This Is Why We Stand With Israel- Netanyahu Speech to AIPAC

[Update] Full video of Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the House of Representatives, on follow up post.

Benjamin Netanyahu whole AIPAC speech will be shown below the post.

Barack Obama either miscalculated badly or simply didn't understand the ramifications of his words in his speech where he took the Palestinian position of peace negotiations starting along the 1967 lines between Israel and it's neighbors.

After being publicly rebuffed and given a history lesson by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Democratic and Republican lawmakers spoke out in support of Netanyahu's position and against Obama's poorly chosen words.

Democratic lawmaker, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is the latest to break with Obama in Reid's public speech made at AIPAC 2011, where he states "The place where negotiating will happen must be the negotiating table – and nowhere else. Those negotiations will not happen – and their terms will not be set – through speeches, or in the streets, or in the media.

"No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building or about anything else."

Obama seemed to realize his mistake when he spoke at AIPAC after his initial highly criticized speech and he tried to reaffirm his words but attempted to change the meaning of them when he said hsi reference to the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps "by definition" meant the "Israelis and Palestinians - will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967."

I kid you not, that is a direct quote.


Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now given his speech at AIPAC, which he will followup by speaking before Congress today, but in his speech he made many good points, thanking America for all it has done for Israel as well as what Israel has supplied America with via technology and the very basic fact that support for Israel unites Republicans, Democrats and Independents, which is confirmed by the latest Gallup poll showing a majority of all three being more sympathetic to Israel as is to the Palestinians.

80 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of both Democrats and Independents, totaling and overall 63 percent "continuing to say their sympathies lie more with the Israelis. Seventeen percent sympathize more with the Palestinians"

Much more on the breakdown's over at Gallup showing that Israel currently enjoys popular U.S. support across all major party groups and most major societal subgroups.

Obama's contempt has been duly noted, publicized, rejected and rebutted.


Full AIPAC speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, via The Algemeiner:

When tragedy strikes America, Israel mourns.

Tragedy has struck America.

In recent days, tornadoes and floods have claimed the lives of hundreds of Americans.

Israel grieves with you.

To all our supporters in this great hall, and to the millions of our supporters across this great land, the people of Israel thank you.

Thank you for your staunch commitment to Israel’s security.

Thank you for defending Israel’s right to defend itself.

Thank you for standing by Israel as it seeks a secure peace.

You know that Israel is America’s indispensable ally.

You understand that Israel and America stand shoulder to shoulder fighting common enemies, protecting common interests.

You know that Israeli innovators help power computers, fight disease, conserve water, and clean the planet.

Your support for Israel flows from the heart.

It’s not just what Israel does. It’s what Israel is.

Yesterday, they let me out.

My wife got to visit Washington’s majestic memorials.

I read Jefferson’s timeless words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

I read Lincoln’s immortal address reaffirming “Government of the people, for the people, and by the people.”

You know why these words resonate so powerfully with me and with all Israelis.

Because they are rooted in ideas first championed by our people, the Jewish people.

The idea that all men are created in God’s image.

That no ruler is above the law.

That everyone is entitled to justice.

These revolutionary Jewish ideas were spoken thousands of years ago when vast slave empires ruled the earth.

Israel is the cradle of our common civilization, crucible of our moral ideals.

The Jewish state was founded on these eternal values.

This is why Israel’s more than one million Muslim citizens enjoy full democratic rights.

This is why the only place in the Middle East where Christians are completely free to practice their faith is in the democratic State of Israel.

And this is why only Israel can be trusted to ensure freedom for all faiths in our eternal capital, the united city of Jerusalem.

My Friends,

Israel and America have drawn from this deep wellspring of common values.

We have forged an enduring friendship not merely between our governments but between our peoples.

Support for Israel doesn’t divide America.

It unites America.

It unites the old and the young, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans—and yes, Joe Leiberman, it even unites Independents—

This broad support for Israel is a source of great strength for my country.

Since Harry Truman, Israel has looked to American Presidents to stand by its side to meet unfolding challenges of a changing world.

President Obama has spoken about his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.

He rightly said that our security cooperation is unprecedented.

He spoke of that commitment not just in front of AIPAC, but in two speeches heard throughout the Arab world.

And President Obama has backed those words with deeds.

I know these are tough economic times.

So I want to thank the President and Congress for providing Israel with vital assistance so that Israel can defend itself by itself.

Thank you for supporting the Iron Dome missile-defense system.

A few weeks ago, Hamas terrorists in Gaza fired eight rockets at Ashkelon and Be’er Sheva.

The rockets never reached their targets.

Iron Dome intercepted them.

For the first time, a missile defense system worked in combat.

Thank you, America.

America and Israel are cooperating in so many other ways.

In science, in technology, in trade, in investment.

Its not only American companies investing in Israel.

It’s Israeli companies investing in America.

In the last decade, Israeli companies have invested more than $50 billion in America.

One of those investments is happening just down the road in Richmond.

An Israeli company is building a food factory there.

That means more business, more jobs and yes, more Hummus.

Well it’s not just food we’re bringing to America.

Take medicine.

Israel is advancing cures for multiple schlerosis, cancer and alzheimer’s.

We’ve developed the mechanical means to make paraplegics walk again.

We placed a tiny diagnostic camera inside a pill.

A Jerusalem start-up company has developed a bandage to rapidly stop bleeding.

A million of those bandages have been supplied to the US army.

They are saving American lives and limbs.

But not just on the battlefield.

A few months ago, one of those bandages was carried by a policeman in Tuscon, Arizona.

It helped save the life of a great friend of Israel, Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords!

Israel and America are also cooperating to end the world’s worst addiction — the addiction to oil.

This dependence fuels terrorism.

It poisons the planet.

We’ve launched a ten-year program to seek a substitute for gasoline.

If we succeed, we can change history.

My Friends,

The American people’s support for Israel is reflected in my invitation to address a joint meeting of Congress tomorrow.

I will talk about the great convulsion taking place in the Middle East -

I will talk about the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran.

I will also outline a vision for a secure Israeli-Palestinian peace.

I will speak the unvarnished truth.

Now, more than ever, what we need is clarity.

Events in our region are finally opening people’s eyes to a simple truth.

The problems of the region are not rooted in Israel.

The remarkable scenes we are witnessing in town squares across the Middle East and North Africa are occurring for a simple reason.

People want freedom.

They want progress. They want a better life.

For many of the people in the region, the 20^th century skipped them by.

Now 21^st century technology is showing them what they missed.

That desperate fruit vendor in Tunis didn’t set himself on fire because of Israel.

He set himself on fire because of decades of indignity, decades of intolerable corruption.

The millions who poured into the streets of Tehran, Tunis, Cairo, Sanna, Benghazi and Damascus, were not thinking about Israel.

They were thinking of freedom.

They were yearning for opportunity.

It’s time to stop blaming Israel for all of the region’s problems.

Let me stress one thing.

Peace between Israelis and Palestinians is a vital need for us.

Peace would be the realization of a powerful and eternal dream.

But it is not a panacea for the endemic problems of the Middle East.

It will not give women is some Arab countries in the Middle East the right to drive a car.

It will not prevent Churches from being bombed.

It will not keep journalists out of jail.

What will change all this? One word.

Democracy. Real, genuine, democracy.

By democracy, I don’t just mean elections.

I mean Freedom of Speech. Freedom of the Press. Freedom of Assembly.

The Rule of Law. Rights for women, for gays, for minorities, for everyone.

What the people of the Middle East need is what you have in America, and what we have in Israel.

Democracy.

It’s time to recognize this basic truth:

Israel is not what’s wrong about the Middle East.

Israel is what’s right about the Middle East.

My Friends,

Israel wants peace because we know the pain of terror and the agony of war.

We want peace because we know the blessings peace could bring to us and to our Palestinian neighbors.

But if we hope to advance peace with the Palestinians, then it is time that we admitted another truth.

This conflict has raged for nearly a century because the Palestinians refuse to end it.

They refuse to accept the Jewish state.

This is what this conflict has always been about.

There are many issues that must be resolved between Israelis and Palestinians.

We can and must resolve them.

But I repeat. We can only make peace with the Palestinians if they are prepared to make peace with the Jewish state.

Tomorrow, I will speak more about what such a peace could look like.

But tonight I wanted to express Israel’s gratitude for all you are doing to help strengthen Israel and its great alliance with America.

*You help maintain our Qualitative Military Edge.

*You back sanctions against Iran.

* You support a genuine peace.

*You oppose Hamas.

*You’ve joined President Obama and me in denouncing Hamas and demanding that it release, Gilad Shalit.

That’s another outrageous crime of Hamas.

Keeping a young soldier locked in a dark dungeon for five years without even a visit from the Red Cross.

Hamas must release Gilad Shalit!

My friends,

I spent my high school years in Philadelphia.

I went many times to see the Liberty Bell.

Now, as Prime Minister of Israel, I can walk down the street and see an exact replica of that bell in Jerusalem’s Liberty Park.

On both bells is the same inscription.

It comes from the Bible, from Leviticus.

“Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land.”

My Dear Friends,

This is the essence of the great alliance between our two nations.

Two peoples bonded in Liberty, and seeking freedom and peace for all.

That ladies and gentlemen, is why we stand with Israel.

.

A Mideast Devoid Of Christians

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle

This is the goal of the Muslim world.  In every Muslim nation there is an official systematic policy to destroy every Christian church, community, life in order to free themselves of the blight they see within their midst.  This isn't a new phenomena in these countries, they rid themselves of Jews decades ago.

This is the saddest Easter in the long epic of Arab Christianity: The cross is near extinction in the lands of it origin. The much-vaunted diversity of the Middle East is going to be reduced to the flat monotony of a single religion, Islam, and to a handful of languages.

In 1919, the Egyptian revolution adopted a green flag with the crescent and the cross. Both Muslims and Christians participated in the nationalist revolution against British colonialism. Now, according to the Egyptian Federation for Human Rights, more than 70 Christians a week are asking to leave the country due to Islamist threats.

The numbers are telling. Today there is only one Middle Eastern country where the number of Christians has grown: Israel. As documented in the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the Christian community that numbered 34,000 people in 1949 is now 163,000-strong, and will reach 187,000 in 2020.

In the rest of the Middle East, the drive for Islamic purity is going to banish all traces of pre-Islamic pasts. This has affected not only Christians, but other non-Islamic communities too, such as the Zoroastrians and Baha’is in Iran (the late also found refuge in Israel, in Haifa.)

The silence of the global forums, the flawed conscience of human rights groups, the self-denial of the media and the Vatican’s appeasement is helping facilitate this Islamist campaign. According to a report on religious freedom compiled by the US Department of State, the number of Christians in Turkey declined from two million to 85,000; in Lebanon they have gone from 55% to 35% of the population; in Syria, from half the population they have been reduced to 4%; in Jordan, from 18% to 2%. In Iraq, they will be exterminated.

Should the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem continue in the next two or three decades, there may be no clergy left to conduct religious services in Jesus’ birthplace. In Iran, Christians have become virtually non-existent since 1979, when Khomeini ordered the immediate closure of all Christian schools. In Gaza, the 3,000 who remain are subjected to persecution. In Sudan, Christians in the South are forced into slavery.

Israel’s flag a symbol of hope

In Lebanon, the Maronites, the only Christians to have held political power in the modern Arab world, have been reduced to a minority because of Muslim violence and Hezbollah’s rise. In Saudi Arabia, Christians have been beaten or tortured by religious police. Benjamin Sleiman, archbishop of Baghdad, is talking about “the extinction of Christianity in the Middle East.”

The Christian Egypt was symbolically represented by former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a Christian married to a Jewish woman whose sister was the wife of Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. In 1977, Boutros-Ghali, who was then Egypt’s foreign minister, accompanied President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem.

Sadat, who as a child had attended a Christian school, was killed because the treaty his signed with the “Zionists,” among other reasons, and his cold peace is now under attack from the new rulers in Cairo.

In 1948, the Middle East was cleansed of its ancient Jews. Today is the Christians’ turn. Just as Islamist totalitarians have ruthlessly persecuted Christians in the Middle East, they have been waging war for the past 63 years to destroy the Jewish state in their midst. That’s why the fate of Israel is intertwined with the fate of the non-Muslim minorities.

Should the Islamists prevail, the Middle East will be completely green, the colour of Islam. Under atomic and Islamist existential threats, the remnant of the Jewish people risks being liquidated before Israel’s centennial in 2048. It’s time for Christians to recognize that Israel’s survival is also critical and vital for them. During the Holocaust, when most Christians were bystanders or collaborators, the Yellow Star was a symbol of death for the Jews. Today, the white flag with the beautiful six pointed star is a symbol of survival and hope for both Jews and Christians.

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism

Full Story

After

Before

I wrote in 2008 that the PA is planning to turn the Church of the Nativity into a Mosque.  It is only a matter of time until there are almost no Christians in Bethlehem. Then the PA can evict the Nuns, Priests and Brother who reside at the church (Their usefulness as mouth pieces will be done.), and then loot the place and rework it into a Mosque.

It is not as if Muslims have any respect for the Holy sites of other people.  The desecration of Joseph's Tomb or the Statues of Buddha is the best example of what will happen to every Christian holy site that falls under the sway of these madmen.

Joseph's Tomb

Why is it the Christian churches for the most part, are silent on this? Only a few will cry out for their persecuted brethren.  What is scaring them into silence?

The silence of the Christian world is deafening. Especially to those communities who are being erased from the lands they lived in since way before Mohammad was born.