Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said it was a “shocking insult” to America’s ally Israel that President Barack Obama and members of his administration snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by not attending his Tuesday address to a joint session of Congress.
“You’d think the Obama administration would welcome the insights of the leader of our closest ally in the Middle East. But President Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry have refused to attend,” Palin wrote in a Facebook note. “This is a shocking insult to our ally, and it all boils down to the Obama administration’s refusal to understand the danger of a nuclear Iran.” Obama was scheduled to be on a conference call with world leaders during Netanyahu’s speech, ensuring that he would not have time to even watch it live.
In her Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speech last week, Palin urged Obama to “wake up” to the threat of radical Islam and said, “While Christians bow our heads to pray for you, radical Islamists want to cut off your head.”
“We will never submit to evil,” Palin promised. “We will consign radical Islam to the ash heap of history.”
But Palin said that “all of the Obama administration’s many failures in the Middle East – from the descent of Libya into a terrorist playground to the rise of ISIS – pale in comparison to the farce unfolding in Iran.”
“The Obama administration is negotiating with the Iranian regime as it builds a nuclear bomb right under our noses,” she said.
Palin pointed out that the world recently found out about another “secret” undisclosed nuclear cite that “Iran failed to disclose to our negotiators.”
“At this point, the Obama administration’s eagerness to strike a deal with a regime that has armed militants who killed American troops and has sworn to destroy Israel is one of the most dangerous developments of my lifetime,” Palin wrote. “America has to wake up. We swore ‘never again’ would we allow anyone to try to wipe out the Jewish people or commit mass genocide like we saw during World War II, and yet we’re allowing a regime that promises genocide to acquire nukes.”
In his speech, recalling the story of Esther, Netanyahu urged those who think that Iran just threatens the state of Israel but not the Jewish people to listen to Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, who said that, “If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of chasing them down around the world.”
Netanyahu said that Iran is “not merely a Jewish problem, any more than the Nazi regime was merely a Jewish problem.” He that “six million Jews murdered by the Nazis were but a fraction of the 60 million people killed in World War II,” and “Iran’s regime poses a grave threat, not only to Israel, but also the peace of the entire world.”
Netanyahu said that “to understand just how dangerous Iran would be with nuclear weapons, we must fully understand the nature of the regime,” which Netanyahu said was “hijacked by religious zealots” who imposed on a proud civilization “a dark and brutal dictatorship” and directed the revolutionary guards to not only protect Iran’s borders but to “export the revolution throughout the world” in order to “fulfill the ideological mission of jihad.”
He also said that though Iran and ISIS are at odds that is because they “are competing for the crown of militant Islam.”
“One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire,” he said. “So when it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.”
Netanyahu said that “in this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no peace for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone.”
Regarding the nuclear deal that Netanyahu said would be a “farewell to arms control” and would “all but guarantee that Iran gets those weapons, lots of them.” He said the deal would spark an arms race in the world’s most volatile region, which would become a “nuclear tinderbox” and full of “nuclear tripwires.” He said that the nuclear deal, which may lift sanctions on Iran after a decade, is bad because “it doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb–it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.” He said that though a “decade may seem like a long time in political life,” it is just a “blink of an eye in the life of a nation” and “in the life of our children.”
Netanyahu said the nuclear deal “a very bad deal” that “we’re better off without.” He said the “alternative to a bad deal is a much better deal” and argued that “by maintaining pressure on Iran and those who do business with Iran, you have the power to make them need it even more.”
Jabbing Iran, Netanyahu said that if Iran “threatens to walk away from the table,” which Netanyahu said “often happens in a Persian bazaar,” then “call their bluff.”
“They’ll be back, because they need the deal a lot more than you do,” he said.
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