Today’s winning Quote of the day – (the 5th in our series) is, again, from Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who was the first speaker in the opening hearing today of the Turkel Commission, which is looking into events surrounding IDF attack on the Freedom Flotilla at sea on 31 May 2010:
“In the Middle East, democracy remains an endangered species. Unfortunately, in this region, governments shoot their political opponents in broad daylight, brutally repress women and stone them to death, and systematically deny their minorities and entire populations the most basic human rights. In these countries, there is no free press to expose such crimes, no genuine parliaments to hold hearings, no independent courts to give the accused a fair trial, and no local human rights organizations to file reports. There is only tyranny and terror“…
Netanyahu noted Israel’s new-found internal agreement on the importance and utility of international law, in the wake of the Freedom Flotilla fiasco on 31 May, stating that “Since this Commission is dealing with the question of international law, I would like to point out that Hamas is guilty of at least four war crimes: inciting to genocide*; systematically and intentionally firing on civilians; using civilians as human shields; and preventing visits by the Red Cross to kidnapped IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit”.
*[Note: Netanyahu claimed, earlier in his prepared remarks, that “The Hamas charter calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people” — a phrase that would actually be difficult to find in the various versions of the Hamas charter. While there might have been, in the past, debatable differences over Hamas’ true aims and ambitions, an honest assessment now of the organization’s overriding and supreme interest leads to the unavoidable conclusion that its goal is merely in securing, above all else, nothing other than political acknowledgement of its victory in January 2006 elections for the Palestine Legislative Council… the mandate for which has now expired.]