(Communicated by the Foreign Minister's Bureau)

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman spoke on Tuesday evening (9 September 2014) at the 14th International Conference on Counter-Terrorism of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya.

Foreign Minister Liberman said:

"We are at a new and very dangerous stage of the war against terrorism, a stage in which the terror organizations are trying to become terror states. Some already are semi-terror states - such as Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon where there is a state within a state, and Boko Haram in Nigeria. Al-Qaida and ISIS also want to achieve statehood. This is a very dangerous stage for the free world - an intermediate stage, but one which marks a definitive moment. The moment terror states are established, we will find ourselves in a completely different situation. We must defeat these terror organizations while they are still semi-states, and while we still can.

I welcome the initiative of the United States in organizing a world coalition against ISIS. This is an important and correct decision, and I hope it will succeed. There must be a permanent world coalition not only against ISIS, but against terrorism in general. It should be the priority of the United Nations to organize such a coalition against terrorism.

The time has come to end the hypocrisy and the double standards of those states which are preventing a united front for the sake of individual benefits. When this will end, we will succeed. As Churchill said, our aim must be "victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; ... for without victory, there is no survival." When victory is the strategic goal, it will ultimately be achieve.

We must stop fighting the wars of the past and begin to fight the wars of the future: to prevent the terror organizations from becoming terror states."