Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Bibi always comes through:
Transcript. A snip:
...This is not a theoretical challenge or a theoretical threat. We have already interdicted vessels bound for Hizbullah, and for Hamas from Iran, containing hundreds of tons of weapons. In one ship, the Francop, we found hundreds of tons of war materiel and weapons destined for Hizbullah. In another celebrated case, the Karine A, dozens of tons of weapons were destined for Hamas by Iran via a shipment to Gaza. Israel simply cannot permit the free flow of weapons and war materials to Hamas from the sea.
I will go further than that. Israel cannot permit Iran to establish a Mediterranean port a few dozen kilometers from Tel Aviv and from Jerusalem. And I would go beyond that too. I say to the responsible leaders of all the nations: The international community cannot afford an Iranian port in the Mediterranean. Fifteen years ago I cautioned about an Iranian development that has come to pass - people now recognize that danger. Today I warn of this impending willingness to enable Iran to establish a naval port right next to Israel, right next to Europe. The same countries that are criticizing us today should know that they will be targeted tomorrow.
For this and for many other reasons, we have a right to inspect cargo heading into Gaza.
And here's our policy. It's very simple: Humanitarian and other goods can go in and weapons and war materiel cannot. And we do let civilian goods into Gaza. There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Each week, an average of ten thousand tons of goods enter Gaza. There's no shortage of food. There's no shortage of medicine. There's no shortage of other goods...
A beautifully crafted and delivered speech.
I like to watch him speak.
Bravo, Netanyahu. His words were undeniable.
Ironic, given the extraordinary degree and near ubiquity of prejudice against Israel and responsibly minded Jews, that Netanyahu is the most eloquent and forceful English speaking leader in the free world.
Not ironic at all absent that qualifier, because Israel remains the Hanita of the free world, the spearhead, and as such, takes the brunt of the ideological and existential assaults directed against the civilized world.
I came back to listen to this again, today, in large part simply for the intellectual and moral pleasure of listening to a "common sense" and factually based accounting of the incident and the context surrounding it. Some "outtakes":
"Once again, Israel faces hypocrisy and a rush to judgement ..."
"Hamas was firing on our civilians while hiding behind civilians ..."
"Hamas is smuggling thousands of Iranian rockets, missiles, and other weaponry ... into Gaza in order to fire into Israeli cities."
"Under international law and common sense and common decency, Israel has every right to interdict this weaponry ..."
"This is not a theoretical challenge or theoretical threat, we've already interdicted vessels bound for Hezbollah and for Hamas from Iran containing hundreds of tons of weapons ..."
Etc.
Netanyahu is to be roundly applauded. It is Netanyahu who is genuinely and truly deserving of being lauded and feted in the free world, not the Rhetorician in Chief who currently occupies the White House.
Similarly, the title and theme of Melanie Phillips' latest book is all too fitting: "The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power". In the same vein and as noted previously in this forum, Isaiah Berlin, excerpted from his biography of Marx:
"The manuscripts of the numerous manifestos, professions of faith and programs of action to which he appended his name still bear the strokes of the pen and the fierce marginal comments, with which he sought to obliterate all references to eternal justice, the equality of man, the rights of individuals or nations, the liberty of conscience, the fight for civilization, and other such phrases which were the stock in trade ... of the democratic movements of his time; he looked upon these as so much worthless cant, indicating confusion of thought and ineffectiveness in action."
It is that systematic and ideological moral inversion and genesis thereof which lies at the heart of so much, and in turn which excuses so much by and within the left. Babies and bathwater thrown out together, hence the hecatombs of the 20th century, hence so much else that is deleterious as well.