Date:
Friday, September 12, 2014
BY RAPHAEL AHREN September 11, 2014, 7:16 pm |The Times of Israel|
Israel is doing its part in confronting worldwide jihadist terrorism, though not all of its
efforts are known to the public, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday,
expressing Jerusalem’s full support for the American-led offensive against the Islamic
State organization unveiled Wednesday.
In a major foreign policy address, Netanyahu warned of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, saying
this would cause the “ultimate terror.” Efforts to weaken Sunni terrorists should not result in
strengthening Shiite radicalism, he urged.
The Islamic State, also known as IS and ISIS, is similar in ideology and strategy to Hamas,
Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, al-Shabab and other radical Islamist terrorist groups,
Netanyahu said at a conference in Herzliya. “These groups must be fought. They must be rolled
back and they must ultimately be defeated. That’s why Israel fully supports President [Barack]
Obama’s call for united actions against ISIS.”
All civilized countries should stand together in the fight against the radical terrorism currently
sweeping the Middle East, Netanyahu added. “And we are playing our part in this continued
effort. Some of the things are known; some of the things are less known.”
The threat posed both by Sunni and Shiite radicalism has led “many Sunni Arab states” to
reevaluate their relationship with Israel, he said. “They understand Israel is not their enemy but
their ally in the fight against this common enemy. I believe that presents an opportunity for
cooperation and perhaps an opportunity for peace.”
But the struggle against Sunni radicalism should not lead the world to neglect the threat of
Shiite extremism, the prime minister warned, referring to proposals to have Iran support the
global coalition against IS. “They’re two sides of the same coin. We don’t have to strengthen
one to weaken the other. My policy is: Weaken both.”
The greatest threat to world peace, Netanyahu said, would be a nuclear-equipped Iran. “You
would see things you never imagined could be possible,” he said, describing a scenario in
which the regime succeeded in obtaining nuclear weapons. “Horrors you couldn’t even
contemplate come to fruition. The ultimate terror. A terrorist regime with the weapons of the
greatest terror of them all. We must not let that happen.”
Speaking at a conference organized by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism,
Netanyahu said all Islamist organizations terrorizing the Middle East are “branches of the same
poisonous tree,” presenting a clear danger to the peace and security of the world. “It’s important
not to let any of these groups succeed anywhere. Because if they gain ground somewhere,
they gain ground everywhere. And their setbacks are also felt everywhere.”
These terror groups all operative according to the same
tactics, the prime minister said. First they rain terror on
their own people, and then on the rest of the world.
“We’ve seen this before,” he said, and then made a
reference to the Jewish people’s fate during World War
II. “There’s a master race; now there’s a master faith.
And that allows you to do anything to anyone, but first of
all to your own people, and then to everyone else.”
Effectively confronting Islamist terrorism requires sophisticated weaponry, “but above all it
requires, I believe, clarity and courage,” the prime minister said. “Clarity to understand: they’re
wrong, we’re right. They’re evil, we’re good. No moral relativism there at all. These people who
lop of heads, trample human rights into the dust, are evil. And they have to be resisted. Evil has
to be resisted.”
Eventually, militant Islam will be defeated and disappear from the stage of history, Netanyahu
added. “Because it’s a grand failure. It doesn’t know how to manage economies and it cannot
offer to the young people to which it appeals any kind of future.” It may take a long time, but
“I’m confident that militant Islam will perish. But we must not allow anyone to perish with it
before it goes down,” he said. “That’s our task.”