PM: We're Fighting for the West, Not Just for Us
In interviews with international media Thursday, Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel's fight against Hamas was not just for Israel.
By Yaakov Levi
First Publish: 8/8/2014, 12:55 AM
In interviews with international media Thursday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pressed Israel's case on defending citizens from Hamas' terror attacks. By fighting Hamas, the leading edge of Islamist terrorism, Israel is defending not only itself, but the entire Western world.
Speaking to Fox News, Netanyahu said that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) “is 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.
“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,” Netanyahu said.
Speaking to German network ZDF, Netanyahu said “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."
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183838
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Don't suppose Hamas is going to give an interview to Fox News and German ZDF network, so we can hear their side of the story?
Israel is NOT a European/Western country. It might have European settlers of mixed and Semitic origin, but it is a Middle-Eastern country.
I'm not religious and I don't understand how people can be religious or why they seek to impose their own take on religion on others, so I don't understand why the fundamentalists are so full on or what threat they allegedly pose to Europe.
But I'm inclined to think it's some propaganda bogeyman, because it's unlikely that one group of Arabic people will ever dominate another group of Arabic people and it is more likley that there will *always* be a struggle between the various groups' beliefs and that there will never be a united Arab (or Islamic) world.
If Israel were to disappear there'd be missiles to send from Turkey or wherever else, so I don't know what he's talking about.
The appeal to the fight against 'anti-Semitism' combined with the emphasis on 'shared liberal values' is a brilliant move by Netanyahu.
Not too many in the West are likely to sympathise with picture of extremist, unforgiving head loppers coming their way -- soon.
How real is that threat? Who knows? I've only just started watching politics. On an emotional level, the spectre Netanyahu raises is very hard to shake off. It's undeniably scary.
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*** NOTE reference to 'entire world' in opener.
Exaggerations like that are always a bit suss.
