CIDI - Centrum Informatie en Documentatie Israël
Netanyahu: VN ondergraaft de eigen missie
di 28-09-2010
De VN moet haar taak beter vervullen. Dit zei premier Netanyahu 24
september in een dramatische speech voor Algemene Vergadering. Als
voorbeeld noemde hij de plicht van de VN om te voorkomen dat Iran, dat
de wereldvrede bedreigt, kernwapens krijgt. Hij sprak over wat de
Holocaust in zijn familie had aangericht en gispte leden die bleven
zitten tijdens de speech van Ahmadinejad, die de Holocaust en het
bestaansrecht van Israel ontkent. Hij hekelde de VN
Mensenrechten-commissie die Israël van oorlogsmisdaden betichtte na de
Gaza-actie: In plaats van terrorisme te veroordelen, veroordeelt de VN
de slachtoffers ervan, aldus Netanyahu. "Ik sta hier als premier van
Israel, de Joodse staat, en spreek voor mijn land en mijn volk", zei
hij. Hij benadrukte Israels vredeswil en riep de PA op de Joodse staat
te erkennen. Hieronder zijn speech .
PM Netanyahu's Speech at the UN General Assembly
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the
Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in
their ancestral homeland.
I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state,
and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and
the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the
recurrence of such horrendous events.
Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic
assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this
very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days
earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.
Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee.
There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials
met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed
minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German
governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued
precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews.
Is this a lie?
A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original
construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those
plans are signed by Hitler?s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is
a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were
murdered. Is this too a lie?
This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?
And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed
numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie?
One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every
Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents,
her father?s two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles
and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?
Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this
podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this
room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you
brought honor to your countries.
But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf
of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you
no shame? Have you no decency?
A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man
who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges
to wipe out the Jewish state.
What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!
Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten
only the Jews. You're wrong.
History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on
the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.
This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst
onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for
centuries.
In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a
murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of
victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and
Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots,
the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to
medieval times.
Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where
women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is
brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit
faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.
It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the
9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.
The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the
progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of
technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day.
Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future
offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress
is growing exponentially.
It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone,
decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a
few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.
What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can
scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the
genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives.
We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the
planet.
I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances
? by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and
biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These
innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined
promise.
But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly
weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like
the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom
will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been
exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world
today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of
mass destruction.
The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of
Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states 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 gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the
streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community
thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners 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 the thousands who
have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand
by their side?
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not
encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian
patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a
recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with
those they targeted.
For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles,
mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these
missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single 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 dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over
8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed
terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities
next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not
only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.
Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was
finally 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. It 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. 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 against
the rocket launchers.
That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from
homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting
explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize
casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted
areas.
We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text
messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people 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 such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the
UN Human Rights Council decide 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.
Delegates of the United Nations,
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 declare that the earth is flat.
If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to
terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from
densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning
Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why.
When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop.
Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international
legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What
self-defense?
The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back
our right of self-defense now accuses us ?my people, my country - of
war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What
a travesty!
Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust
report is 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 and 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.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
All of Israel wants peace.
Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace.
We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan
led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my
government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a
genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this
body voted to establish two states for two peoples ? a Jewish state and
an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected
it.We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do
for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to
recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians
must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The
Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is
the land of our forefathers.
Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical
vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They
shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet
Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the
hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.
We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply
connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians
also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by
side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and
dignity.But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the
powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could
endanger Israel.
That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We
don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting
Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.
We want peace.
I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the
forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate
Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the
international community is whether it is prepared to confront those
forces or accommodate them.
Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the
"confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of
civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.
Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the
unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack
of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes,
until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong."
I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the
"unteachibility of mankind" is for once proven wrong.I speak here today
in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent
danger in time.
In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years
ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril,
secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for
generations to come.