Netanyahu slams United Nations, Iran

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Israel's prime minister scolded the United Nations for allowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at a U.N. session.

In an address before the General Assembly Thursday, Binyamin Netanyahu commended delegates who left the hall during Ahmadinejad's speech. But to those who remained to hear the speech, Netanyahu said:

"Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of 6 million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish State," Netanyahu said.

The greatest threat facing the world today is the " marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Netanyahu slammed the U.N. Human Rights Council over its failure to condemn Hamas attacks on Israel in a recent report submitted by South African judge Richard J. Goldstone that accuses Israel of war crimes in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.

"Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way," Netanyahu said. "Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the U.N. Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. … If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity.'"

Israel seeks genuine peace with the Palestinians, Netanyahu said. "And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace."