Hamas, Islamic State Share the Same Goal of World Domination, Says Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Hamas and the Islamic State share the same goal of world domination through terror.

Addressing the United Nations general assembly, Netanyahu criticized world leaders for denouncing Israel for indulging in war with Hamas and at the same time praising Obama for attacking Islamic State militants and other extremists.

"They evidently don't understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree," Netanyahu said, referring to the Islamic State group by one of its acronyms. "When it comes to its ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS, and ISIS is Hamas," he added, reports the Associated Press.

Netanyahu said that like Islamic State and Hamas , other Muslim militant organizations like al Qaida , Boko Haram, al Shaba and Hezbollah also share the same fanatic ideology  of imposing militant Islam on the world. He also equated their ideology to Nazism.

The cancer of Islamic extremism should be removed to ensure global peace and security, he said.

Comparing Israel's fight against Hamas and the US led military campaign against the Islamic State, Netanyahu said that both the operations have the same goal of defeating Islamic extremism.

Reacting to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's statement last week accusing Israel of indulging in war crimes, Netanyahu said it was Hamas who committed real war crimes in Gaza by using Palestinian people as human shields.

Taking up the case of Iran, Netanyahu said that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a far greater threat to the world than the Islamic State. He said that Iran's nuclear military capabilities must be fully dismantled.

"Make no mistake, ISIS (Islamic State) must be defeated," Netanyahu added. "But to defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war."

"It's one thing to confront militant Islamists on pickup trucks armed with Kalashnikov rifles, it's another thing to confront militant Islamists armed with weapons of mass destruction," Netanyahu said, reports Reuters.