Iran threat like Nazis: Netanyahu
Abraham Rabinovich
Jerusalem, 02 December 2006

"IT'S 1938," said former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "and Iran is Germany, racing to arm itself with atomic bombs."

Addressing a Jewish audience in Los Angeles, Mr Netanyahu was giving voice to growing alarm in Israel at Iran's march towards nuclear capability.

The Iranian Bomb has become for Israel an issue of urgency as the international community appears to back away from confrontation with Tehran.

In his address, Mr Netanyahu referred to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated calls for wiping Israel off the map.

"Believe him and stop him," he said. "This is what we must do. Everything pales before it."

The memory of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered by the Germans, is a central element in Israel's collective consciousness, a memory made more acute by Mr Ahmadinejad's denial that the Holocaust ever happened.

Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld, who survived the Holocaust as a boy, said last month that the Iranian threat was on a scale with that of the Holocaust.

"For the first time since I'm in the country I feel that we face a real existential danger," he said.

Israel has half assumed, half hoped that if international pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear development fails, the US would use force. But a war-weary Washington now seems to be backing away from a confrontation.

There was little comfort from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's remark that the US lacked sufficient intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities to carry out a strike. This was despite her talking tough on the diplomatic front, claiming yesterday that the US and its European allies might try to force through the UN Security Council a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program despite objections from China and Russia.

© The Australian