel the lies. I will not go back to those gas chambers. Not those physical ones, not those of the poisoned wells and slanders but the only way that a free society can defend itself aside from taking up arms is also to light those candles for truth.
What I ask of you tonight is for each of you to light the candle of truth. You know how you do it .....flip on the internet and light many many candles of truth."
Amen.
See also NETNYAHU: NO ROOM FOR PARTIZANSHIP IN JUST WAR
UPDAYE: Click below for complete transcript
Walking in, they chanted in protest, and I wrote it down.
Netanyahu, you’re a war criminal.
Israel is a war criminal.
And that’s [garbled]
Now, how do we know if someone is a war criminal?
Well, war crimes were defined. They were defined about 150 years ago; it began to be codified, and as humanity started climbing out of the swamp, slowly there emerged laws of war. And you say how can you have laws of war? I mean, everything is fair in war, right? Or acceptable. And the answer is no. Nations began to codify war to say yes, we’re condemned to fighting armed conflicts with one another but we’ve placed limits, and if I have to put the whole -- to get up on one leg, as they say, put the whole Torah put it on one foot, all of these war rules and war crimes can be summed up basically in one principle.
We divide the room into ... how many aisles do we have here 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.
One aisle, one division. On one side you put combatants, soldiers who fight each other.
And on the other side you put everyone else, civilians.
And the soldiers can fight each other and they can accidentally cross the line but they don’t deliberately cross the line, and if you deliberately cross the line, you're likely to commit what is a war crime. You got that?
The war crime says that you have actually two things. You can’t deliberately target civilians, and you can’t deliberately hide behind civilians. Did you get that, too?
Here is an American law I’m told, and if there are any lawyers here you can find this out. If you are bank robber, you’re robbing a bank, you're holding a hostage; the police come and they kill the hostage, you the bank robber are charged with murder. I was told that by an eminent lawyer and I hope it’s true.
But in international law it is true. You are charged twice with criminal war crimes, with mass murder. You rocket civilians, you attack civilians deliberately and you hide deliberately behind civilians.
Now Israel is widely attacked for being disproportionate because some civilians accidentally get killed, so many get killed about a thousand. That surely says that Israel acted with improper restraints. So I was asked during the war -- there was no opposition coalition. In a war we are all united, you know; those rockets don’t discriminate between good (Likud?) and [Labour?], they don’t even discriminate between Arab and Jew, so ... I was in the Knesset during the war and I got one of the Arab Knesset members in the corridor, and I said (not his name) Achmed, I said -- we go a long way together bb & t -- I asked, I said, Achmed, what's the matter with you? Do you think these people will spare you? D'you think they care about killing Sunnis? It's an added bonus! And they’re going to rocket your villages, just as they rocket ours. Two days later they did, their camp got hit. And I said do you think the Iranians our masters really care if they develop a bomb and they drop it on us and kill 7 million Jews and a million Sunni Arabs die with them? Do you think they care? They care, they do care; it happened.
I can’t tell you what his response was; these are private conversations, all right?
That’s a war crime. The unbridled use of force, the deliberate targeting of civilians.
But did Israel respond preponderantly, disproportionately?
Well, I was asked to go -- by the Knesset to send a message to London because we were under ferocious attack by a lot of the British media, and since there was national unity about the war aims and seeking to deflect these slanderous vilifications against Israel I went there. And
I was asked by one interviewer -- I think on the BBC, I’m sure it was the BBC -- he said what can you say about these excessive civilian casualties?
And I said, do you really want to go that route?
He said, yes I do. What can you say in your defense?
I said, well, what do you say in your defense? I mean the only way you can compare whether Israel's action is proportionate or disproportionate is to compare this to the only other case where a city or cities were rocketed in a major wipeout.
What’s the number of rockets fired on Israel? Do you know? 4,000.
What’s the number of rockets fired on London? Class? 4,000.
What did Britain do in response to the rocketing of London?
Hmm? Sorry? Destroyed Dresden, yeah, but they firebombed German cities, not only Dresden. How many people got killed? All in total? Well, in Dresden there was 70,000, but all told about a couple hundred thousand.
They weren't targeting the rocketeers. This is Churchill, probably the greatest statesmen of the modern era. I don't fault him. I pass no judgment.
But look at us. We went after the rocketeers implanted within civilian communities and yes, unfortunately, several hundred, close to a thousand, died.
We didn’t firebomb their cities. Actually the British, the air force, the Royal Air Force bombed by day, firebombed by night, burned by night.
So yes, Israel was disproportionate; we were disproportionately restrained compared to the only other example.
Oh, but you can't talk about that; that was against Nazism. I said, so is this.
You're saying that the Hezbollah are Nazis? I said, yes, they are. They're latter day Nazis, but they're in the service of a latter day Nazi regime, the extension of a regime that doesn't have race supremacy as it's creed but a crazy creed, crazy perversion. Their perversion of Islam means that their first targets are infidels defined as nonmilitant Muslims, non militant Muslims of their ilk and then everyone else. Yes, we define them as latter day Nazis.
Well you can't do that, you can't say that.
And I said, okay you want to talk about the modern period?
Let's see how many civilians were killed by the NATO bombs, including British bombs, in Kosovo; do you want to know? You don't.
How about in Afghanistan? How about in Iraq?
That Israel is put here on trial, is singled out and destroyed is not a double standard. It’s a triple standard. There's one standard for the dictatorships, one standard for the democracies and still a third standard for Israel.
We'll have none of them. Just puncture this. See, I wish they'd let these guys come in; I won't mind. Bring 'em in; it doesn't bother me. Because I want to hit them right in the face, and puncture their slanders.
This is something we have to do. We cannot let lies permeate because those lies spread, and you cannot have the assault on the Jewish people perpetrated without the verbal preparation that always precedes the physical.
You know throughout antiquity the rise of anti-Semitism which began about 2500 years ago in the [garbled], through the medieval period, through the modern period. All the assaults on the Jews were preceded by the vilification of the Jewish people, by distortions upon distortions upon distortions. And protecting ourselves is also defending ourselves against lies and finding out the truth. And if I have to say one thing on a campus, on a college campus I say, fight this battle. Stand up, don’t be afraid, be armed with the facts, be armed with truth, and scold.
I think this is the most important thing that we can do, and you now have ways of doing it, because each of you today is a publishing house; each of you has access to that stream of information. You can enter; you can act; you can fight. I think it's important.
You know, before I went, just before I came here, I went to serve as Israel’s ambassador.
I went to visit a prominent reveyeh of [garbled]
It was the first time that I did and he said to me ...
This was a big celebration in a hall about half this size, about 5000 for seating packed, packed! and stalls and candles and valleys [garbled]
and they all waited for the reveyeh to come. And a door opened; he was a man of great stature but not physical stature, you just saw him wend his way -- what you saw was movement, the parting of the Red Sea. And then he went onto the small podium and he had his back to the audience and he began reading the Torah
And one of my former, a Soviet had become a (Hassan?) member of a left wing [garbled]
and he said to me now go to the reveyeh now
I said, Go now? Yes, go now.
So I went to the reveyeh, and tapped him lightly on the shoulder and I said, Reveyeh -- I spoke to him in Yiddish, I didn't speak to him in English -- I said Reveyeh, I came to see you. And he said, just to see not to talk? And he began talking, and we talked about 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, and 15 minutes and 20 minutes. And those who were seated were getting awfully impatient, and we got to 30 minutes, and this was palpable danger, then 45 minutes and then he stopped and began the proceedings.
But I'll tell you what he told me, he said,
you are going into the house of lies -- that is what we call the United Nations.
He said, remember that in a chamber of complete darkness, if you light up one candle, that light will be seen from afar. And what you have to do is light up one candle, the candle of truth. And I think that this is as true today as it was then, and I’ve tried and I urge you all to do the same, to do this we have to fight, we have to discover the vilifications of Israel, and I think also not only do we have to defend ourselves but we have to expose our enemies.
I think a lot was exposed in this recent conflict. I think the first thing that was exposed is the nature, the enduring nature of this conflict. Why is it not being solved?
Well, it has been solved. We have peace with Egypt; we have peace with Jordan.
Why is it that we have peace with Egypt and peace with Jordan, but not peace with the Palestinians, not peace with Hezbollah, and evidently not with Iran.
Why is it? Well, every time we’ve met an Arab leader that was willing to make a genuine peace with us Israel was always forthcoming. It didn’t make any difference if it was the (Likud?) government under Begin or the [Labour?] government under [Barak?]. It was easy.
But five successive prime ministers, myself included, failed to make peace with [Arafat?], and you know why? Because he didn’t want peace, he didn’t even want a piece of Israel; he wanted the whole thing. And he simply violated every single provision in the Oslo Accords that he signed because he had no intention whatsoever of making peace. Neither does Hamas, which openly says that it's out to destroy us.
But I think the most revealing moment in this conflict was that something that [Nastralla?] said
We had left every last inch of Lebanon; we had left every last inch of Gaza. We left Gaza and they fired on us. We left Lebanon and they fired on us. Why are they firing?
You might think it's because they want the West Bank, but they say, [Nastralla?] says ...
He says, we are firing rockets on the occupied settlements of Palestine.
What occupied settlements? Tiberias? [Sparks?] Haifa? Akka? There it was, saying very simple.
I have to credit them; that was telling the truth about their position, and their position is we can't occupy a single meter, because we shouldn't be there altogether.
That's the first thing that was revealed, the true source of the conflict. It is not conflict over our borders, it's a conflict over our existence; and that's something that has to be understood.
The second part is it's not a conflict only about our existence, or about OUR existence exclusively, it's a conflict about the existence of the west. And that one is going to take some while to percolate, because people do not listen to what these various, virulent strains of militant Islam say, but we do; and they're attacking Israel because it's really the first stop. They might attack, by the way, the nonmilitant Arab regimes first, but Israel is the first western target but not the last. And they all intend to achieve this mad fantasy, vis a vis this Islamic empire from Persia to Spain, that's the beginning.
But we're just the little Satan. You know who the great Satan is. So if we're the little Satan and the United States is the great Satan, who's the middle sized Satan?
Europe. But they don't know it. They're on the list.
That's why Iran is building their long range missiles, [I don't know?], they may already have them. The missiles to reach London and Paris and Berlin and also they're supposed to reach Manhattan. It'll take them about 12 - 15 years; they're working on that, too.
It's not just our world, it's not even the [western?] world. It's not that these militants hate the west because of Israel; it's the other way around. They hate Israel because of the west, because we are the incarnation of this hated free civilization, this idea where women walk around.
Look at you. You know, children are free to play on television, they can see whatever they want.
[Garbled]
Freedom of choice, freedom of information is anathema to them, they want to force on the world -- I want to say a medieval creed, but it's actually pre-medieval.
They're absolutely starking mad.
No cultural relativism here, no multi-cultural, I think they're absolutely mad. So do a lot of Arabs; so do a lot of Muslims. But they're intimidated, because this madness is like a bull elephant. It's charging around the world; its trampling everything in its way, and soon, if this elephant has nuclear tusks, we're all in mortal peril.
This has to be stopped. And the first thing is, it has to be defended.
They cannot have nuclear weapons.
This is not a partisan issue. I don't care what side of the divide or divides you're on; you have to be insane to say that doesn't make a difference if Iran has nuclear weapons, because they'll be deterred.
They're not like the communists; they're not like the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not put its zealotry over its survival; and the Soviet union did not have battalions and battalions of suicide bombers. Did you ever hear of a Soviet suicide bomber? No.
But militant Islam produces hordes of them; and they smash into the towers in Manhattan, and they smash into the Pentagon; and they're going to now blow up with their own children aircraft coming out of Heathrow, with their own children. This is pathological, and a suicidal regime may not be deterrable. We cannot bet the future of the world on conception of deterrence that may not apply by saying, well Hitler will be deterred [garbled]
But you see, Hitler embarked on a world conflict first and then on the development of nuclear weapons second and not only did he [garbled] go about it in the reverse order and he's right. It's very dangerous. You don't bet the store on deterrence; you make sure that it don't happen. And this should unite everyone.
I just went through a war and a proxy, we were fighting a proxy of Iran.
I'm the opposition leader. I supported my government; I supported the goals shared by the people of Israel, and you should the support goals set forth by President Bush vis a vis Iraq
Everybody! I don't care who you are.
You know why? Because it's not a question of Iraq, it's a question of whether this latter day Hitler has nuclear weapons, and that is no longer a partisan issue.
If you're leaving Iraq with a timetable or staying in Iraq without a timetable, just think of the consequences of Iraq having nuclear ... Iran having nuclear weapons.
What happens to Europe?
You think you can stabilize that. The regimes of the Middle East will fall one after the other. The oil supply will be controlled by Iran. That's the easy part. It's the severe danger, the real possibility, I would say the great almost certainty, that they would use these weapons for the first time since Hiroshima. Surely they will use it against us if not anyone else.
This has to be stopped; and there has to be what was absent in the 1930's. there has to be a coalescing of the free nations, at least the citizens of this free nation and a few others. To stop [it?] we have to transcend local divides; we have to cross the Atlantic. It didn't happen in the 1930's. The world was led by spent powers; they couldn't see the importance of the moment and the greatness of the danger; they couldn't see it and there was no America. America was isolationist.
But in the first half of the 21st century, America is the leading power; America has the will, I think, and also has the ability to look at reality and to act; and this requires you, because no political leadership can lead without a following; and this is something I ask of you not merely for Israel's sake, but for America's sake, for the sake of our common goal. It is true that the first to be attacked by this latter day Nazism, just as with the original Nazisim were the Jews. This is the same thing that happened then, and people say well, it's over now Hitler and the Jews
Iran uses Hesbollah
by the Jews and people say well it s a local matter I don't se it
There's no such thing as Hezbollah without Iran [garbled]
It's not ... it wasn't then, and it isn't now.
The Jews may be the first target but not the last; and the real question is what do we do about it? I think that part of the problem is the fixation on Israel, part of the problem is the quickness, the speed at which people condemn Israel; they thereby absolve themselves of the need to think about the larger issue. And I often ask myself why is it that some in the west -- I'm not talking about Islamic civilizations, I'm talking about western civilizations -- I ask myself why is it that people get caught up in it, and I think there are two reasons. I think there is a palpable and residual guilt. They did nothing to stop the holocaust in most countries, except for Denmark and Bulgaria, Bulgaria did amazing things, but most did nothing and there's a sense of guilt, and what a way to expiate that guilt by saying well Israel [garbled] [the Nazi flag?]
We weren't even Churchill; he was okay
At the very least [and?] he fought the Nazis and saved the world.
But we're just like the Nazis because the way it gets, it's a way to get around that guilt; it's a subliminal expiation; but I think there's a second reason more profound, because you have to ask yourself, how is it these distortions of reality, this triple standard, this offering up of Israel in such, to this altar of vilification, this slander, how can it be? And I think there's a deeper reason, and I think the deeper reason is that for almost two millennia, the Jews were the perfect victim.
They were absolutely powerless, and being powerless we lacked the capacity to defend ourselves. You see, we had no state. We had no army. We had no, ultimately no political rights.
We ultimately had no ability to defend ourselves even in the courts, in the judicial system.
After we were gradually stripped away of all our defenses, and we became the perfect victim. And as a result we suffered a succession of attacks unlike no other people.
We had pogroms and expulsions and massacres, culminating in of course the greatest massacre of them all. And this produced the perfect morality, the Jew can do no wrong, because he couldn't do anything.
Now after the last great massacre the Holocaust we collected our bones, our [people?], and we came back to life. And the first thing we did is we created a military force and a state to defend ourselves, and when we do that we have to act on the stage of nations. We have to go and ferret
out the rocketeers and the terrorists, and yes occasionally [accidently?] but not deliberately we cross the line and yes some civilian are killed.
We act to defend ourselves; and that is very jarring in a deep historical sense. You cannot replace 2000 years of perception even in 50 years. There's still this adjustment to the idea of the Jews shifting from powerlessness to power, but I refuse to go back to powerlessness.
I would rather repel the slanderer than go back and become the victim; and I'd rather fight the slanderer as we fight the other attacks on us.
The founding fathers of Zionism, Ben-Gurion and the others --
They never said that the attacks on the Jews would stop once there was a Jewish state; that's not what they said. They said that these attacks can be repelled once there was a Jewish state, and the Jew would no longer be defenseless.
Well we defend ourselves militarily; we can improve on that and we we will [garbled] Iran.
We can defeat any combination of enemies. People will make such a mistake if they choose to force another Iran. We will defeat any combination; we will study, learn all the lessons we know how to do.
But there is another defense that has to take place for which we have a state, and that is to defend ourselves and to repel the lies.
I will not go back to those gas chambers, not the physical ones, and not the ones from the poisoned quills and slanderers. But the only way that a free society can defend itself, aside from taking up arms, is also to light those candles for truth. What I ask of you tonight is for each of you to light a candle for truth. Do you know how you do that? You flip on the Internet and you light many, many candles of truth.
Thank you very much.
{APPLAUSE}
MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Mr. Prime Minister. We have time for a few questions and answers that were submitted earlier by members of the audience.
Ary Sterner, junior at NYU, would like to know if you agree with the decision to lift the sea and air blockade on Lebanon before before Israeli soldiers are freed and what do you believe is the best approach for creating the [foreign words – unintelligible]
NETANYAHU: I was asked by a group of senators in Washington yesterday -- no, two days ago -- whether I agree or disagree with that position of our government on whether I think the war could have been handled any differently; and I said I recommend myself that whenever I am on foreign soil not to disagree with my government so I am going to recommend myself. Thank you next question. Oh, by the way, one of the senators said, gee, could you impart that to some of our colleagues here
M: Matthew Engler, also a junior at New York University, asks what you believe is the future of Israeli settlement in Judea and Sameria.
N: Well, I think the real question is whether we have a part in it or not, and if we have a part in it there'll be a deal. There'll be a deal. If we don't have a part in it, if we just unilaterally walk away, I think we've learned a lesson. You know, four months ago we had an election and the election was drawn on this question. Basically we said that ... the other party said that one, we were trounced. Here's what they said and here's what we said: They said we were going to walk away; we will dismantle so many settlements unilaterally and walk away from them; and we said that would be a mistake because Iran already has a base in the north with Hezbollah and now it has a base in the south with Hamas, and pretty soon they're going to fire rockets deep – this is verbatim – deep into our country and why we have a third base above Tel Aviv which would have us targeted by missiles ... this was not well received. We were accused of fear mongering; we were seeding fear in our nation and how do you say here? Yada, yada, yada? Things change, and what has changed is not our position. What has changed is that the idea, that you unilaterally withdraw, really unilaterally retreat under terrorist fire, has now been shown to produce the opposite effect; of those who [garbled] peace with Hezbollah. It does not produce peace, does not produce security; it emboldens the terrorists and it does something else; it gives them new bases from which to attack either with suicide bombers or with rockets or whatever means, and so it is not a way to proceed towards peace. If we have a peace partner who is willing to recognize our existence and to abandon terror, then we will negotiate the question of settlements; we will negotiate the question of borders. But if they do not, we are not going to hand it over to them, so they can attack us and proceed with their goals to annihilate us. We're not, you know, we're not [no longer?] the pushovers [garbled].
M: Dominique Calms asks is Israel prepared to take unilateral military action against Iran and if not what other options are available.
N: The most and the best option is to let the United States do what President Bush has said. Two days ago he said the free nations -- I noticed he didn't say the United Nations -- he said the free nations will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons; and it is best to let the US lead this endeavor in whatever combination of means it seeks to do so. It is better for two reasons: Number one is, I don't know if you noticed this but the United States is bigger than Israel; it's more powerful than Israel. I once said to a Canadian visitor that we have so many similarities between our two countries; we are both democracies, we are both ... both countries are about the same size .... no, it's a thousand times bigger.
No, the US is not a thousand times bigger, but is is more powerful, and because it's more powerful, it is able to deter, it can summon the full gamut of economic, political and military sanctions that are available; and the likelihood is that you aren't going to need to use all of those because the Iranians will back off if they understand that there is a serious American-led international effort. But if there is no such effort, and Iran basically enjoys immunity and impunity because so long as -- for that is what they have, they can do anything they want and never be punished -- and continue to operate then they'll proceed to develop nuclear bombs and they'll endanger the entire world. So I think the best thing is not to ask what Israel can do or not do -- first of all, I'm not in the government now -- the best thing to do is to let the United States, support the American effort. It's really essential and I think it has a good chance of success.
M: Thank you so much, I believe we're out of time
N: Well, thank you, and thank you for having me.
{APPLAUSE}
