It was hard, listening to Binyamin Netanyahu excoriating the United Nations on Thursday, to avoid the impression that this speech — in all its righteous, angry, victimized fury — could one day be seen as a milestone in the Mideast’s march toward war.
Here was the Israeli prime minister, standing before the very body that had condemned the Jewish state so many times, evoking Winston Churchill, offering documentary proof that the Holocaust really happened and warning the world of its blindness to the gathering storm.
The danger in Netanyahu’s view, of course, is Iran and its nuclear ambitions. And even as Netanyahu delivered his admonition, Iran was preparing to confirm to the world that it was operating a second, illegal uranium enrichment plant.
“I believe…peace can be achieved,” said Netanyahu. “But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.”
When I was The Post’s correspondent in Israel 10 years ago, there was urgency in the Jewish state’s warnings of the peril posed by Tehran. That urgency has now reached a fever pitch inside Israel, as Iran draws closer to nuclear capability — a fever reflected in the nearly apocalyptic shades of Netanyahu’s rhetoric. Will his speech in New York be the Jewish state’s final warning to the world?
Lee Hockstader, Washington Post
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Full article: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/09/israels_final_warning_to_the_w.html
