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Israeli President Peres: "One of the Human Rights Is to Remain Alive"


[Telegraph-UK] Israeli President Shimon Peres said in an interview: "One of the human rights is to remain alive. We didn't initiate it (the war in Gaza). We never went to war on our own initiative. We were attacked, in 61 years nine times, with full-fledged wars and endless terrorist attacks. But if a terrorist does not respect the lives of children, the children of ours and their own children, if they don't respect the lives of civilians, our civilians and their own civilians, and they don't respect mosques and they don't respect ambulances, what can the law do?" "We suffered less victims than the Arabs - it's true - because we defend our people and they exploit their people. That's the difference. We have shelters and take care of our children. They don't. They use mosques to hide arms, they use ambulances to carry terrorists. My God! And you know even in that war there were 250,000 telephone calls to all the houses before they were attacked. We asked them to leave. We tried to do whatever we can. We lost many lives because we tried to avoid casualties." "They talk of occupied Gaza? What occupation? We took out our army. We took out our settlers and some of you watched on television how difficult it was and of course it was. Nobody forced us. We handed it over to the Palestinians and for eight years they fired missiles against our civilian life. Can anybody tell me why? Can anybody tell me what was the purpose of it? And Israel restrained and restrained and restrained until the citizens told the government, can't you defend our lives?"
2009-10-20 06:00:00
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