Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran not to directly attack the Jewish state, as he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Friday morning.
“If you strike us, we will strike you,” Netanyahu said.
“There is no place in Iran where the long arm of Israel can not reach,” Netanyahu said.
“Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel will fight back,” Netanyahu said, adding, “We are winning.”
Netanyahu spoke to the plenum as his country is fighting a multi-front war against Iranian proxies, namely Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
He was greeted by loud applause from the Israeli delegation while the entire Iranian walked out as he strode to the podium.
Netanyahu explained that he had not wanted to come to the UN in the middle of those wars, but felt bound to so that he could speak Israel’s “truth” to the world.
Israel, he said, stands between “the curse of Iran or the blessing of a historic normalization between Arabs and Jews.”
He held up two maps, one showing what he described as Iran’s long aggressive arm and the other showing the regional potential of expanding Israeli-Arab ties. One map was titled “the curse,” and the other, “the blessing.”
“Iran’s aggression will endanger every single country in the Middle East and many countries in the rest of the world,” he said.
“For too long the world has appeased Iran, and turned a blind eye to its internal oppression and external aggression,” Netanyahu said.
He pledged not to allow Iran to acquire or develop nuclear weapons and asked the United Nations, particularly the Security Council to take steps to make sure that Iran does not become a nuclear power.
Netanyahu recalled the Hamas-led invasion of October 7, which sparked the Gaza war, and the Hezbollah attack on October 8, which sparked the constrained cross-border war along its northern border. This was followed by attacks from the Houthis in Yemen and a direct Iranian attack.
Turning to Gaza, he called on Hamas to release the remaining 101 hostages and pledged not to end the war in Gaza until it does so.
“All that has to happen” to end the Gaza war “is for Hamas to surrender, lay down its arms, and release all the hostages,” Netanyahu said.
“If they do not, we will fight until we achieve total victory, there is no substitute,” he said. A small group of relatives of hostages were in the gallery, listening to his speech.
“Hamas has got to go,” Netanyahu stated. “Just imagine, for those who say Hamas has to stay, it has to be part of a post-war Gaza – imagine in a post-war situation – in World War Two, imagine allowing the defeated Nazis in 1945 to rebuild Germany.”
“It’s inconceivable. It’s ridiculous. It didn’t happen then, and it’s not going to happen now,” Netanyahu added.
With respect to Hezbollah, he charged that it was “the quintessential terror organization in the world today, it has murdered more Americans and Frenchmen than any [terror] group, except Iran,” Netanyahu stated.
Don’t let Hezbollah drag Lebanon into the abyss,” Netanyahu said, explaining that as long as Hezbollah. Remained on Israel’s northern border, “Israel has no choice and every right to remove this threat and return our citizens” safely to their homes, he said.
Israel-Saudi normalization
Netanyahu spoke of the potential of Israel-Saudi normalization, noting that this could happen sooner than anyone could imagine.
He recalled that when he was Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations he had fought against attempts to oust Israel from the global body. Now, he said, he finds himself in that same battle 49 years later, with the latest push to drive Israel out of the UN coming from Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, not Hamas.
The United Nations General Assembly, he said, and the body itself has a long history of bias against the Jewish state.In its “swamp of antisemitic vile,” there is an “automatic majority that is willing to demonize the Jewish state,” he said.
“In this anti-Israel, flat earth society, any false charge, any outlandish allegation has a majority,” he stated, adding that since 2014, this body condemned Israel 174 times while condemning all the other countries in the world 73 times.
“Why hypocrisy, what a double standard, what a joke,” he said.
He took particular issue with the recent resolution which sought to strip Israel of its right to self-defense, which he said was the same thing as determining that it should not exist.
“If you can’t defend yourself, you can’t exist, not in our neighborhood and maybe not in yours,” he said.Those who stand with Israel “should be ashamed of yourselves,” he said, adding that Israel will “win this battle” because “we do not have a choice.”
Netanyahu quoted from the Bible stating that “the eternity of Israel will not falter” and from the famed poet Dylan Thomas.
“Israel will not go gently into that good night. We will never cease to rage against the dying light, Israel will forever shine bright,” he said.
“The people of Israel live, now, tomorrow, and forever,” he said.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
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