The following article has been published on The Aus­trali­an Jewish News. 

Bibi’s bombshells

Gareth Narunsky
The Australian Jewish News
October 4, 2018

THE Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (ECAJ) has labelled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s United Nations General Assembly speech “com­pel­ling”, identi­fy­ing Bibi’s rev­el­a­tion of a secret atomic warehouse in Tehran a “key moment”.
Present­ing diagrams, maps and even coordin­ates of the warehouse, Netanyahu accused Europe of “appeasing” Iran.
“The reason Iran didn’t destroy its atomic archive and its atomic warehouse is because it hasn’t abandoned its goal to develop nuclear weapons,” he added.
ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim said it was dis­turb­ing that the Inter­na­tion­al Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been mon­it­or­ing Iran’s com­pli­ance with the nuclear deal (also known as the Joint Com­pre­hens­ive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), has remained silent.
He added, “The ECAJ has from the outset respect­fully disagreed with the Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ment regarding the effect­ive­ness of the JCPOA.
“Rather than reforming the Iranian regime’s conduct, it has resulted in the regime increas­ing its bel­li­ger­ence abroad and sup­pres­sion of basic human rights at home.
“It has done nothing to curb the regime’s long-term ambitions and plans to acquire a nuclear weapons cap­ab­il­ity.”
In an AJN interview last week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison ques­tioned what the deal would be replaced with if abandoned and “if it makes things any safer”.
Other high­lights of Netanyahu’s speech included taking a swipe at the UN itself for accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing, calling the charge “the same old antisemitism with a brand new face”, express­ing gratitude for Israel’s new regional alliances and extending the olive branch to other neigh­bours including the Palestini­ans.
Palestini­an Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his speech threatened to reverse Palestini­an recog­ni­tion of Israel, said Israel’s “racist” Nation State Law “crossed all red lines” and claimed that the US had “reneged on all previous com­mit­ments and under­mined the two-state solution”.
With one breath he said, “Peace is the only path. We don’t believe in terrorism and violence,” and with another paid tribute to “our hero martyrs”.
He declared: “Jerusalem is not for sale” and also blamed Hamas for the failure of the Palestini­an unity deal.
Wertheim called it a “long and rambling address” that “rehashed all the tired old cliches”.
“Whether he was describ­ing Palestini­an relations with Israel, the US or even Hamas, Abbas blamed everybody but himself and his pre­de­cessors for the failures of those rela­tion­ships and for the political dead end to which they have now led their people,” he said.
“Public self-criticism and accept­ance of any degree of respons­ib­il­ity seem to be beyond the capacity of Palestini­an leaders, and this failure alone puts authentic statehood beyond their reach for the fore­see­able future.”
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Ruben­stein said Abbas’s speech “only re-emphas­ised that the elderly Abbas has lost any interest he once had in doing anything beyond robot­ic­ally repeating the Palestini­an position in inter­na­tion­al NGOs and clinging to power in the Palestini­an Authority”.
He added that the “real take-out” from the two speeches was Netanyahu’s Iran rev­el­a­tions, not “Abbas’s repe­ti­tion of the pre­dict­able slurs which have char­ac­ter­ised his speeches of recent years”.
Zionist Fed­er­a­tion of Australia president Danny Lamm said it was “shocking” that Abbas’s tribute to “our hero martyrs and prisoners of war” was met with a rousing applause from the audience.
“The martyrs and prisoners that he speaks of are murderers and ter­ror­ists,” he said. “He made these state­ments in a room full of world leaders and diplomats at the United Nations and was applauded for it. What a disgrace.”

Image: Benjamin Netanyahu addressing the UN General Assembly last week. (Source: AP Photo/Richard Drew)