Addressing the Christians United For Israel Jerusalem Summit on Monday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu welcomed the participants to “Jerusalem, the undivided, eternal capital of the Jewish state and the Jewish people.”
 

Your presence here today represents a profound transformation in the relationship between Christians and Jews. 
 

Today, Christians by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, by the tens of millions – today they have heard this call, and they stand with Israel.  I salute you, the people of Israel salute you, the Jewish people salute you.
 

Time after time, through thick and thin, you have stood shoulder to shoulder with our state, and I have come here tonight to thank you for your unwavering friendship.  And today that friendship is more important than ever because Israel faces unprecedented challenges to its security and its legitimacy.
 

No security challenge is more important to our common future than preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  I have said before and I’ll say again, that the greatest threat facing mankind is the specter of a militant Islamic regime acquiring nuclear weapons, or the specter of nuclear weapons acquiring a militant Islamic regime. 

The first is dangerously close to happening in Iran, and the second may or may not happen in Pakistan.  I believe that with the right policies both can be averted.
 

If Iran develops atomic weapons, the world would never be the same.  We would witness a cascade of terrorism across the globe as terrorists would operate under an Iranian nuclear umbrella.  Look at how much havoc, how much terror they sow now, when there is no such umbrella, and understand what can happen if Iran, their patron, sponsor, supplier and supporter, if that Iran had nuclear weapons. 

Equally, the region’s vital oil supplies could be severely threatened and efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East would collapse as one regime after another would rush to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.  Worst of all, if nuclear weapons would be given to terrorists, or to terrorist states, a 65 year-old era of nuclear peace would be endangered for the first time.
 

Remember that for the tyrants in Teheran, Israel is only the little Satan.  In their eyes, America is the Great Satan.  America is their ultimate target.  Yet for Israel, the threat from Iran could not be clearer.  Iran’s leaders openly call for Israel’s destruction.  They brazenly deny the Holocaust and they hope, and they say so just about every other day, they hope to wipe Israel off the map of the Middle East.
 

We must not allow such a regime to threaten the peace of the world, the peace and security of all humanity.  All responsible members of the international community must do everything in their power to stop Iran from developing atomic weapons.
 

As we speak the United States is leading an international effort to impose sanctions on Iran.  We believe those sanctions must have teeth.  And to have teeth, they must bite deep into Iran's energy sector.  Simply put, they should prevent Iran from importing gasoline and from exporting oil.  I believe that such measures might convince the regime to choose between continuing the weapons program and between assuring the regime’s future.  But there must be tough, biting sanctions.
 

I said that we face great challenges to our security, but we also face unprecedented challenges to our legitimacy.  Now this assault on our legitimacy comes in many forms – it comes from the so-called human rights bodies in the UN which would deny Israel its legitimate right of self-defense, it comes by falsely charging Israel’s political and military leaders with imaginary war crimes, and it comes by the outrageous waging campaigns to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.  You are all familiar with that.
 

But I think that there is an even greater assault on our legitimacy.  I think it is the attempt to perpetrate one of the greatest lies of history -- to deny the connection between the people of Israel and the land of Israel; to cast the Jewish people as foreigners in the land of our forefathers.  Make no mistake about it.  The attempt to deny our history in this land is an attempt to deny our future in this land.   That is why to defend our past is to defend our future.
 

I ask you all to join us in this battle to defend the truth. 

Israel faces great challenges.  We must prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  We must repel the assault on our legitimacy.  We must find a way to achieve peace with our neighbors.  We must all pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
 

After centuries in exile, I have come here to assure you, the people of Israel have come home and no force on earth will ever make us leave our home again.
 

Thank you.  Each of us is forced to decide if we take a stand on things that matter in our lives and matter to the lives of those we hold dear. And Natan Sharansky took one of the greatest personal stands in the post-war period and the day you stood up in a Soviet court, tore up your indictment and said ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ was a testament, not only to your character, but what you represent in the modern history of our people.  And I’ve found it a personal privilege to have had the opportunity to take part in the broad efforts to get Natan out of that large jail, to bring him home and to have an enduring partnership and friendship since.  And I also appreciate the fact that you were kind enough to give me a draw in a game of chess that we played.  I know you were kind because to others you are unforgiving so I appreciate that very much.  I’ve never played with him since and I don’t intend to.

But we do move on the larger chessboards of the nations.  And we have to recognize what it is that we need to succeed and to assure the Jewish future.  There is a palpable challenge to our future from two main directions.  The first one is the loss of identity – the loss of identity through assimilation or through intermarriage or through both is the greatest toll-taker of Jewish numbers in the last half-century.  Before that, we had the greatest catastrophe in our history.  We lost a third of our people to murderous violence and I think it’s telling to go and visit, as we did, Auschwitz-Birkenau, to stand there in the terrible ice and to understand that those who didn’t burn, froze, and those who didn’t freeze, burnt.  That was the condition of our people only 65 years ago as we escaped from a great cauldron, from a great catastrophe and built our life here.

But we see since then that there has been a palpable, if not reduction in Jewish numbers, the absence of growth that would normally have normally accompanied a half-century and more – 65 years – would enable, certainly if not the doubling, if not the tripling, then certainly more than the doubling of our numbers.  And yet we were some 12 or 13 million after the Holocaust and those are our numbers today.  There’s been no growth at all in most of the Jewish Diaspora.  There’s been significant decline in many of the communities and certainly none of the extrapolation that one would have had for the normal development of a population.  These have not taken place in the Diaspora.  It has taken place only in one place, here in Israel. 

And as a result, Israel today has the largest Jewish community in the world.  We’re fast approaching six million souls and we’re fast approaching a point where the majority of the Jews will live in the land of Israel.  That has not happened since the days of the Second Temple.  That is, in one sense, good news and it will happen very shortly, but in another sense, it reflects not merely the growth and the development of Israel – the absorption of millions of immigrants from all over the world including over a million from the Former Soviet Union – and the naturally high growth rate of the Israeli population – very high – I think it’s the highest or among the highest in the developed countries, in developed economies – and that is a reflection of an inner – by the way – secular and religious alike – religious more, secular very high, very high, compared to say our counterparts in Western Europe – very, very high. 

And there is a natural life force in the Jewish people in response, I think, to the Holocaust – an enduring, lingering response to the Holocaust and to the wars of Israel and to our natural impetus to ensure that the Jewish people survive beyond the personal calculation and consideration that every family makes.  So that is the good side and the robust nature of the Israeli economy, the development of the Israeli state, the Israeli society, the Israeli economy, Israeli technology – the capacity not merely to increase our numbers but to increase our productivity well beyond our numbers – to increase our economy, our GDP per capita well beyond the growth rate of our numbers – this is all good news.

The bad news is that we have steadily eroded as a people.  The commitment of our young people – the Jewish people – have frayed at the edges, but there was a concomitant development which I think was important, and that is a concentration – a consolidation at the vibrant center including the Diaspora that says we should reverse this. 

And the most important thing which has happened in the last decade has been the conscious effort of the Diaspora first, and then Israel second, joining it pretty early on, to try to reverse the forces of the loss of identity through such programs as Masa and Taglit and the fostering of Jewish education, the study of Hebrew.  These are conscious efforts to arrest the tide of loss of identity and we should continue them – we should increase them.  We – I mean as a partnership between the Jewish people outside of Israel and the Jewish State of Israel, between the Jewish Agency and the Government of Israel and any other organization that seeks to support this important effort.  We’re committed to this. 

I was the first Prime Minister who actually gave money from the Israeli official budget to foster Jewish education abroad and to help Taglit.  I thought it was a tremendous development which has since been augmented.  But we are committed to do this and as our economy grows, we will add more resources for this common effort – stopping the loss of identity, strengthening the identity in the Diaspora, especially with young Jews – getting them to come to Israel, getting them to know Israel, getting them to consider staying in Israel or becoming ambassadors in their own communities and on their campuses fighting the vilification of Israel and also cementing their own commitment to it is a vital component for the Jewish future.  And I assure you, Natan, that we will work together on this because we deeply believe it and ultimately we act on our beliefs. 

This was the nature of our effort yesterday – we went to Tel Hai the place where Joseph Trumpledor fell some 90 years ago to secure the Upper Galilee, and we started a program for roughly 150 projects which are both from antiquity, archaeological projects from Biblical and post-Biblical periods but also the restoration of sites of modern Zionism, and in so doing also correct the distortions of history.  We’re just presenting the facts.  We need not color the facts, we need not prove the facts – we just have to explain the facts – the actual facts of the growth of Zionism, the return of the Jews, the origins of the attacks against us, the defense, the value of defense that people gave up – pulp history warts and all. 

And there are some warts.  Put it up front because I don’t think that any people, any other people, can be as proud of our ancient and modern history as the Jewish people.  And this pride is part of our identity – it’s part of the thing that connects us to this land and to each other.  It deepens our roots in our country and it also connects, I believe, Jews around the world to the Jewish state and to the Jewish land.  We’re going to do this in a variety of ways obviously suited for the 21st century and for the new means of communication. 

This is what our Heritage Program is about and I would like to consider ways to coordinate this program which was by the way a considerable expenditure – I’ve always found that people take you seriously only if you spend money.  Well, we’re spending money on this but I think that we should spend some time, and I plan to do this in whatever form we designate, to see how we can tighten this Moreshet Program – Tochnit Moreshet – which is our heritage program with the Jewish Agency and with the Jewish communities around the world.  I think this is not merely an exercise in education. 

I think it’s an exercise in survival because I think this is a key part of the history and the mystery of the Jews.  It’s because we wanted to come back.  It’s because we broke the laws of history.  It’s because we said while we were strewn to the four corners of the world absolutely powerless, absolutely defenseless – we said – ‘We will come back – next year in Jerusalem’.

If I had to put in a nutshell the greatest threat that faces humanity – it is that a militant Islamic regime will meet up with nuclear weapons or that nuclear weapons will meet up with a militant Islamic regime.  The first is a danger now focused in Iran and the second is a concern that many people have about a Taliban takeover of Pakistan. 

I think that both are eminently preventable but things are not prevented by themselves, they depend on actions and the most important action vis-à-vis Iran is action that the international community can take and must take in time.  This regime depends virtually entirely on energy.  Its budgets depend on energy – on the exportation of oil and natural gas. 

The first and most powerful sanction – biting sanctions – is to prevent the export of oil from Iran.  Right alongside it is to prevent the import of oil or specifically refined petroleum which means gasoline into Iran.  These are sanctions with teeth.  Other sanctions are now being discussed by the international community but without these sanctions, I think they will not have the impact to actually make a dent in this regime and force it to consider whether to continue its brazen pursuit of a nuclear weapons program. 

If one is talking about what are effective sanctions – what are crippling sanctions – what are sanctions that can actually work – they must include, they must include the constriction of the export of oil from Iran and the import of refined oil into Iran.  I think that nothing else stands a real chance to stop the progress of the regime but this has a chance – at least it must be tried and must be tried now. 

There has been a slow lag of understanding of things that we have been talking about for years.  At first, there was a question whether Iran is – whether this regime is as tyrannical as it is.  People said that it’s a populous regime – it may have a theological bent but it is a popular regime that seeks to better the lives of Iran’s people.  Well, they no longer think that.  I think the regime has been exposed by the clear sunlight that fell on those sidewalks where young Iranians were bleeding, choking on their blood, being gunned down by these goons.  People now know the truth about the nature of the regime.  And a regime that tyrannizes its own people will tyrannize its neighbors very soon.  In fact, that’s already happening. 

The second thing that people said is does Iran have a nuclear program?  There was some debate about that.  Well, that’s pretty much evaporated as Iran’s secret nuclear facility has been exposed and other facts came to light.  So now we know that this is a tyrannical regime that is developing atomic bombs.

The third thing that we know is that they threatened to use those bombs against us and possibly as weapons of terror against anyone else they choose.  This is a formidable combination.  When you have no inhibition and you have far-reaching ideological, theological ambitions – the combination of a militant Islamic regime that has the weapons of mass death and could use atomic weapons, not merely to threaten directly but also to use it as weapons of nuclear terror could be a pivot of history.  That too is understood in most of the capitals and by most of the leaders that I’ve spoken to in recent months and over the years and there is a crystallization of an understanding.

And now comes another question that caused a lot of arguments and disagreements.  How long will it take for them to develop a weapon?  That too, as Iran is advancing and as it is demonstrably accruing low, enriched uranium which is one step short of a process called high enrichment which they’ve just begun.  So now the leading countries in the world and the leading leaders of the world today understand that Iran is a brutal tyranny, that it has a nuclear weapons program, that it is using its power to tyrannize its own people and its neighbors and that it is fast approaching a nuclear weapons capacity.  Well what is it going to do when you have the understanding?   There’s a difference between not knowing and knowing.  Then there’s a difference between knowing and understanding.   And then there’s a difference between understanding and having the international community actually act on that understanding. 

We’re at that fate point.  We’re at the point where the international community has to decide whether it is serious about stopping Iran.  If it is serious about stopping Iran, then what it needs to do is not water-down sanctions, moderate sanctions, sanctions that will only enable people to put a ‘V’ around the rubric box of sanctions, but effective , biting sanctions that curtail the import and export of oil into and out of Iran.  This is what is required now.   It may not do the job but nothing else will.  And at least we will have known that it’s been tried. 

And if this cannot pass in the Security Council, then it should be done outside the Security Council but immediately.  I never fail to quote Hillel the Elder who said several thousand years ago some pretty smart things.  They were short and succinct and to the point.  And one of the things that he said was: ‘If not now, when?’ If not now, when is the international community going to impose biting sanctions on Iran?  A year from now? Two years from now?  Three years from now when it’s all pointless?   If not now, when and the answer is right now!  That is what is required:  Crippling sanctions that affect Iran’s import and export of oil now.

Well, we’re here this year in Jerusalem.  And I think part of the reason we’re here is this unique partnership that exists between the Jewish State and the Jewish people.  We face problems and challenges like no other people but we have a bond like no other people.  People comment about it.  They have all sorts of – both admiration and sometimes odd speculation – that’s a nice way of saying it.  It’s a mythic and sometimes mythical bond between us – between the Jewish people, between the Jewish state and the Diaspora.  But it is a wondrous force. It has enabled us to defeat the greatest forces of history – overcome them – and to stand up to the greatest empires in history and to meet that challenge too.  So we are here today in Jerusalem because that saying is not a cliché – we are one – but we have to make sure that our youngsters know that, that our children and grandchildren and our great-grandchildren know that.  And we also must ensure that those who seek to extinguish Jewish identity or Jewish life will never succeed.  This partnership will assure that they don’t.