This is really worth reading.
Here's a conversation between the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bill Maher on the show "Real Time with Bill Maher." Check it out.
MAHER: How are you today, Mr. Prime Minister?
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU [via satellite]: I’m fine.
MAHER: Is that what I should refer to you as, because I know you’ve had many jobs in the Israeli government: foreign minister and prime minister, and finance minister, U.N. ambassador.
NETANYAHU: Bill, you want to start with a quarrel? You want to call me “prime minister,” I’m not going to argue with you.
MAHER: No. [laughter] And - and I know when Israeli politicians come to the United States, it usually means they’re trying to get their old job back.
NETANYAHU: No, actually, it doesn’t. Because - because America is of interest to us whether in our position or in government. America is important for everyone.
MAHER: But you do want your old job back?
NETANYAHU: Yes, I do. [laughter]
MAHER: Well, that’s the kind of honesty we don’t have here in America. [laughter] [applause] From our politicians. But I’ll tell you one thing, unlike America, Israel seems to be able to fight wars very quickly. What is your secret? Because we don’t seem to have the hang of that. [laughter]
NETANYAHU: The secret is that we have America. [Maher laughs] And America - America - see, the point is that Israel, when it fights, is subject to international pressures. And the people who are fighting us are subject to international pressures.
MAHER: But this is not over between you and Hezbollah. This is just halftime.
NETANYAHU: It’s not between us and Hezbollah.
MAHER: It’s not between you and Hezbollah?
NETANYAHU: No.
MAHER: Who is it between?
NETANYAHU: Us and Iran, you and Iran, the rest of the world and Iran.
MAHER: Right. [scattered applause]
NETANYAHU: Hezbollah doesn’t exist…people are clapping for Iran?
MAHER: No, they’re clapping that they think you got it right.
NETANYAHU: Well, I’m glad, because-[applause]
MAHER: They - and I do, too.
NETANYAHU: Well, Bill, I want to clarify what I mean by that. I think it’s important. Look, Hezbollah may have - not “may have,” I’m quite sure - kidnapped these three soldiers without getting clearance from their masters in Tehran. But once the fighting got going, they were essentially a forward unit of the Iranian army. They were trained by the Iranian army on Iranian soil, using Iranian weapons-
MAHER: [overlapping] Right.
NETANYAHU: [overlapping]-using Iranian tactics. And their long-range weapons are controlled by Iranian officers. So this is a forward unit of the Iranian army. And therefore, when we talk about Hezbollah, we’re really asking, “What does Iran want?” It wanted a diversion from its nuclear weapons program, and it got it. But right now, I think it wants quiet, because it wants to someone pursue the completion of the - of its plan to build atomic bombs, from which they intend to bomb us out of existence.
We’ve never had this - this mad ideology armed with nuclear weapons. People always refer to Hitler, and in some sense, there’re a parallel, but in another sense, there isn’t, because Hitler entered a world conflict and then went to produce nuclear weapons. The great luck for us that he did that. Ahmadinejad is going about it the other way around. He’s first creating the nuclear arsenal, and then he’ll march onto the world stage and the world conflict. So far, he’s just using proxies like Hezbollah. So we have to understand how dangerous this is. You do not want a latter-day Hitler with nuclear weapons. You really must stop that. [applause]
MAHER: No, and it’s always - it’s always amazed me that, among all the nations in the world, the one that gets compared to the Nazis the most in the world press is actually Israel. [he laughs] And I think that’s-
NETANYAHU: You know why? You know why?
MAHER: Well, the Jerusalem Post says it’s because you need a local Bill Maher. [laughter] It said, “The foreign minister would do well to watch ‘Bill Maher,’ to learn how to sell Israel’s case to a TV audience.” What do you think? I could roll that way. [applause] I could - I mean…
NETANYAHU: Hey, Bill, watch it. You watch it. If I’m prime minister, you’ll get the job. [laughter]
MAHER: I could roll that way, I’m telling you. If the Jews want to pay me, I love HBO, but - I mean, the other Jews-[laughter] [applause]
NETANYAHU: Government - government salaries are…
MAHER: Yeah, good point.
NETANYAHU: Are not what you think. And I’m cutting them. But-
MAHER: But do you think Israel does have an image problem?
NETANYAHU: Yes, I do. I think there is a reason why some people are so quick to compare Israel to the Nazis. Israel, that is a democratic country that exercises unbelievable restraint. You know, during the war, I was asked to - by our Knesset, our parliament, to go to London. We were being smashed by some of the British media, most of it. And they said to me, “What do you say” - I can’t imitate a British accent, but you get the point - “What do you say about all these civilian casualties in Lebanon?” And I said, “Do you really want to go that route?” And he said, “Yes, what about the horrendous number,” which was close to 1000, undoubtedly a tragic number.
I said, “Well, the only way we can say if we are proportionate or disproportionate is to look at the only other example of a city rocketed by about the same number of rockets, 4000 rockets, and that’s London. And Churchill’s response was to obliterate Dresden and close to, I think, altogether, 200,000 German civilians. They were bombed by day, fire bombed by night, deliberately.
So we are disproportionate. Disproportionately restrained because we seek to just attack the racketeers who are committing a double war crime, both rocketing civilians and hiding behind civilians.
MAHER: Right.
NETANYAHU: Both war crimes under the fourth Geneva Convention. So, now - so why do people resort to this lie? Number one, European guilt. They did nothing to help the Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. And by comparing Israel to the Nazis, they absolve themselves and they say, “You see, the Jews are just as bad.” We’re not.
MAHER: No.
NETANYAHU: But they’re very bad, in making that comparison. We don’t have that problem in America. [applause] I think the American people are eminently fair. By and large, the American media, which you occasionally castigate - and I appreciate your puncturing of hypocrisy and falsehood. But on the whole, the American people have it right, and they know who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. And we’re fighting the same war against the same common enemies who are barbaric and evil. People who blow up children in a bus or smash into buildings and kill thousands of people. Or - Or poison - try to poison airline passengers. These people are evil, and should be stopped.
MAHER: Yeah. And one of the concepts that was quoted in this article that I was trying to raise, was that the world seems to want it both ways with the Jews. When they went to their slaughter, as they have been accused of, in World War II, they said, “How could the Jews do that? How could they let the Nazis just line them up and march right into the gas chamber.” But then when they defend themselves, somehow the Jews are doing it without showing restraint. It seems to me the world just doesn’t like it when the Jews win.
NETANYAHU: I think there’s something in what you say. But I think it has to do with something related close by. I’ll tell you what it is. For about 2000 years, the Jew was the perfect victim. I mean, we had no - no land, no army, no government, no way to defend ourselves. So we were slaughtered with happy abandon, by, you know, sundry nations and movements and crazies.
But having been a perfect victim, we were always perfectly moral, because if you were just on the receiving end, of tremendous violence - pogroms, massacres, expulsions, holocausts - then you are perfectly moral. And the world got used to the idea that the Jew is a victim.
Now, when we refuse to be a victim, after the latest and greatest pogrom, the Holocaust, took place, we re-established our state, raised an army to defend ourselves, now we’re on the world scene and we have to fight these terrorists, and we have to decide what to do when they rocket us from civilian neighborhoods. And we take action, and occasionally - unintentionally, of course - civilians get killed. Now we’ve deviated from that perfection of powerlessness into power. And I think there’s a real historical adjustment that has yet to take place in the perception of a large portion of mankind towards the Jews.
Well, we refuse to be victims, and we’re not going to be annihilated again. And we will defend ourselves with the same moral code that any democratic and normal society would apply to itself. We’re just not going back into those gas chambers. [applause]
MAHER: Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister. I hope you rejoin us when you are the prime minister again. Thank you.
NETANYAHU: Thank you.
MAHER: How are you today, Mr. Prime Minister?
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU [via satellite]: I’m fine.
MAHER: Is that what I should refer to you as, because I know you’ve had many jobs in the Israeli government: foreign minister and prime minister, and finance minister, U.N. ambassador.
NETANYAHU: Bill, you want to start with a quarrel? You want to call me “prime minister,” I’m not going to argue with you.
MAHER: No. [laughter] And - and I know when Israeli politicians come to the United States, it usually means they’re trying to get their old job back.
NETANYAHU: No, actually, it doesn’t. Because - because America is of interest to us whether in our position or in government. America is important for everyone.
MAHER: But you do want your old job back?
NETANYAHU: Yes, I do. [laughter]
MAHER: Well, that’s the kind of honesty we don’t have here in America. [laughter] [applause] From our politicians. But I’ll tell you one thing, unlike America, Israel seems to be able to fight wars very quickly. What is your secret? Because we don’t seem to have the hang of that. [laughter]
NETANYAHU: The secret is that we have America. [Maher laughs] And America - America - see, the point is that Israel, when it fights, is subject to international pressures. And the people who are fighting us are subject to international pressures.
MAHER: But this is not over between you and Hezbollah. This is just halftime.
NETANYAHU: It’s not between us and Hezbollah.
MAHER: It’s not between you and Hezbollah?
NETANYAHU: No.
MAHER: Who is it between?
NETANYAHU: Us and Iran, you and Iran, the rest of the world and Iran.
MAHER: Right. [scattered applause]
NETANYAHU: Hezbollah doesn’t exist…people are clapping for Iran?
MAHER: No, they’re clapping that they think you got it right.
NETANYAHU: Well, I’m glad, because-[applause]
MAHER: They - and I do, too.
NETANYAHU: Well, Bill, I want to clarify what I mean by that. I think it’s important. Look, Hezbollah may have - not “may have,” I’m quite sure - kidnapped these three soldiers without getting clearance from their masters in Tehran. But once the fighting got going, they were essentially a forward unit of the Iranian army. They were trained by the Iranian army on Iranian soil, using Iranian weapons-
MAHER: [overlapping] Right.
NETANYAHU: [overlapping]-using Iranian tactics. And their long-range weapons are controlled by Iranian officers. So this is a forward unit of the Iranian army. And therefore, when we talk about Hezbollah, we’re really asking, “What does Iran want?” It wanted a diversion from its nuclear weapons program, and it got it. But right now, I think it wants quiet, because it wants to someone pursue the completion of the - of its plan to build atomic bombs, from which they intend to bomb us out of existence.
We’ve never had this - this mad ideology armed with nuclear weapons. People always refer to Hitler, and in some sense, there’re a parallel, but in another sense, there isn’t, because Hitler entered a world conflict and then went to produce nuclear weapons. The great luck for us that he did that. Ahmadinejad is going about it the other way around. He’s first creating the nuclear arsenal, and then he’ll march onto the world stage and the world conflict. So far, he’s just using proxies like Hezbollah. So we have to understand how dangerous this is. You do not want a latter-day Hitler with nuclear weapons. You really must stop that. [applause]
MAHER: No, and it’s always - it’s always amazed me that, among all the nations in the world, the one that gets compared to the Nazis the most in the world press is actually Israel. [he laughs] And I think that’s-
NETANYAHU: You know why? You know why?
MAHER: Well, the Jerusalem Post says it’s because you need a local Bill Maher. [laughter] It said, “The foreign minister would do well to watch ‘Bill Maher,’ to learn how to sell Israel’s case to a TV audience.” What do you think? I could roll that way. [applause] I could - I mean…
NETANYAHU: Hey, Bill, watch it. You watch it. If I’m prime minister, you’ll get the job. [laughter]
MAHER: I could roll that way, I’m telling you. If the Jews want to pay me, I love HBO, but - I mean, the other Jews-[laughter] [applause]
NETANYAHU: Government - government salaries are…
MAHER: Yeah, good point.
NETANYAHU: Are not what you think. And I’m cutting them. But-
MAHER: But do you think Israel does have an image problem?
NETANYAHU: Yes, I do. I think there is a reason why some people are so quick to compare Israel to the Nazis. Israel, that is a democratic country that exercises unbelievable restraint. You know, during the war, I was asked to - by our Knesset, our parliament, to go to London. We were being smashed by some of the British media, most of it. And they said to me, “What do you say” - I can’t imitate a British accent, but you get the point - “What do you say about all these civilian casualties in Lebanon?” And I said, “Do you really want to go that route?” And he said, “Yes, what about the horrendous number,” which was close to 1000, undoubtedly a tragic number.
I said, “Well, the only way we can say if we are proportionate or disproportionate is to look at the only other example of a city rocketed by about the same number of rockets, 4000 rockets, and that’s London. And Churchill’s response was to obliterate Dresden and close to, I think, altogether, 200,000 German civilians. They were bombed by day, fire bombed by night, deliberately.
So we are disproportionate. Disproportionately restrained because we seek to just attack the racketeers who are committing a double war crime, both rocketing civilians and hiding behind civilians.
MAHER: Right.
NETANYAHU: Both war crimes under the fourth Geneva Convention. So, now - so why do people resort to this lie? Number one, European guilt. They did nothing to help the Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. And by comparing Israel to the Nazis, they absolve themselves and they say, “You see, the Jews are just as bad.” We’re not.
MAHER: No.
NETANYAHU: But they’re very bad, in making that comparison. We don’t have that problem in America. [applause] I think the American people are eminently fair. By and large, the American media, which you occasionally castigate - and I appreciate your puncturing of hypocrisy and falsehood. But on the whole, the American people have it right, and they know who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. And we’re fighting the same war against the same common enemies who are barbaric and evil. People who blow up children in a bus or smash into buildings and kill thousands of people. Or - Or poison - try to poison airline passengers. These people are evil, and should be stopped.
MAHER: Yeah. And one of the concepts that was quoted in this article that I was trying to raise, was that the world seems to want it both ways with the Jews. When they went to their slaughter, as they have been accused of, in World War II, they said, “How could the Jews do that? How could they let the Nazis just line them up and march right into the gas chamber.” But then when they defend themselves, somehow the Jews are doing it without showing restraint. It seems to me the world just doesn’t like it when the Jews win.
NETANYAHU: I think there’s something in what you say. But I think it has to do with something related close by. I’ll tell you what it is. For about 2000 years, the Jew was the perfect victim. I mean, we had no - no land, no army, no government, no way to defend ourselves. So we were slaughtered with happy abandon, by, you know, sundry nations and movements and crazies.
But having been a perfect victim, we were always perfectly moral, because if you were just on the receiving end, of tremendous violence - pogroms, massacres, expulsions, holocausts - then you are perfectly moral. And the world got used to the idea that the Jew is a victim.
Now, when we refuse to be a victim, after the latest and greatest pogrom, the Holocaust, took place, we re-established our state, raised an army to defend ourselves, now we’re on the world scene and we have to fight these terrorists, and we have to decide what to do when they rocket us from civilian neighborhoods. And we take action, and occasionally - unintentionally, of course - civilians get killed. Now we’ve deviated from that perfection of powerlessness into power. And I think there’s a real historical adjustment that has yet to take place in the perception of a large portion of mankind towards the Jews.
Well, we refuse to be victims, and we’re not going to be annihilated again. And we will defend ourselves with the same moral code that any democratic and normal society would apply to itself. We’re just not going back into those gas chambers. [applause]
MAHER: Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister. I hope you rejoin us when you are the prime minister again. Thank you.
NETANYAHU: Thank you.