Former Australian prime minister John Howard says he felt "disdain and horror" following Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic outbursts at the United Nations last week.
In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Ahmadinejad told world leaders Israel was "on a definite slope to collapse and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters".
Ahmadinejad has previously called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
"No other leader in the world comes within a bull's roar of using the sort of language that has been used by Ahmadinejad to talk of the people of Israel," Howard said at a ceremony in Los Angeles today.
Howard was awarded the Winston S Churchill Medal of Freedom at the event organised by the American Freedom Alliance, an LA-based think tank, for having been a steadfast ally of the US during his 11 years as prime minister.
The ceremony also marked the 70th anniversary of the ill-fated Munich Agreement, signed by the leaders of Britain, France and Italy to appease German dictator Adolf Hitler prior to World War II.
Howard related the attempted "appeasement" of Hitler to the West's modern day battle with "Islamic fascism".
"The values at stake are just as important now as what they were then," Howard told the audience, which included senior members of the LA Jewish community and the French, German and Czech Republic LA consuls-general.
The former prime minister, who lost last November's federal election amid growing discontent with policies such as his support for the US in Iraq, said leaders often had to make decisions that may not be appreciated at the time.
"Sometimes the wisdom of what you do now is not understood by nations until years and years have elapsed," Howard said.
"The lessons of Munich today are the lessons that, sometimes, to take an unpopular stand which is costly in the short term and very unpopular in the short term, is needed in order to prevent a much greater catastrophe in the longer term."
