Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, is about to address the UN General Assembly.
00:04Take a listen.
00:10Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen,
00:17I didn't intend to come here this year. My country is at war, fighting for its life.
00:26But after I heard the lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium,
00:38I decided to come here and set the record straight.
00:43I decided to come here to speak for my people, to speak for my country, to speak for the truth.
01:04And here's the truth. Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace.
01:11Israel has made peace and will make peace again.
01:21Yet we face savage enemies who seek our annihilation.
01:26And we must defend ourselves against these savage murderers.
01:32Our enemies seek not only to destroy us,
01:35they seek to destroy our common civilization and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror.
01:47When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice
01:54that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago.
01:59As we were about to enter the Promised Land, Moses told us that our actions will determine
02:07whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.
02:13And that is the choice we face today – the curse of Iran's unremitting aggression
02:20or the blessing of a historic reconciliation between Arab and Jew.
02:26In the days that followed that speech, the blessing I spoke of came into sharper focus.
02:32A normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed closer than ever.
02:39But then came the curse of October 7th.
02:44Thousands of Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists from Gaza burst into Israel in pickup trucks, on motorcycles.
02:52And they committed unimaginable atrocities.
02:55They savagely murdered 1,200 people.
02:58They raped and mutilated women.
03:01They beheaded men.
03:03They burned babies alive.
03:06They burned entire families alive.
03:08Babies, children, parents, grandparents.
03:10In scenes reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust.
03:14Hamas kidnapped 251 people from dozens of different countries,
03:19dragging them into the dungeons of Gaza.
03:23Israel has brought home 154 of these hostages, including 117 who returned alive.
03:31I want to assure you, we will not rest until the remaining hostages are brought home too.
03:38And some of their family members are here with us today.
03:41I ask you to stand up.
03:50With us, with us is Eli Stevie, whose son Idan was abducted from the Nova Music Festival.
03:58That was his crime.
04:00A music festival.
04:04And these murderous monsters took him.
04:09Kobi Smyrno, whose son Jonathan was murdered.
04:12And his corpse, his corpse was taken into the dungeons, into the terror tunnels of Gaza.
04:17A corpse held hostage.
04:21Salim al-Atrash, whose brother Muhammad, a brave Arab-Israeli soldier, was murdered.
04:28His body too was taken to Gaza.
04:30And so was the body of Ifat Haiman's daughter Inbar,
04:34who was brutally murdered at that same music festival.
04:39With us is Sharon Sharabi, whose brother Yossi was murdered.
04:44And who prays for his older brother Eli, who is still held hostage in Gaza.
04:51And with us too is Izhar Lifshitz from kibbutz near Oz.
04:56A kibbutz that was wiped out by the terrorists.
05:00Thankfully, we achieved the release of his mother Yocheved.
05:04But his father Oded is still languishing in an underground terrorist hell of Hamas.
05:11I again promise you, we will return your loved ones home.
05:15We will not spare that effort until this holy mission is accomplished.
05:28Ladies and gentlemen, the curse of October 7th began when Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza.
05:37But it didn't end there.
05:39Israel was soon forced to defend itself on six more war fronts organized by Iran.
05:46On October 8th, Hezbollah attacked us from Lebanon.
05:50Since then, they've fired over 8,000 rockets at our towns and cities, at our civilians,
05:58at our children.
06:00Two weeks later, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen launched drones and missiles at Israel.
06:06The first of 250 such attacks, including one yesterday, aimed at Tel Aviv.
06:12Iran's Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq have targeted Israel dozens of times over the past
06:18year as well.
06:20Fueled by Iran, Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria perpetrated scores of attacks there
06:26and throughout Israel.
06:28And last April, for the first time ever, Iran directly attacked Israel from its own territory,
06:36firing 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at us.
06:43I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran.
06:46If you strike us, we will strike you.
06:51There is no place –
06:57There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.
07:07And that's true of the entire Middle East.
07:11Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel's soldiers have fought back with incredible
07:17courage and with heroic sacrifice.
07:20And I have another message for this assembly and for the world outside this hall.
07:26We are winning.
07:38Ladies and gentlemen, as Israel defends itself against Iran in this seven-front war,
07:44the line separating the blessing and the curse could not be more clear.
07:51This is the map I presented here last year.
07:55It's a map of a blessing.
07:58It shows Israel, Israel and its Arab partners, forming a land bridge connecting Asia and
08:06Europe, between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
08:12Across this bridge, we will lay rail lines, energy pipelines, fiber optic cables, and
08:20this will serve the betterment of two billion people.
08:24Now look at this second map.
08:28It's a map – look at this second map.
08:32It's a map of a curse.
08:34It's a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean
08:41to the Mediterranean.
08:43Iran's malignant arc has shut down international waterways.
08:48It cuts off trade.
08:50It destroys millions, destroys nations from within, and inflicts misery on millions.
08:57On the one hand, a bright blessing, a future of hope.
09:05On the other hand, a dark future of despair.
09:09And if you think this dark map is only a curse for Israel, if you think that, then you should
09:15think again.
09:16Because Iran's aggression, if it's not checked, will endanger every single country
09:23in the Middle East, and many, many countries in the rest of the world.
09:28Because Iran seeks to impose its radicalism well beyond the Middle East.
09:33That's why it funds terror networks on five continents.
09:36That's why it builds ballistic missiles for nuclear warheads to threaten the entire world.
09:43For too long, the world has appeased Iran.
09:46It turns a blind eye to its internal repression.
09:49It turns a blind eye to its external aggression.
09:51Well, that appeasement must end.
09:54And that appeasement must end now.
09:56And that appeasement must end now.
10:08Nations of the world should support the brave people of Iran who want to rid themselves
10:14of this evil regime.
10:16Responsible governments should not only support Israel in rolling back Iran's aggression,
10:22they should join Israel.
10:23They should join Israel in stopping Iran's nuclear weapons program.
10:32In this body, in the Security Council, we're going to have a deliberation in a few months.
10:38And I call on the Security Council to snap back UN Security Council sanctions against
10:44Iran.
10:44Because we must all do everything in our power to ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons.
10:54For decades, I've been warning the world against Iran's nuclear program.
11:04Our actions delayed this program by perhaps a decade.
11:10But we haven't stopped it.
11:11We've delayed it.
11:12But we haven't stopped it.
11:14Iran now seeks to weaponize its nuclear program.
11:18For the sake of the peace and security of all your countries, for the sake of the peace
11:26and security of the entire world, we must not let that happen.
11:30And I assure you, Israel will do everything in its power to make sure it doesn't happen.
11:37So, ladies and gentlemen, the question before us is simple.
11:50Which of these two maps that I showed you will shape our future?
11:55Will it be the blessings of peace and prosperity for Israel, our Arab partners, and the rest
12:00of the world?
12:01Or will it be the curse in which Iran and its proxies spread carnage and chaos everywhere?
12:09Israel has already made its choice.
12:12We've decided to advance the blessing.
12:15We're building a partnership for peace with our Arab neighbors while fighting the forces
12:19of terror that threaten that peace.
12:22For nearly a year, the brave men and women of the IDF have been systematically crushing
12:28Hamas' terror army that once ruled Gaza.
12:32On October 7th, the day of that invasion into Israel, that terror army numbered nearly
12:4040,000 terrorists.
12:41It was armed with more than 15,000 rockets.
12:45It had 350 miles of terror tunnels, an underground network bigger than the New York subway system
12:53which they used to wreak havoc above and below ground.
12:56A year later, the IDF has killed or captured more than half of these terrorists, destroyed
13:02over 90% of their rocket arsenal, and eliminated the key segments of their terror tunnel network.
13:10In major military operations, we destroyed nearly half of Hamas' – sorry, nearly all
13:22of Hamas' terror battalions, 23 out of 24 battalions.
13:27Now to complete our victory, we are focused on mopping up Hamas' remaining fighting
13:33capabilities.
13:34We are taking out senior terrorist commanders and destroying remaining terrorist infrastructure.
13:40But all the while, all the while, and I'll say this one more time, we remain focused
13:46on our sacred mission, bringing our hostages home.
13:50And we will not stop until that mission is complete.
13:58Now ladies and gentlemen, even with Hamas' greatly diminished military capability, the
14:04terrorists still exercise some governing power in Gaza by stealing the food that we enable
14:11aid agencies to bring into Gaza.
14:16Hamas steals the food and then they hike the prices.
14:21They feed their bellies and then they fill their coffers with money that they extort
14:26from their own people.
14:28They sell the stolen food at exorbitant prices.
14:33And that's how they stay in power.
14:35Well this too has to end and we're working to bring it to an end.
14:40And the reason is simple.
14:48Because if Hamas stays in power, it will regroup, rearm, and attack Israel again and again and
14:55again, as it has vowed to do.
14:58So Hamas has got to go.
15:01Just imagine, for those who say, well Hamas has to stay, it has to be part of a post-war
15:13Gaza, imagine in a post-war situation, in World War II, imagine allowing the defeated
15:21Nazis in 1945 to rebuild Germany.
15:24It's inconceivable.
15:26It's ridiculous.
15:27It didn't happen then.
15:28It's not going to happen now.
15:30This is why Israel will reject any rule for Hamas in a post-war Gaza.
15:43We don't seek to resettle Gaza.
15:45What we seek is a demilitarized and deradicalized Gaza.
15:50Only then, only then can we ensure that this round of fighting will be the last round of
15:57fighting.
15:58We are ready to work with regional and other partners to support a local civilian administration
16:03in Gaza committed to peaceful coexistence.
16:07As for the hostages, I have a message for the Hamas captors.
16:13Let them go.
16:16Let them go.
16:18All of them.
16:19Those alive today must be returned alive.
16:23And the remains of those whom you brutally killed must be returned to their families.
16:28Those families here with us today, and others in Israel, deserve to have a resting place
16:33for their loved ones, a place where they can grieve and remember them.
16:40This war, ladies and gentlemen, this war can come to an end now.
16:49All that has to happen is for Hamas to surrender, lay down its arms, and release all the hostages.
16:57But if they don't, but if they don't, we will fight until we achieve victory.
17:04Total victory.
17:06There is no substitute for it.
17:13Israel must also defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon.
17:17Hezbollah is the quintessential terror organization in the world today.
17:23It has tentacles that span in all continents.
17:30It has murdered more Americans and more Frenchmen than any group except Bin Laden.
17:38It's murdered the citizens of many countries represented in this room.
17:43And it has attacked Israel viciously over the last 20 years, in the last year, completely unprovoked.
17:50A day after the Hamas massacre, on October 7th, Hezbollah began attacks against Israel
17:58which forced more than 60,000 Israelis on our northern border to leave their homes,
18:04becoming refugees in their own land.
18:07Hezbollah turned vibrant towns in the north of Israel into ghost towns.
18:13So I want you to think about this in equivalent American terms.
18:17Just imagine if terrorists turned El Paso in San Diego into ghost towns.
18:24Then ask yourself, how long would the American government tolerate that?
18:30A day? A week? A month?
18:34I doubt they'd tolerate it even for a single day.
18:38Yet Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year.
18:43Well, I've come here today to say, enough is enough.
18:53We won't rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes.
18:58We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border,
19:03able to perpetrate another October 7th style massacre.
19:07For 18 years, Hezbollah brazenly refused to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701,
19:15which requires it to move its forces away from our borders.
19:19Instead, Hezbollah moved right up to our border.
19:22They secretly dug terror tunnels to infiltrate our communities
19:26and indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets into our towns and villages.
19:31They fire these rockets and missiles not from military sites.
19:38Not from that.
19:40They do that too.
19:41But they fire those rockets and missiles after they place them in schools,
19:48in hospitals, in apartment buildings, and in the private homes of the citizens of Lebanon.
19:55They endanger their own people.
19:58They put a missile in every kitchen, a rocket in every garage.
20:03I said to the people of Lebanon this week, get out of the death trap that Hezbollah has put you in.
20:10Don't let Nasrallah drag Lebanon into the abyss.
20:13We're not at war with you.
20:15We're at war with Hezbollah, which has hijacked your country and threatens to destroy ours.
20:21As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war,
20:24Israel has no choice and Israel has every right to remove this threat
20:30and return our citizens to their homes safely.
20:32And that's exactly what we're doing.
20:42Just this week, the IDF destroyed large percentages of Hezbollah's rockets,
20:48which it built with Iran's funding for three decades.
20:51We took out senior military commanders who not only shed Israeli blood,
20:56but American and French blood as well.
20:59And then we took out their replacements, and then the replacements of their replacements.
21:05And we'll continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met.
21:11Ladies and gentlemen, we're committed to removing the curse of terrorism that threatens all civilized societies.
21:27But to truly realize the blessing of a new Middle East,
21:31we must continue the path we paved with the Abraham Accords four years ago.
21:37Above all, this means achieving a historic peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
21:49And having seen the blessings that we've already brought with the Abraham Accords,
21:56the millions of Israelis who've already flown back and forth across the Arabian Peninsula,
22:03over the skies of Saudi Arabia, to the Gulf countries,
22:07the trade, the tourism, the joint ventures, the peace, the peace.
22:14I say to you, what blessings such a peace with Saudi Arabia would bring.
22:20It would be a boon to the security and economy of our two countries.
22:25It would boost trade and tourism across the region.
22:28It would help transform the Middle East into a global juggernaut.
22:33Our two countries could cooperate on energy, water, agriculture, artificial intelligence,
22:39and many, many other fields.
22:42Such a peace, I am sure, would be a true pivot of history.
22:47It would usher in a historic reconciliation between the Arab world and Israel,
22:52between Islam and Judaism, between Mecca and Jerusalem.
22:57While Israel is committed to achieving such a peace,
23:00Iran and its terror proxies are committed to scuttling it.
23:05That's why one of the best ways to foil Iran's nefarious designs is to achieve the peace.
23:12Such a peace would be the foundation for an even broader Abrahamic alliance.
23:18And that alliance would include the United States, Israel's current Arab peace partners,
23:22Saudi Arabia, and others who choose the blessing of peace.
23:27It would advance security and prosperity across the Middle East
23:31and bring enormous benefits to the rest of the world.
23:34With American support and leadership, I believe this vision can materialize,
23:40and much sooner than people think.
23:43And as the Prime Minister of Israel, I will do everything in my power to make it happen.
23:49This is an opportunity that we and the world should not let go by.
24:00Ladies and gentlemen,
24:03Israel has made its choice.
24:06We seek to move forward to a bright age of prosperity and peace.
24:11Iran and its proxies have also made their choice.
24:15They want to move back to a dark age of terror and war.
24:20And now I have a question.
24:23And I pose that question to you.
24:26What choice will you make?
24:30Will your nation stand with Israel?
24:32Will you stand with democracy and peace?
24:35Or will you stand with Iran, a brutal dictatorship that subjugates its own people,
24:41exports terrorism across the globe?
24:44In this battle between good and evil, there must be no equivocation.
24:49When you stand with Israel, you stand for your own values and your own interests.
24:55Yes, we're defending ourselves.
24:57But we're also defending you against a common enemy
25:00that through violence and terror seeks to destroy our way of life.
25:05So there should be no confusion about this.
25:08But unfortunately, there is.
25:11A lot of it.
25:12In many countries.
25:14And in this very hall, as I've just heard.
25:17Good is portrayed as evil.
25:20And evil is portrayed as good.
25:22We see this moral confusion when Israel is falsely accused of genocide
25:27when we defend ourselves against enemies who try to commit genocide against us.
25:32We see this too when Israel is absurdly accused
25:36by the ICC prosecutor of deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza.
25:41What an absurdity.
25:43We helped bring in 700,000 tons of food into Gaza.
25:48That's more than 3,000 calories a day for every man, woman and child in Gaza.
25:54We see this moral confusion when Israel is falsely accused of deliberately targeting civilians.
26:00We don't want to see a single person, a single innocent person die.
26:04That's always a tragedy.
26:06And that's why we do so much to minimize civilian casualties.
26:09Even as our enemies use civilians as human shields.
26:13And no army has done what Israel is doing to minimize civilian casualties.
26:18We drop flyers.
26:20We send text messages.
26:21We make phone calls by the millions to ensure that Palestinian civilians get out of harm's way.
26:27We spare no effort in this noble pursuit.
26:31We see yet another profound moral confusion
26:34when self-described progressives march against the democracy of Israel.
26:41Don't they realize they support the Iranian-backed goons in Tehran and in Gaza?
26:48The goons who gun down protesters, murder women for not covering their hair
26:52and hang gays in public squares.
26:54Some progressives.
26:57According to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence,
27:01Iran funds and fuels many of the protesters against Israel.
27:05Who knows, maybe some of the protesters or even many of the protesters outside this building now.
27:13Ladies and gentlemen,
27:16King Solomon, who reigned in our eternal capital Jerusalem 3,000 years ago,
27:21proclaimed – he proclaimed something that is familiar to all of you.
27:27He said,
27:28There is nothing new under the sun.
27:32Well, in an age of space travel, quantum physics and artificial intelligence,
27:39some would argue that's a debatable statement.
27:42But one thing is undeniable.
27:46There is definitely nothing new at the United Nations.
27:57Take it from me.
27:59I first spoke from this podium as Israel's ambassador to the UN in 1984.
28:06That's exactly 40 years ago.
28:09And in my maiden speech here – I think it's the same podium, by the way.
28:14In my maiden speech here, I spoke against a proposal to expel Israel from this body.
28:20Four decades later, I find myself defending Israel against that same preposterous proposal.
28:29And who's leading the charge this time?
28:33Not Hamas, but Abbas, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
28:40This is the man who claims he wants peace with Israel.
28:44Yet he still refuses to condemn the horrific massacre of October 7th.
28:48He's still paying hundreds of millions to terrorists who murder Israelis and Americans.
28:54It's called pay for slay.
28:55The more you murder, the more you get paid.
28:58And he still wages unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel's right to exist
29:04and against Israel's right to defend itself.
29:06And by the way, they amount to the same thing.
29:09Because if you can't defend yourself, you can't exist.
29:12Not in our neighborhood, certainly, and maybe not in yours.
29:14Standing in this podium, 40 years ago, I told the sponsors of that outrageous resolution to expel Israel.
29:22Gentlemen, check your fanaticism at the door.
29:29Today, I tell President Abbas and all of you who would shamefully support that resolution,
29:35check your fanaticism at the door.
29:38Check your fanaticism at the door.
29:41The singling out of the one and only Jewish state continues to be a moral stain on the United Nations.
29:47It has made this once respected institution contemptible in the eyes of decent people everywhere.
29:54But for the Palestinians, this UN House of Darkness is home court.
30:00They know that in this swamp of anti-Semitic bile,
30:05there's an automatic majority willing to demonize the Jewish state on anything.
30:12In this anti-Israel, flat-earth society, any false charge, any outlandish allegation can muster a majority.
30:21In the last decade, there have been more resolutions passed against Israel
30:27in this hall at the UN General Assembly than against the entire world combined.
30:33Actually, more than twice as many.
30:37Since 2014, this body condemned Israel 174 times.
30:43It condemned all the other countries in the world 73 times.
30:48That's more than 100 extra condemnations for the Jewish state.
30:54What hypocrisy.
30:56What a double standard.
30:57What a joke.
30:59So the UN's hostility…
31:13So all the speeches you heard today, all the hostility directed at Israel this year,
31:19it's not about Gaza.
31:21It's about Israel.
31:23It's always been about Israel.
31:26About Israel's very existence.
31:30And I say to you, until Israel, until the Jewish state is treated like other nations,
31:36until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained,
31:39the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce.
31:48Now given the anti-Semitism at the UN,
31:51it should surprise no one that the prosecutor at the ICC, one of the UN's affiliated organs,
31:58is considering issuing arrest warrants against me and Israel's defense minister,
32:03the democratically elected leaders of the democratic state of Israel.
32:10The ICC prosecutors rushed to judgment.
32:13His refusal to treat Israel with its independent courts the way other democracies are treated
32:20is hard to explain by anything other than pure anti-Semitism.
32:26Ladies and gentlemen, the real war criminals are not in Israel.
32:31They're in Iran.
32:33They're in Gaza.
32:34In Syria.
32:35In Lebanon.
32:36In Yemen.
32:38Those of you who stand with these war criminals,
32:41those of you who stand with evil against good,
32:44with a curse against a blessing,
32:46those of you who do so should be ashamed of yourselves.
32:57But I have a message for you.
33:00Israel will win this battle.
33:03We'll win this battle because we don't have a choice.
33:07After generations in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered,
33:17and no one raised a finger in our defense,
33:20we now have a state, we now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage,
33:26and we are defending ourselves.
33:28As the book of Samuel says in the Bible,
33:32Netzach Yisrael lo yishakel, the eternity of Israel will not falter.
33:45In the Jewish people's epic journey from antiquity,
33:48in our odyssey through the tempests and upheavals of modern times,
33:53that ancient promise has always been kept.
33:56And it will hold true for all time.
33:59To borrow a great poet's phrase,
34:02Israel will not go gently into that good night.
34:06We will never, we will never need to rage against the dying of the light
34:13because the torch of Israel will forever shine bright.
34:26To the people of Israel and to the soldiers of Israel, I say,
34:31be strong and of good courage.
34:43Am Yisrael chai, the people of Israel live now, tomorrow, forever.
34:56On behalf of the Assembly,
35:00I wish to thank the Prime Minister of the State of Israel.