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‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’ – Israeli PM lays it all on the line with defiant pre-attack showdown-throwdown UN speech.

September 28, 2024
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Netanyahu tells UN to choose peace and battle the ’Iranian curse’; says Hamas must go; he vows Israel ’won’t go gently into that good night.’

 

Full text of PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Sept. 27 speech to the UN General Assembly | Courtesy: Times of Israel 

Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen, I didn’t intend to come here this year. My country is at war, fighting for its life.

But after I heard the lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight. I decided to come here to speak for my people.

To speak for my country, to speak for the truth. And here’s the truth: Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. Israel has made peace and will make peace again. Yet we face savage enemies who seek our annihilation, and we must defend ourselves against them.

These savage murderers, our enemies, seek not only to destroy us, but they seek to destroy our common civilization and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror. When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land. Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.

And that is the choice we face today: the curse of Iran’s unremitting aggression or the blessing of a historic reconciliation between Arab and Jew. In the days that followed that speech, the blessing I spoke of came into sharper focus.

A normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed closer than ever. But then came the curse of October 7th. Thousands of Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists from Gaza burst into Israel in pickup trucks and on motorcycles, and they committed unimaginable atrocities.

They savagely murdered 1,200 people. They raped and mutilated women. They beheaded men. They burned babies alive. They burned entire families alive—babies, children, parents, grandparents, in scenes reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust.

Hamas kidnapped 251 people from dozens of different countries, dragging them into the dungeons of Gaza. Israel has brought home 154 of these hostages, including 117 who returned alive.

I want to assure you, we will not rest until the remaining hostages are brought home too, and some of their family members are here with us today. I ask you to stand up.

With us is Eli Shtivi, whose son Idan was abducted from the Nova music festival. That was his crime—a music festival. And these murderous monsters took him. Koby Samerano, whose son Jonathan was murdered, and his corpse was taken into the dungeons, into the terror tunnels of Gaza—a corpse held hostage.

Salem Alatrash, whose brother Mohammad, a brave Arab Israeli soldier, was murdered. His body, too, was taken to Gaza. And so was the body of Ifat Haiman’s daughter, Inbar, who was brutally murdered at that same music festival.

With us is Sharon Sharabi, whose brother Yossi was murdered, and who prays for his older brother Eli, who is still held hostage in Gaza. And with us too is Yizhar Lifshitz from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a kibbutz that was wiped out by the terrorists.

Thankfully, we achieved the release of his mother, Yocheved, but his father, Oded, is still languishing in the underground terrorist hell of Hamas. I again promise you, we will return your loved ones home. We will not spare that effort until this holy mission is accomplished.

War on seven fronts

Ladies and gentlemen, the curse of October 7th began when Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza, but it didn’t end there. Israel was soon forced to defend itself on six more war fronts organized by Iran.

On October 8th, Hezbollah attacked us from Lebanon. Since then, they have fired over 8,000 rockets at our towns and cities, at our civilians, at our children. Two weeks later, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen launched drones and missiles at Israel, the first of 250 such attacks, including one yesterday aimed at Tel Aviv. Iran’s Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq have targeted Israel dozens of times over the past year as well.

Fueled by Iran, Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria perpetrated scores of attacks there and throughout Israel. And last April, for the first time ever, Iran directly attacked Israel from its own territory.

Firing 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at us. I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran: If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place—there is no place in Iran—that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that’s true of the entire Middle East.

Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel’s soldiers have fought back with incredible courage and with heroic sacrifice. And I have another message for this assembly and for the world outside this hall: We are winning.

Blessing or curse

Ladies and gentlemen, as Israel defends itself against Iran in this seven-front war, the lines separating the blessing and the curse could not be more clear. This is the map I presented here last year. It’s a map of a blessing.

It shows Israel and its Arab partners forming a land bridge connecting Asia and Europe. Between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, across this bridge, we will lay rail lines, energy pipelines, and fiber optic cables, and this will serve the betterment of 2 billion people.

Now look at this second map. It’s a map of a curse. It’s a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Iran’s malignant arc has shut down international waterways.

It cuts off trade, it destroys nations from within, and inflicts misery on millions. On the one hand, a bright blessing—a future of hope. On the other hand, a dark future of despair. And if you think this dark map is only a curse for Israel, then you should think again.

Because Iran’s aggression, if it’s not checked, will endanger every single country in the Middle East, and many, many countries in the rest of the world, because Iran seeks to impose its radicalism well beyond the Middle East.

That’s why it funds terror networks on five continents. That’s why it builds ballistic missiles for nuclear warheads to threaten the entire world. For too long, the world has appeased Iran. It turned a blind eye to its internal repression. It turned a blind eye to its external aggression. Well, that appeasement must end. And that appeasement must end now.

Nations of the world should support the brave people of Iran who want to rid themselves of this evil regime. Responsible governments should not only support Israel in rolling back Iran’s aggression, but they should join Israel. They should join Israel in stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

In this body and the Security Council, we’re going to have a deliberation in a few months. And I call on the Security Council to snap back UN Security Council sanctions against Iran because we must all do everything in our power to ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons.

For decades I’ve been warning the world against Iran’s nuclear program. Our actions delayed this program by perhaps a decade, but we haven’t stopped it. We’ve delayed it, but we haven’t stopped it. Iran now seeks to weaponize its nuclear program. For the sake of the peace and security of all your countries.

For the sake of the peace and security of the entire world, we must not let that happen. And I assure you, Israel will do everything in its power to make sure it doesn’t happen.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the question before us is simple: Which of these two maps that I showed you will shape our future? Will it be the blessings of peace and prosperity for Israel, our Arab partners, and the rest of the world?

Or will it be the curse in which Iran and its proxies spread carnage and chaos everywhere? Israel has already made its choice. We’ve decided to advance the blessing. We’re building a partnership for peace with our Arab neighbors while fighting the forces of terror that threaten that peace.