WarSclerotic

The Iranians boasted that 3 kings, 27 presidents, 8 prime ministers and 50 foreign ministers attended. Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsy was present, breaching Egypt’s long standing estrangement from Iran which he now describes as “a strategic ally”, even though he condemned Assad’s regime in Syria. India, the world’s most populous democracy, participated with a delegation of 250 headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, stating shamelessly that its objective was to increase trade and commerce with Iran.

Despite appeals from the United States and others, UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, also attended. He did so only days after his condemnation of Iran for defying repeated Security Council resolutions demanding that it end its uranium enrichment program and repeatedly contravening the UN Charter by calling for the destruction of Israel.

In his address to participants, Ban, without explicitly naming Iran, did condemn “threats by any member state to destroy one another, or outrageous attempts to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust”. He also called on Iran to stop supplying arms to Assad in Syria and expressed regret at Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear enrichment program.

Ban’s media spokesman, Martin Nesirky stated that in private meetings with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the UN leader also referred to the vicious verbal attacks on Israel as offensive, inflammatory and unacceptable.

But this did not detract from the fact that combined with representatives from 120 nations, the UN secretary-general’s presence effectively provided legitimacy to Iran and sabotaged efforts to isolate it as a pariah state, the regime which serves as a launching pad for global terrorism. In fact, only last week, Iran proudly proclaimed that it had dispatched members of its Revolutionary Guard Corps and other fighting personnel to support Assad’s criminal rule in Syria.

At the opening of the conference, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini made yet another feral anti-Semitic speech, shamelessly exhorting the world to annihilate Israel the cancerous growth, referring to the “blood-thirsty Zionist wolves” who kill and torture Palestinians and control the global media. Yet the UN secretary-general, together with the other 120 participants remained passively glued to their seats. In many respects, the atmosphere was reminiscent of the late 1930s when the European nations, bent on appeasing Hitler, abandoned Czechoslovakia.

Had the Iranians, instead of targeting Israel, been describing a country like the UK as the cancer of Europe and calling for its elimination, it would have been inconceivable for Ban and the participating countries to attend a meeting hosted by such rogues. But apparently, for Israel, anything goes, provoking Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to appropriately describe the Tehran NAM summit as “a disgrace and stain on humanity”.

To exacerbate matters, in their closing statement, the 120 participants mockingly denounced the UN Security Council “unilateral sanctions” and unanimously endorsed Iran’s right to pursue “a peaceful nuclear program” including “nuclear enrichment”.

Nor was there a single dissenting voice when Egyptian President Morsy handed over the rotating presidency to Holocaust denier, President Ahmadinejad who will now preside over NAM during the next three years.

Any criticism or deviation from Iranian policy such as Ban’s censure of Iranian behavior or Morsy’s condemnation of Syria’s Assad was predictably censored by the local media who presented the summit to the Iranian public as a vindication of their policies and a global rejection of efforts to isolate and impose sanctions against their government.

Not surprisingly, the Iranian leaders jubilantly proclaimed that the broad global participation vindicated them and represented a repudiation of US and Western efforts to deter them from becoming a nuclear power. All in all, it was a major PR victory for this evil regime and an indictment of the dismal state of the international community.

The willingness of so many countries to attend such a conference in Teheran at this time and unanimously endorse the Ayatollah’s nuclear policies, clearly demonstrates the abysmal failure of Obama’s initial policy of “engaging” with Iran and his subsequent decision to impose sanctions and isolate the rogue state.

This episode underlines the futility of Israel relying on the international community to resolve potential conflicts.

It also reaffirms the dysfunction of the United Nations, which the Obama Administration continues to appease.

Nothing epitomizes this more demonstratively than the prominent role Syria, Iran, Libya, Cuba, Saudi-Arabia and similar dictatorships have contributed towards formulating the policy of the so-called United Nations Human Rights Council. Ironically, both Syria and Sudan, whose leaders are recognized war criminals, notorious for brutally butchering their own people, are candidates for seats on this bogus organization’s council scheduled for election next month.

Ironically, the US is the principal financial donor to the UN – to the tune of a staggering $6 billion annually. It is highly unlikely that UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon would have dignified the Iranians with his presence, had the US threatened to review its funding to the UN budget if he proceeded to undermine efforts to isolate Iran for defying Security Council demands and repeatedly calling for the annihilation of a member state.

The United States and Western democracies must recognize that they will become utterly impotent if their global policies continue to be effectively subject to veto by international bodies dominated by an alliance of Islamic nations, dictatorships and tyrannies.

Democracies should unite and seek to create a world order which will strengthen freedom, encourage oppressed people to achieve self-determination and if required, be willing to employ military power to deter the barbarians at our gates. Failure to confront these problems now, threatens the long-term survival prospects for Western civilization.

In Europe, the motivation to resist antidemocratic forces has been substantially weakened by the immigration of large numbers of Muslims who have undermined the foundations of genuine multiculturalism by seeking to impose their way of life on indigenous communities. This has been aided and abetted by the postmodernists –– whose anarchical leftism and confused anti-colonialism have led them to allying themselves with terrorist organizations and apologists for the most rabid racist.

The message emerging for us in Israel is that we must retain our relationship with democratic countries, in particular the US, which despite the Obama administration’s appeasement of Muslim extremism, has not capitulated to Islamic pressures like the Europeans.

Ultimately, the bottom line is that we must not succumb to pressures from those seeking to deter us from taking steps to thwart threats to our survival. Nor should we be tempted to rely on undertakings from other, “friendly” nations. We have learned from bitter experience, that when the chips are down we must rely on ourselves. As Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon recently stated “the righteous work may be done by others, but we have to prepare as if no one else will do it for us”.

The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com.

He may be contacted at ileibler@netvision.net.il 

The IDF is ready to reach any enemy target at any time, Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz said Sunday, during an awards ceremony for reserve army units.

“Recently, we’ve heard threats from near and far enemies to ‘wipe out’ the State of Israel from the map of the Middle East. In all these, I can say that the IDF is ready for any scenario. We will reach any place, anytime, and defend this nation,” Gantz said, speaking at the residence of President Shimon Peres.

In recent weeks, Iranian leaders, from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni to military officials, have stepped up threats to annihilate Israel. Khameni described Israel as a “cancerous tumor” and “the biggest problem confronting Muslim countries today.” The threats coincided with a message from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who threatened to kill tens of thousands of Israeli civilians in a future confrontation by striking strategic sites with rockets.

The threats came as tensions rose over Iran’s ongoing nuclear program.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak also spoke at Sunday’s award, saying, “In the past two years, the map of the region is changing before eyes. Nations went out into the streets and toppled totalitarian states. Reality has given birth to unexpected results, more than once.”

Barak added that Israel resides in an unstable Middle East, and is surrounded by a “stormy sea, big parts of which refuse to accept it as a member of the nations with equal rights.” He said that the “reality in which we live has presented us with heavy challenges, the need to fully use utilize resources, [and] to prepare for all developments that may come from near or from afar.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on the international community Sunday to set down a clear “red line” for the Iranians so Tehran feels the world’s determination to stop its nuclear march.

Netanyahu, speaking at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting, articulated publicly what he has been saying for weeks behind closed doors: that it is not enough for there to be open-ended diplomacy, but clear red lines need to set so the Iranians see that there will be direct consequences for their actions.

Referring to last week’s Non-Aligned Movement conference in Tehran, Netanyahu said that the representatives of 120 countries listened to the anti-Semitic rants of the Iranian leadership and “no one stood up, no one left the hall.”

This lack of protest was even worse in light of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency report that “confirms what I have been saying for a long time – the international sanctions are making things difficult for the Iranian economy, but are not delaying at all the Iranian nuclear program.”

“I think that the truth must be told,” Netanyahu continued. “The international community is not putting down a clear red line to Iran, and Iran is not seeing international determination to stop its nuclear program.”

Until the Iranians see a clear red line and this determination, he said, they will not stop moving their nuclear program forward.  “Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon,” he declared.

Turning to the economy and the steep rise in prices, Netanyahu pointed out the world was still in the midst of the worst economic crisis it has faced in the last 80 years.

“These difficulties are making things difficult for the citizens of all countries, especially developed countries, and also for Israelis,” he said. “We need to tighten our belt in order to preserve Israel’s economy, and that is not easy, and it presents difficulties for the citizens, and I know that”

Netanyahu said that alongside the difficulties, the government is taking action to ease the situation. He ticked off a number of steps, including free education for children from age three and free dental care until age 12.

“The most important thing,” he said, “is that we are protecting the places of employment for Israeli citizens.” To prove this point he referred to statistics released last week by the Central Bureau of Statistics placing the country’s unemployment rate at 6.5%, lower than the unemployment level in the US, Europe and most developed nations  in the world.