Defeating ISIS, Ignoring Iran 'Loses the War'

JERUSALEM, Israel -- If the applause during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly Monday is any measure, he won an Oscar. Netanyahu said he’d come “to expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country and against the brave soldiers who defend it.” Throughout his speech, he warned of the rise of militant Islam, saying “everywhere we look militant Islam is on the march.” Some felt his address hearkened back to the warnings of England’s Winston Churchill, who warned the world about the totalitarian threat of Hitler’s Nazi fascism. Today, the threat is militant Islam. “Militant Islam’s ambition is 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,” he said. “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 start choice: covert or die,” Netanyahu said. Among the lies he addressed were war crimes charges by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the subject of a UN Human Rights Council investigation. “Ladies and gentlemen, the people of Israel pray for peace, but our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace are in danger because everywhere we look militant Islam is on the march,” he said. The goal of these Islamists, he said, is world domination. Like a cancer that’s left unchecked, it grows and metastasizes over wider and wider areas. It must be removed, he said, before it’s too late. Israel’s battle against Hamas mirrors the battle against global jihadists because Islamist groups seek to dominate the world. People 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,” he continued. About two months ago, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said the day will soon come when the Muslim will walk everywhere as a master and will cause the world to hear and understand the meaning of terrorism and destroy the idol of democracy,” Netanyahu said. “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,’” Netanyahu said. “It’s one thing to confront militant Islamists on pickup trucks armed with Kalashnikov rifles. It’s another thing to confront militant Islamists armed with weapons of mass destruction,” he said. While Netanyahu agreed ISIS presents a clear and present danger, he said the greater threat is a nuclear Iran. “Make no mistake,” Netanyahu said. “ISIS must be defeated. But to defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power would be to win the battle and lose the war.” In the midst of these dangers, he noted a new alignment with Arab countries is forming in the Middle East, an alliance that offers hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Netanyahu also spoke about Israel’s summer war with Hamas and the propaganda war the Jewish state faces. He explained that Operation Protective Edge was Israel’s response to the kidnapping and murder of three teenagers, the incessant rocket fire and the discovery of dozens of tunnels to carry out terror attacks inside Israel. The IDF did not target civilians and regretted every casualty, he said. Hamas, on the other hand, builds its terror infrastructure in residential areas and uses children as human shields. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a war crime. And I say to [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas, these are war crimes, the war crimes committed by your Hamas partners in the national unity government that you head and you are responsible for.” “By investigating Israel rather than Hamas for war crimes, the U.N. Human Rights Council has betrayed its noble mission to protect the innocent,” he said. “By granting international legitimacy to the used of human shields, the U.N. Human Rights Council has become a terrorist rights council….” Netanyahu ended his speech on a hopeful note with a scripture from the Book of Isaiah about the need to speak truth in an age of lies. “For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness and her salvation as a lamp that burns.” ( )