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  • 'No Peace Till Netanyahu No Longer In Power In Israel'

    'NO PEACE TILL NETANYAHU NO LONGER IN POWER IN ISRAEL'

    http://on.rt.com/obvgci
    Published time: September 30, 2014 10:56

    Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a photograph as
    he addresses the 69th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N.

    headquarters in New York September 29, 2014. (Reuters//Mike Segar)

    Arms, Army, Clashes, Conflict, Human rights, Iran, Israel, Middle East,
    Military,Politics, Security, Terrorism, UN, Violence

    The Israelis and the Palestinians will see no peace while Benjamin
    Netanyahu remains in power, Charles Kogan from the Belfer Centre for
    Science and International Affairs told RT, commenting on the Israeli
    PM's speech to the UNGA comparing Hamas to ISIS.

    Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly
    Monday, drawing attention to Iran and its nuclear program, which is
    considered by Israel a bigger threat than ISIS.

    "Make no mistake - ISIS (Islamic State) must be defeated. But to
    defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win
    the battle and lose the war," Netanyahu said.

    READ MORE: Win battle, lose the war: Photo-wielding Netanyahu puts
    Iran over ISIS, slams Hamas

    The Israeli Prime Minister also stressed that ISIS radicals and Hamas
    share the same task "of imposing militant Islam on the world," and
    even brought with him photo claiming the "proof" showed Hamas using
    Palestinian civilians as human shields.

    "Hamas' immediate goal is to destroy Israel, but it has a broader
    objective. When it comes to its ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS, and
    ISIS is Hamas," he added.

    RT: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was not holding back at the
    General Assembly, telling the Iranian president to "save his phony
    tears." Why is he so distrustful of President Rouhani's attempts to
    make things work with the West?

    Charles Kogan: First of all, I must say that this is my own personal
    opinion, I have nothing to do with the US government anymore, and I do
    have strong opinions. I looked at the speech that Netanyahu made and
    there is very little statesmanship in it. It is an extended polemic,
    or if I were to use a stronger word, it is philippic, it is rant.

    There is inaccuracy in it also because he said some of the ideological
    extremist groups are Shia - that's not the case, they are all Sunni.

    There are Shia militias trained by Iran but they don't have an
    ideological bent, they just have their mission to protect the Shia-led
    regime in Baghdad.

    A Palestinian girl looks out through her family's damaged house, which
    witnesses said was shelled by Israel during the seven-week offensive,
    in the devastated area of the east of Gaza City September 22, 2014.

    (Reuters/Mohammed Salem)

    RT: At a time when the world is struggling to contain the rise of
    the Islamic State, how relevant was this shift of focus to Iran's
    nuclear program?

    CK: I think that it is probably the case that the Israeli leadership,
    or Netanyahu, is concerned with the new emphasis on ISIS, or the
    Islamic State, is taking some of the attention away from Iran, and
    he wanted to set this straight in his speech. He wanted to bring Iran
    in the forefront and describe it as a hypocritical power bent on the
    regional hegemony and heading towards nuclear weapon which would be
    a disaster from the Israeli point of view.

    Another thing that he was anxious to point out in his speech was
    that Israel has been very careful to protect civilians when it made
    these attacks in Gaza, which of course is rather absurd because there
    were some 2,000 Palestinians killed in the Israeli campaign, and on
    the Israeli side there were something like 72 casualties, of which I
    think three or four were due to Palestinian rockets and the rest were
    Israeli army casualties. The imbalance is extreme. To say that Hamas
    invited attacks on Palestinians is an overstatement. Israel this time
    had some justification because Hamas was sending rockets into Israel.

    They caused very few casualties but they set everybody's teeth on
    edge. So there was some basis for retaliation but as the former French
    prime minister pointed out in an article in Figaro on August 1, he took
    the example of the British in Northern Ireland: if they had casualties,
    they didn't respond by bombing Belfast. That's basically what the
    Israelis have done in this campaign - 2,000 casualties and great
    damage. There was some justification for that but it was overdone.

    RT: Another key message of Netanyahu's speech was that Hamas is no
    different from the Islamic State. He even brought a picture to make
    his point. Would you agree with this point?

    CK: There is no question that the Islamic State is totally separate
    from Hamas in Gaza, they are not the same. He made the point that they
    are the same ideologically but this is not true. The idea that Hamas
    is responsible for killing Palestinians is absurd. There is a very
    little nuance in what he delivered in his speech at the UN. I would
    go further to say that as long as Netanyahu is in power in Israel,
    there will be no peace.

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