Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this morning (Thursday, 7 August 2014), met with International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer and told him:
„You can have thousands of reports like that, that shows that what the terrorists are doing is what I told you a year ago. You know, every one of these civilian deaths is a tragedy; we regret every single one. We do not target a single civilian (<
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Prime Minister Netanyahu noted that Israel makes every effort to aid civilian non-combatants in Gaza and added:
„You may know, we’ve put in about 2,000 trucks during the fighting, during the humanitarian ceasefires which we kept and Hamas violated. We’ve opened a field hospital which Hamas – right next to Gaza in order to assist the wounded, the Palestinian wounded. Hamas prevents people from coming in. We’re fixing fuel lines, electricity lines for Gaza during the fighting, water supply – during the fighting, as best as we can. Hamas has been the one that’s been deliberately stopping that, so it’s actually a triple thing that they’re doing. They’re not only firing on our civilians, not only hiding behind their civilians and accruing as much civilian deaths as they can pile up, because that’s what they want for the PR game against Israel, but also I think that they’ve done something else and that’s to prevent and refuse humanitarian assistance that Israel itself offered for their own people. And I think when you put it all together, you understand that there is a deliberate strategy here and that is to have Hamas – Hamas – inflict as much civilian damage as they can on their own people as part of a deliberate strategy to try to have Israel accused in international public opinion.
Now, if international law and the international code basically surrenders to this policy and to this tactic, what it means is that terrorists that are embedded in dense urban populations are firing rockets at neighboring countries, democracies like Israel, and then get Israel or the democracies to be accused when it takes legitimate action against them, that means that democracies and the law-abiding states are absolutely defenseless. What is at stake here is not merely Israel’s ability and legitimate right of self-defense; it’s the ability of all civilized countries and all democracies to defend themselves because this test case is not only about Israel. What happens here will happen for everyone. Now it may seem farfetched to you, but it’s not. This will be everywhere, everywhere you have radicalized Islamic terrorist communities and movements, you will have this phenomenon. The issue here is not merely Israel’s right of self-defense, but the right of self-defense of all civilized countries against this barbarism.”
PM Netanyahu is Interviewed on International Television Networks
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Thursday, 7 August 2014), was interviewed on American Fox News, German ZDF and French CANAL + iTele.
Prime Minister Netanyahu told Fox News: „What you have right now is this terrific conflagration in the Middle East. You have ISIS taking swaths of Iraq and Syria. It’s now pushing into, right close to Lebanon and perhaps into Jordan. That’s very, very dangerous and ISIS is basically a sister movement of al-Qaeda. You have Hezbollah, radical Shiites fighting radical Sunnis; you have Hamas; and you have in Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and in North Africa a plethora of Islamist terrorist groups. Now, look, they’re all fighting among themselves, but they all agree that once they destroy, vanquish their Muslim moderates who are there who don’t share their views and they behead them and do horrible things to them. And then they have to get to Israel, which is the Western country in the region…but we’re the Small Satan. For all of them, you’re the Great Satan. The radical Shiites are backed by Iran. The radical Sunnis have various backers and so on, and these people fight among themselves who’ll be the king of the hill. But one thing they agree on, it’s going to be an Islamist hill and it’s going to be a world dominated by their unforgiving creed, their violent ideology which rejects modernity, rejects human rights, rejects, puts women as chattel, all minorities are subjugated or eliminated. I mean, it is a terrible, terrible world view with these competing sects who want to enforce it on the rest of humanity, those of humanity who will be left alive. A good portion will be destroyed. Now, this is the danger: that you have 21st century weapons with early medieval doctrines here, wedded together. And this is a great danger for the world. Israel is on the front line facing this terrible force and should be given support and who is the world supporting? Is it supporting Hamas, this, a terrorist tyranny of the worst kind, that is cruel to not only to us, but to its own people? Or is it supporting this vibrant, beleaguered democracy, Israel, that is trying to legitimately defend itself? And I think everybody should ask themselves that question, because by supporting Israel, you’re supporting yourself.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu told ZDF: „Hamas is part of a movement, an Islamist movement that wants to reconstruct an Islamic dominion without human rights, without plurality, women as chattel, no rights for minorities, for gays, you name it. They either don’t exist or they should be executed. This kind of unforgiving creed has anti-Semitism as part of its horrible doctrine. And that, when we see that spreading in parts of Europe, we‘re grateful when we see strong leaders like Angela Merkel, and some others in Europe, stand up forcefully against this anti-Semitism. I think that’s, we need support for Israel, but also the fight against anti-Semitism, and the liberal values that we all share. Support for the liberal values that we all share.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu told CANAL+iTele: „It’s not Israel’s battle. It’s your battle. It’s the battle of France, because it’s the same battle. If they succeed here, if Israel’s the one that’s blamed here and not the terrorists, if we don’t stand together, then this terror plague will come to you. It’s just a question of time. It will come to you, it will come to France.”
