| United in War Binyamin Netanyahu Knesset speech - July 25, 20006 When fighting a war the nation is united. We are all under attack and we are all threatened. The purpose of the war is to remove this threat - first and foremost the threat of missiles and rockets. It is a threat to Israel’s civilian population, one that has not been seen since Israel’s War of Independence. True, Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at us, yet they failed to claim any lives. In contrast, Hizbullah has hitherto fired more than 1000 missiles and rockets, killing dozens of Israeli civilians. The creation of a security zone is Lebanon would indeed distance the threat, yet it would not eliminate it. The same can be said about an multinational force – although I am not opposed to such a force in principle, I am skeptical as to its effectiveness. Since these missiles can reach 200 kilometers and more inside Israel, establishing a security zone will clearly not eliminate the threat as such. That is why targeting Hizbullah’s capability to threaten Israel’s greater civilian population has remained the primary mission of the IDF and was properly labeled as such by the government. Eight days ago a said the missiles do not distinguish Nazeret-Ilit from Nazareth or Arab from Jew. Two days later missiles hit Nazareth, killing two little brothers, Israeli Arabs. I ask you non-Jewish Members of Knesset: what is your reaction? You must realize that no will spare you, particularly not Iran. As far as Iran is concerned, you can all die here with us. You must stand by the government, as we in the national opposition are doing. You must put aside any and all other considerations. In the midst of a war we all must give our support. We are now is a situation not experience since the War of Independence: the entire land is the front and the whole nation is an army. Two million of our citizens are in distress and suffering. Businesses are collapsing. Not big ones but small: a local grocery, a barbershop. It is very easy to destroy a business and extremely hard to rebuilt it. These small businesses need oxygen – credit and loan assistance, as well as help those employees who cannot get to work. The government must immediately and without delay put together a state-of-emergency team to provide assistance and establish the criteria for aid. We must arm our civilian soldiers with the means to be resilient. Our current dire straits may prove to be a blessing in disguise, for this is a loud wake-up call for the entire world. Many in the world are sleeping and today must wake up and realize that what we are seeing is the first test fire by Iran. Iran activated its two proxy arms – first Hamas via the firing of Qassam rockets and then Hizbullah and its volleys of missiles and rockets on Israel’s cities and towns. Iran is attacking a Western nation and it is essentially gauging the West’s reaction. And yet it is from the West that Israel is being condemned! What for? Disproportional response, so they say? True, more than 300 Lebanese civilians have, unfortunately, been tragically killed. This was not the result of malice on Israel’s part. We sympathize and are sad for every innocent life, but we know very well that the full responsibility for these injuries and deaths lies on the shoulders of Hizbullah and those who support them. Why are we being criticized? For trying to destroy to missile launchers Hizbullah purposely hides under populated buildings? Let us review who exactly is condemning Israel. Syria? The same Syria that massacred 15,000 of its own citizens in just one afternoon in the town of Hama? Apart form Israel there are other nations fighting terrorism. Russia, for instance. In Chechnya, the number of civilian casualties stands in the thousands, some say tens of thousands. I was disappointed to hear a British government minister say that our response was disproportionate. To hear this from a British official, of all people? In World War II V2 rockets pummeled London. The British and Allies’ response was to carpet bomb German cities to smithereens. Dresden was completely obliterated. I am not here to make any moral judgments. After all, that was an all out war. What I am trying to say is that in comparison with many other cases and historical precedents Israel’s response has been relatively moderate. And so I ask the international community: how dare you treat Israel this way, while we are not applying even a fraction of our military might? Indeed, this war has been going on for so many days because we have not employed our military might in full, for we are trying to minimize the number of innocent civilian casualties. I say to the nations of the West: Iran is sending its long arms to attack us, but we are you. And who do you condemn, Iran? No, you choose to condemn us! Wake up, for this is only the “Siftach” (the opening round). For when Iran - with its crazy ideology is arming itself with missiles that are already capable of hitting Israel and every European capital – when this Iran is able to arm its missiles not with metal pellets but with nuclear warheads, you too will be in Iran’s crosshairs. This is why my friend Shimon Peres is right when he says: act now, and with means possible – diplomatic, economic and others. Because this threat applies to you as well. So lend us your hand and support us to break Iran’s deadly proxies and you can press Iran and its Syrian way station. This is what every decent, rational human being would expect you to do now. But here is also a separate, special wake-up call for us Israelis. Something important has been revealed: nothing less than the root cause of the conflict in this region. For heaven’s sake, why do they shoot at us? Is it the occupation? We left every inch of Lebanon and Gaza. Does anyone truly believe that if we give up every last inch in Judea and Samaria, it would in turn bring about a change in Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran? Nasrallah, as usual, has been frank about it all along. Two days ago he said: “we will continue to fire our rockets at the enemy’s occupied settlements”. He is firing his rockets at occupied Tiberias, occupied Safed, occupied Acre, and occupied Haifa. By his own words he had once and for all exposed the real cause for this longstanding conflict: refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist at any borders. When previous Likud and Labor governments dealt with Arab leaders like Anwar Sadat and King Hussein, who renounced this mad notion, we were able to make peace. We were also very generous in that context because we knew we had a real partner for peace and coexistence. Yet, the greater conflict lingers because there are forces within the Arab and Muslim world wishing to relieve the Middle East from the very existence of the State of Israel. Period. We must stand united in the face of this existential threat and fend it off. We must go back to the term adopted by Ben-Gurion from his political rival. In building up the IDF’s strength, Ben-Gurion practically adopted Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” doctrine. Jabotinsky assumed that our enemies would be relentless in attempting to destroy us, but that once they would eventually fail, they would tire and cease to attack us. Jabotinsky did not invent this idea. To the best of my knowledge he got it from Nordau. In one of his books, Nordau recounted the story of an experiment conducted by a German scientist by the name of Mobius. Mobius installed a glass partition in an aquarium, dividing it in two. In one part he put a predator fish and in the other a small fish, meant to be eaten by the bigger fish. The predator fish saw the small fish and stormed in his direction, only to hit the glass partition. Stunned, the predator fish swam around then stormed the small fish again. After repeating this futile act dozens of times, the big fish tired and ceased his attacks. Mobius then took out the glass partition out of the aquarium. The predator fish remained in his section of the aquarium, never bothering the small fish again. I would like to amend something in this analogy. We should assume that in the course of time, such an experiment could work with normal enemies, but not with predators of Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas’ ilk. Predators of that kind must be de-fanged. They must have their rockets, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons pulled out of them. My friend Shimon Peres, only if we pull out these murderous fangs and continue to fend off their attacks will we be able to one day take out the glass partition and then, and only then, we might have a new Middle East, or at least a safer one. |
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