Israel is an American Ally
Not an enemy, Mr. President.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
I want to tell you about the day when I realized what this transformation was. It was the day I met Shlomit Vilmosh over forty years ago. I was nineteen years old. I served with her son, with Shlomit’s son, Haim, in the same elite military unit. And one dark night during a battle in 1969, Haim was killed in a burst of gunfire. At his funeral, in a kibbutz in the Galilee, I learned something. I discovered that Haim had been born shortly after his mother and father had been freed from the death camps of Europe. If Haim had been born two years earlier, this daring young Israeli officer would have been tossed into the ovens like a million and a half other Jewish children. Haim’s mother Shlomit told me that though she was in great anguish, she was proud. At least, she told me – and this is something I’ll never forget as long as I live – at least she said, my son fell wearing the uniform of a Jewish soldier defending the Jewish state. . . .
Today, an unprecedented threat to humanity looms large. A radical Iranian regime armed with nuclear weapons could bring an end to the era of nuclear peace that the world has enjoyed for the last 65 years. Such a regime could provide nuclear weapons to terrorists. It might even be tempted to use them and our world would never be the same. Iran’s brazen bid to develop nuclear weapons is certainly first and foremost a threat to my country, to Israel, but it’s a threat to the entire region; it’s a threat to the entire world. Israel thus expects the international community to act swiftly and to act decisively to thwart this danger. But we always reserve the right of self-defense.
Indeed, and not only self-defense, but doing the work that Obama will not do.