Netanyahu warns Vancouver conference of Islamist threat

By Paul Haist

article created on:

A former Israeli prime minister told an audience in Vancouver, Wash., on the 63rd anniversary of D-Day that the threat posed to Western Civilization by radical Islam today is more sinister and dangerous than the threat to civilization for which D-Day was a beginning of the end.

An estimated 350 people, most of them Christian supporters of Israel, gathered at the Hilton Hotel in Vancouver June 6-7 to hear 11 Middle East experts, including three local Jews and members of Israel's Knesset, among others, present what was billed as "an honest depiction of the current state of the war in Israel."

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the keynote speaker at Convergence Northwest Conference 2007, organized by state Sen. Joseph Zarelli (R-Ridgefield) and his wife Tani along the lines of a similar event last year in Savannah, Ga.

Netanyahu heads Israel's conservative Likud Party and is a contender in the upcoming race for prime minister of Israel.

He spoke live by satellite on June 6 at 9:30 p.m.,local time.

Addressing the reaction of some in America to Islamist boasts that they will bring down the United States, Nethanyahu said, "This is so outlandish, it so far-fetched that normal people say, 'Nah, they couldn't mean it. They don't really mean it. They're just saying it.'"

For those who dismiss the Islamists' threats Netanyahu had words of caution.

"That's what they said about another extreme ideology in the 1930s, about Hitler," he said."'He doesn't really mean it; it's just for general consumption.'

"But this brand of madness, of fanaticism brought suicide bombers to smash into the towers of New York, to smash into the Pentagon, and, more recently, to immolate themselves in the streets of London," said Netanyahu.

"These people mean what they say," he said. "If we've learned anything from the Holocaust it is that when somebody says they desire to annihilate you, you better believe it.

"And in this case we have a fanaticism that knows no bounds and no limitations in its hatred of our way of life, of our freedoms and of our common values."

He called the threat of radical Islam "the most insidious threat" to civilization in more than the last 100 years.

"Previous threats were centered in one country, in Germany and the Soviet Union," said Netanyahu. "If you defeated that country, if you stopped its military machine, either through war or without firing a shot as the United States did under Ronald Reagan, then you basically won the war. The ideologies of Nazism and the ideologies of communism collapsed."

But Islamic militarism is different and poses a different challenge, he said.

"It's a challenge that percolates throughout societies. What they are saying is that they want to put back the clock of history, they want to roll back the last 500 years in which the Western free societies rose and the world of Islam was subsided. They want to reverse it not through the competition of ideas, competition in the marketplace, but through holy war, through jihad."

Notwithstanding spectacular terror attacks by Islamists outside the Middle East in recent years, the Islamists' near-term goal is the destruction of Israel, according to Netanyahu, what he said the Islamists call "the little Satan."

"Israel is merely the frontal position; it's standing in their way; it is at the heart of the Middle East, which is obviously the first realm they want to conquer," he said.

"But once they dispose of Israel, they intend to move on," he added, explaining their goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate "from Persia to Spain."

"Certainly they want to annihilate us first, they say so openly, but their ultimate target is to bring down the United States," he reminded his audience, what the Islamists call "the great Satan."

"They're building ICBMs, ICBMs that are intended to reach the United States, probably within a decade," said Netanyahu. "And they are arming these missiles with an atomic arsenal."

To deal with the Islamic threat, the former prime minister spelled out three courses of action.

"The most important thing that we have to do right away is to prevent the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons," said Netanyahu. He wants Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain to make this their goal—"and above all an American goal, because we are all under great threat. This is the first thing."

Action item No. 2 for Netanyahu calls for the defeat of Iran's proxies in the Middle East, those who threaten Israel directly.

The West must "put a robust defense against the proxies of Iran (Shiite militarism) and the proxies of Sunni militarism," he said. "Iran is not yet armed, so it is using its Hamas proxies in the south, in Gaza, and its northern proxies, Hezbollah, the Shiites in Lebanon, and they seek, of course, to attack Israel through those proxies, until they (Iran) are ready."

He said the proxy war is not just Israel's fight, but that of "the United States and all free countries."

Netanyahu assailed moderate Arab states for failing to join the battle.

They don't stand up," he said. "They whisper they are supporters of diplomacy, but they don't really stand up."

Finally, Netanyahu opened the door to a seldom-discussed avenue by which the West is abetting its Islamic enemies in its own destruction. He called on rank-and-file Americans to take direct action.

"We have to stand very firmly against these fanatics," he said. The room broke into wild applause when he added, "We don't have to honor them and we don't have to give them money. The United States should not give any money to the Hamas regime; it's like giving money to Iran."

Then he made it personal for everyone in the room and pointed to an issue that is only just emerging in news columns.

"We can do many things to stop the march of Islamic fanaticism. It is possible, for example, to make sure that your pension, your hard-earned retirement does not go to feed the European companies that are doing business with Iran. So, what has to be done today is divest from Iran, to make sure that they don't receive any money," said Netanyahu.

The Iranian regime is weak, it is very weak economically, and it could be made a lot weaker and could be brought down if it doesn't receive the necessary investment funds. And investment funds are coming from European companies that receive your pension funds," he said.

He explained that there is a growing movement across the United States and in many individual states to divest from Iran.

"I want to ask you to make sure that your pension fund and your state pension fund do not go to feed the Iranian regime," said Netanyahu.

"That is as though your pension funds went to support Nazi Germany in the 1930s. You wouldn't want it then. You don't want it now," he said.

Netanyahu finally praised his largely Christian audience for the history of Christian Zionism, which predates Jewish Zionism.

"Great men from America and from Britain and many other countries, but especially America and Britain, banded together in the mid-19th century and toward the end of the 19th century to promulgate the rise and rebirth of the Jewish return," he said. "Before there were modern Jewish Zionists in the late 19th century, there were Christian Zionists."

The former prime minister thanked his audience for their support.

"The most powerful support (for Israel) beyond the Jewish people is the friends of the Jewish people in the United States and elsewhere who share our common values," said Netanyahu. "I want to thank you for that support and I want you to understand that we in Israel, all of us, understand that we have no better friends than you."