Discussion on Terrorism and Global Security

Mr. Prime Minister, welcome. Why was the United States hit so

savagely? What was the objective of these

terrorists?

What we're dealing with are terrorist, uh, attacks launched by, uh,

Islamic militants, uh, who enjoy the support of, uh, uh,

radical states in the Middle East.

These, this militant Islam, uh, I think, perverts and distorts,

uh, one of the world's great religions. Uh, they wanna reverse history.

They really don't accept, uh, the last, uh, 1,000 years of history in which,

uh, Islam receded, uh, in the West, and Western democracy,

uh, became the primary, uh, force in the world.

And so they want to roll back time, and in order to do that, they're,

they have

to strike at the main, uh, bastion of the Western

democracy, and that's the United States.

Uh, and so they'll hit you, they hit you now,

and they'll hit you again because

their objective is literally to destroy the United States.

If they can't destroy it, they can hit it and strike it,

and at least crush its

will, uh, and bring it to, to its knees.

This is, uh, this may sound fantastic, but that's exactly what they

think, and this is inspired again and again by, uh,

Islamic, uh, militant teachings and of course by the Islamic Republic of

Iran. Uh, this is what the Ayatollah Khomeini

was all about.

So they see the United States as the great Satan.

We in Israel, by the way, are the little Satan.

If Belgium was in our place right here in the Middle East, it would also be a

little Satan. Uh, and, uh, uh, and they go after, uh, the

United States, and they'll go after it again.

Waken the sleeping giant, don't you agree?

Yes, but I think this is a wake-up call from hell because they

don't intend to stay

where they are. They're constantly, uh, developing greater technical proficiency,

and the, uh, radical, uh, regimes, specifically Iran and

Iraq, are, that are s- part of their, this terror network, are

developing weapons of mass destruction.

So the next time, uh, as horrific as this attack was,

as horrible

and, and agonizing in loss of life, the next time you will

see not thousands or 10,000 people

die in New York, but millions. In other words, once

this, uh, Islamic militancy acquires nuclear

weapons,

they might change history. They might destroy our civilization,

our freedoms, our democracy that they hate so much.

And therefore we, this wake-up call that we've received, uh, is a summons to

action. It says that unless we act now to

dismantle this terror

network of, uh, terrorist states, uh, manipulating terrorist

groups in the Middle East and beyond, then our future is in

doubt. They have the will to destroy us.

They don't have the power today. We have the power today to crush them.

We now must show that we have the will to do so.

You wrote in your book, uh, five years ago, Fighting Terrorism:

How Democracies Can

Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism, I'll quote, "In the worst, uh,

scenario, the consequences could not be a car bomb,

but a nuclear bomb in the

basement of the World Trade Center." Uh, you know, you, uh, you got the

location right, the weapon, uh, wrong, but, uh, they didn't even

need a nuclear weapon. Do you really envision, uh, the obtaining

of, um, weapons of mass destruction by these very

same personalities

or people like them, and that they would have the will to deliver

even

an Armageddon kind of blow to the United States?

Do you have any doubt? I mean, okay, they didn't use nuclear bombs because they

don't have them, but they used a 350-ton

conventional bomb, 350 tons of conventional bombs,

uh, with all that fuel and, uh, that, that is far more powerful than

anything, uh, an F-16, uh, uh, could launch in terms of, uh, conventional

weapons. So they're well on their way.

Uh, but it is important to understand that none of these groups, uh,

not bin Laden,

uh, not the Hamas and Hezbollah and, uh, the Fatah that, uh, uh,

Fatah groups, uh, Arafat's own group that, uh, uh, formed this, uh,

network of terror, none of them could act without

states, without terrorist regimes. It's important to understand that.

Uh, these terrorists don't float in the air.

They need territory.

They need a place to, uh, to be launched from, to come back to,

to coordinate.

That is those who don't commit suicide.

Those who orchestrate, plan, execute, arm, uh,

dispatch these terrorists, they need a place to be, and

that place to be is a

handful of states in the Middle East, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, a few Arab

states, uh, and indeed, uh, this complex that includes also

Arafat's own, uh, Palestinian domain, which has become, uh, in

fact, the factory, uh, of suicide bombs.

Arafat has summer camps. Geraldo, he has summer camps

in Gaza, where Hamas and Islamic Jihad

teach Palestinian children to become suicide bombers.

He's preparing the kamikaze pilots not only of today, but of tomorrow.

So this network that, uh, whose various parts support one another,

uh, help e- each other in materiel, help each other in political support in,

in these abominable resolutions they passed in Durban the other day, uh, this

network itself has to be dismantled because if it's not

dismantled, the answer is yes, they will develop atomic weapons.

They already have ballistic missiles, two of these states.

They already have chemical and biological weapons.

They're well on their way to developing atomic bombs, and if they do,

then history will change. History has not ended, unlike, uh,

what, uh, Francis Fukuyama wrote, uh, with the triumph of capitalism and

democracy over communism. Uh, in fact, there is a new conflict, uh,

and this is the threat of this Islamic militancy coupled with, uh,

affiliated Arab terrorist groups who, uh, seek to destroy the

West, nothing short of that. What we have to ma- make clear is

that terrorism is an indivisible evil.

It is evil everywhere, and the success of terrorists in one part

of the world

emboldens terrorists elsewhere.

So we have to adopt the same kind of attitude that the, uh,

civilized powers adopted against piracy, uh, in the 19th century, against

Nazism in the 20th century, we now have to adopt against terrorism in

the

21st century. It is a crime against humanity.

It is evil at all times. It is unpardonable.

There are no excuses and no concession to terrorism, and the

terrorists and those who support them are enemies of mankind.

We will fight them resolutely. I think this attitude will

produce the, the, uh, necessary, uh, action, uh, and I

think that President Bush has been wise to call a global war of the democracies

against terrorism.

Mr. Prime Minister, uh, shalom. Thank you.