Press TV – February 13, 2009
Tel Aviv has by no means shelved its plans to strike the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, says a former Israeli envoy to the United Nations.
In the harshest war rhetoric since the deadly offensive on Gaza, former Israeli UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman, said Tel Aviv could not afford to wait any longer for diplomatic efforts to curb Iran's uranium enrichment program adding that it was preparing a military offensive against the country.
Gillerman said international diplomacy is vastly overrated when it comes to dealing with Iran's nuclear program. He further said that Israel has made it crystal clear that “it will not live with a nuclear Iran.”
The West accuses Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program and under such pretext has so far imposed three rounds of sanctions on the country.
The Islamic Republic has severely dismissed the allegations saying its nuclear program is solely aimed at generating electricity.
"Israel is facing an Iranian threat, from afar and from near. The nuclear threat and the terror threat … it will be up to us to deal with this, and we will be able to deal with these two challenges successfully," he continued.
Gillerman urged the international community to consider Tehran as a serious threat, drawing a parallel between the government of Iran and that of Nazi Germany - a metaphor that quite ironically was used by the international community to describe the Israeli forces' killing of Palestinian civilians.
"We all paid a huge price for not taking seriously the ranting of another small, mustached leader who some people considered as crazy, and I don't think we have the luxury to show the same indifference and apathy as we did before," he said.
Gillerman likened the Islamic Republic to the Hitler regime, while Israel is facing war international crime charges for actions that have been widely referred to as holocaust of Palestinians.
Prominent UN investigator Richard Falk said Israel's war on Gaza is widely reminiscent of "the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto" which included the starvation and murder of Polish Jews by Nazi Germany in the World War II.
Falk called for an independent inquiry into Israel's violation of international humanitarian law, saying there is more than enough evidence that Tel Aviv committed war crimes in its three week-long offensive into Gaza.
Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27 with the declared goal of self-defense and toppling the Hamas government.
The UN Charter and international law, however, do not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defense in the case of its Gaza operations.
More than 1,330 Palestinians – the natives of the land – were killed during Israel's Operation Cast Lead, while thousands of others, many of them women and children, remain hospitalized.
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Last updated 17/02/2009
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