Israel faces nuclear Holocaust warns Gingrich
Yaakov Lappin Published: 01.23.07, 19:51
The Israeli people are facing the threat of a nuclear Holocaust, former US Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned the Herzliya Conference held by the Institute for Policy and Strategy at IDC Herzliya on Tuesday afternoon. Meanwhile, he said, the United States could lose a few million people or a number of cities to a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction.
Gingrich, who addressed the conference via satellite from the United States, said he thought Israel's existence was under threat again for the first time in 40 years.
"Israel is in the greatest danger it has been in since 1967. Prior to '67, many wondered if Israel would survive. After '67, Israel seemed military dominant, despite the '73 war. I would say we are (now) back to question of survival," Gingrich said.
He added that the United States could "lose two or three cities to nuclear weapons, or more than a million to biological weapons."
Gingrich added that in such a scenario, "freedom as we know it will disappear, and we will become a much grimmer, much more militarized, dictatorial society."
"Three nuclear weapons are a second Holocaust," Gingrich declared, adding: "People are greatly underestimating how dangerous the world is becoming. I'll repeat it, three nuclear weapons are a second Holocaust. Our enemies are quite explicit in their desire to destroy us. They say it publicly? We are sleepwalking through this process as though it's only a problem of communication," Gingrich said.
The former House speaker expressed concern that the Israeli and American political establishments were not fully equipped to take stock of the current threat level.
"Our enemies are fully as determined as Nazi Germany, and more determined that the Soviets. Our enemies will kill us the first chance they get. There is no rational ability to deny that fact. It's very clear that the problems are larger and more immediate than the political systems in Israel or the US are currently capable of dealing with," said Gingrich.
"We don't have right language, goals, structure, or operating speed, to defeat our enemies. My hope is that being this candid and direct, I could open a dialogue that will force people to come to grips with how serious this is, how real it is, how much we are threatened. If that fails, at least we will be intellectually prepared for the correct results once we have lost one or more cities," Gingrich added.
He also said "citizens who do not wake up every morning and think about the possible catastrophic civilian casualties are deluding themselves."
"If we knew that tomorrow morning we would lose Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, what would we do to stop it? If we knew we would tomorrow lose Boston, San Francisco, or Atlanta, what would we do? Today, those threats are probably one, two, five years away? Although you can't be certain when our enemies will break out," he warned.
Earlier, Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, said that Islamic jihadism was "the nightmare of this century."
"The war in Lebanon demonstrated that Israel is facing a jihadist threat that runs through Tehran, to Damascus, to Gaza. Hizbullah are not fighting for the coming into being of a Palestinian state, but for the going out of being of the Israeli state," he said.
Romney emphasized that Iran could not be compared to the former Soviet threat, because the Islamic Republic was following a suicidal path. "For all of the Soviets' deep flaws, they were never suicidal. Soviet commitment to national survival was never in question. That assumption cannot be made to an irrational regime (Iran) that celebrates martyrdom," he said.
How will the apologists spin this? Ahmednejad is a worse threat to th
Iran: Israel, US will soon die
Ahmadinejad: Be assured that the US and Israel will soon end lives
Yaakov Lappin Published: 01.23.07, 22:24
Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report.
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives," the Iranian president was quoted as saying.
"Sparking discord among Muslims, especially between the Shiites and Sunnis, is a plot hatched by the Zionists and the US for dominating regional nations and looting their resources," Ahmadinejad added, according to the report.
The Iranian president also directly tied events in Lebanon to a wider plan aimed at Israel's destruction. He called on "regional countries" to "support the Islamic resistance of the Lebanese people and strive to enhance solidarity and unity among the different Palestinian groups in a bid to pave the ground for the undermining of the Zionist regime whose demise is, of course, imminent."
Ahmadinejad has threatened the State of Israel with annihilation several times in recent months, and has recently added the US and Britain to the list of countries he says will be destroyed.
It's not ISRAEL that needs to be worried here...Olmert can't wait to push the fucking button.
Israel is as much a state of fundamentalists as Iran is. Hell, I've never lived to see a place that discriminates more. The elite of eastern European emigrants treats other Jews like absolute slime. And the government enforces an apartheid-regime towards the Palestines; no wonder that they radicalize: so did the resistance under Nazi-occupation.
History's verdict will definitely not be in favour of Israel's politics. I feel very sorry for those Israelis who DO have compassion and human decency, but must live under the reign of radical xenophobes.
What sickens me about both extreme sides of politics is that they're constantly creating conspiracy theories about how the other side is evil and their side is where the good guys are.
Complete utter bullshit. We won't get on the argument about which side is worse because both are nearly as evil. Makes sick that there are so many idiots who feel we should pick sides.