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Israeli Foreign Minister to UN: Iran Leaders Threaten the World, No to Palestinian Terror State
[Israel Foreign Ministry] Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday: "An ancient people in the heart of the Middle East - great in history but small in number - we have been a constant target of those that oppose our very existence. We face this conflict on different fronts: as Jews against the dark forces of anti-Semitism, as Israelis against the enemies of our statehood, and as members of the free world against the merchants of global terror." "There is a critical moral difference between the terrorists that hunt down civilians, and the soldiers that target terrorists, while trying to avoid civilian casualties. To protect its integrity, the international community must uphold this basic moral distinction. Terror is terror - even when it's called resistance. It cannot be justified and it cannot be equated with the actions of those seeking only to defend themselves against it." "The leaders of Iran deny and mock the Holocaust. They speak proudly and openly of their desire to wipe Israel off the map. And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective, to imperil the region and to threaten the world....The international community is faced with no greater responsibility than to stand against this dark and growing danger - not for Israel's sake, but for its own." "The international community has insisted that the state of Palestine that emerges next to Israel cannot be a terror state. It is the last thing our troubled region needs. It is for this reason that the Road Map requires an end to terror. It is for this reason that the international community has demanded that any Palestinian government fulfill three basic conditions: renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and accept existing Israeli-Palestinian agreements." "Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority is dominated today by a terrorist organization that teaches children to hate and seeks to transform the conflict from a resolvable political dispute into an endless religious confrontation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the consequence and not the cause of this ideology of intolerance and hatred."