Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Ceremonies commemorating the 13th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center were held throughout Israel Thursday.
Israeli officials and foreign ambassadors from around the globe attended a ceremony held by the Jewish National Fund at the September 11th Living Memorial in Jerusalem, where the United States Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro gave a speech.
Speaking at the 14th World Summit of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the growing threat of radical Islam, Iran and Israel’s commitment and support for Obama’s call for united action against the Islamic State. Ambassador Shapiro and leading Israeli and international officials were in attendance.
Netanyahu held a moment of silence in commemoration for the anniversary of 9/11 and began his speech stating, “We remember that day, 13 years ago, and we mourn with you on this day for the thousands who lost their lives in that horrific attack.”
He went on to speak of the Palestinian reaction to the attacks stating, “All of Israel mourned on September 11th. In Gaza, they were dancing on the roofs. They were handing out candy. That’s the moral divide – we mourn, they celebrate the death of thousands of innocents. And then when the U.S. took out Bin Laden, I, speaking virtually for the entire country, congratulated President Obama; in Gaza, Hamas condemned the US, and called Bin Laden a holy warrior of Islam. That’s the moral divide – we celebrate, they mourn the death of an arch terrorist.”
He spoke of Sunni terror groups listing the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Boko Haram “as well as radical Shiite terror” as “two sides of the same coin” embodied by Iran and Hezbollah stating the groups “have absolutely no moral or other impediments to their mad desires. Once they have massive power, they will unleash all their violence, all their ideological zeal, all their hatred with weapons of mass death.”
He stated that Islamic terrorist groups all have “one common goal” of the establishment of Islamic domination in the Middle East then globally and that “they all agree on the establishment of the Caliphate. They just disagree on who the caliph should be.”
On nuclear Iran and its attempts for diplomatic deception as it continues advancing its nuclear program, he stated, “They put up a good front, but they have tremendous ambitions. Not for Iran, but for Shi’ism from Iran. And those ambitions would be unleashed once they have nuclear weapons in their capacity…. The whole idea of nuclear breakout- you throw away the inspector, and once you unlock the storehouse, you rush to make the weapons. That is what Iran is seeking. Iran is seeking to keep enriched nuclear material, to keep centrifuges in short order, but to put a padlock on it with inspectors.”
He warned that a nuclear Iran would be a “tremendous pivot” in the world, and the results would be something “you never imagined could be possible. Horrors that you cannot even contemplate come to fruition. The ultimate terror. A terrorist regime with the greatest terror of them all” and warned the United States against a “bad deal” with Iran.
Ambassador Shapiro echoed US cooperation with Israel to battle the Islamic State threat, stating, “There is no doubt that every country can contribute in some way to this effort, including Israel. We always closely coordinate and fully cooperate with Israel in regard to shared threats. We view the Islamic State group as an organization that could pose a threat to us and to Israel, and we’ve already seen it happen: one of our shared citizens was murdered by these terrorists. I am convinced that our intelligence services and armies will continue to coordinate on the Islamic State threat as they do with other threats.”
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Amir Tsarfati, a Jewish Christian, is the founder and president of Behold Israel, a news site to correct the scarcity in trustworthy reportage on issues and events impacting Israel, and to resolve the uncertainty about who or what to believe.
