PM: Proliferate freedom, stop proliferating deadly weapons

Speaking by videoconference to the President's conference "Facing Tomorrow," Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Israel and its Western allies must "continue the proliferation of freedom" and "stop the proliferation of deadly weapons."

Netanyahu said he was very optimistic about the future, calling our era the "knowledge century." However, he expressed deep skepticism that what he dubbed the Arab, Muslim and Iranian world were ready to benefit fully from the Western notion of freedom and the newest technological discoveries.

The prime minister said that he did not believe a major mature change could occur in the Arab-Muslim world for "several decades." Although by the end of the century, Netanyahu was confident that even these nations would turn towards democracy and Western values, he described the central question as being what to do until then.

He said this was a particularly challenging problem, when nations, like North Korea, have built nuclear weapons, or nations, like Iran, are trying to build "weapons of mass death."