At a meeting with diplomats from 26 European countries, Yossi Gal, the director general of the Foreign Ministry, appealed to the ambassadors to convince their home countries to dismiss or protest the Goldstone panel report. "The Goldstone report should be a source of worry for all democratic countries fighting terrorism. It negates the basic principle of national self defense," he said.
Gal added that Iran constituted a threat not just to Israel, but to the whole world. Gal said that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "a serial Holocaust denier who had turned his country into the most hated country in the world."