Netanyahu brands Tehran summit ‘a stain on humanity’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called the Non-Aligned summit currently taking place in Tehran “a disgrace and a stain on humanity.”

After a meeting at his office with the governor of Lower Saxony, David McAllister, Netanyahu said that the participation of representatives of over 120 countries at the conference showed that “many in the international community appear to have learned nothing.”

His words came at the same time UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on his Iranian hosts at the Non-Aligned Movement summit to stop threats against Israel.

Netanyahu referred to statements made by the regime in Tehran in denial of the Holocaust, saying that participants at the summit were “saluting a regime that not only denies the Holocaust but pledges to annihilate the Jewish state, brutalizes its own people, colludes in the murder of thousands of innocent Syrians and leads millions in chanting ‘Death to America, death to Israel’.”

Netanyahu told his German colleague, “Seventy years ago, six million of my people were exterminated in an act of genocide. The world pledged ‘never again’; it passed treaties against genocide; it formed the United Nations; it made a commitment that this thing will never be repeated.”

The prime minister praised Germany for its refusal to “take part in this charade and condemn us, because our common future is bound on standing up and confronting this inhumanity and this brutality.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Ban spoke out on his Iranian hosts’ threats against Israel, which he called inflammatory and offensive.

Ban also deplored Tehran’s human rights record and lack of cooperation with the UN.

“We have discussed how United Nations can work together with Iran to improve the human rights situation in Iran. We have our serious concerns on the human rights abuses and violations in this country,” Ban said.