Israeli PM Draws Huge Applause during UN Speech: "ISIS must be defeated. But to defeat ISIS and leave Iran [with nuclear weapon capability]... would be to win the battle and lose the war"

John Waage, Tzippe Barrow : Sep 30, 2014
CBN News

"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."

[For Benjamin Netanyahu's full speech to the UN Assembly, click here.]

[CBN News] (Jerusalem, Israel)—If the applause during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before the UN General Assembly Monday is any measure, he won an Oscar. (Photo via CBN News)

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."

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. (Photo via CBN News)

The prime minister then warned of the danger of ending the ISIS threat while leaving a potentially nuclear Iran unchecked.

"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."

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 UN Human Rights Council has betrayed its noble mission to protect the innocent," he said. "By granting international legitimacy to the use of human shields, the UN Human Rights Council has become a terrorist rights council..."