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00:00to New York. Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in the past hour or so at the UN General Assembly.
00:06All eyes on this speech given what rests on the next few hours and days have been speaking about Israel.
00:11The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah are closer than ever to an all-out war.
00:14Israeli military chiefs telling troops this week to prepare for a ground offensive.
00:18By Wednesday evening, France and the UN prepared an urgent plan for a 21-day ceasefire
00:23to try to avoid escalation, re-establish a path to peace.
00:27Now, one that the UN, the EU, 10 Arab states signed.
00:29This morning, there was some confusion.
00:31The State Department had briefed reporters that the Israeli Prime Minister had given assent to his truce,
00:37to the truce idea, but he was telling reporters that Hezbollah would be met with full force.
00:41So this is what happened as Benjamin Netanyahu took to the stage in the last few hours at the UN General Assembly.
00:49Order. Order, please.
01:00So what we're seeing, several diplomats walking out of the speech as it began, including the Saudi delegation.
01:06Cheers to.
01:07And Benjamin Netanyahu began by saying he didn't originally want to come to New York.
01:11He said he was doing it to tackle what he called, quote, slander, lies spoken by world leaders about him.
01:18This is him saying he's setting the record straight.
01:24Good is portrayed as evil.
01:26And evil is portrayed as good.
01:28We see this moral confusion when Israel is falsely accused of genocide, when we defend ourselves.
01:35It's not about Gaza.
01:37It's about Israel.
01:39It's always been about Israel, about Israel's very existence.
01:46And I say to you, until Israel, until the Jewish state is treated like other nations,
01:51until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere
01:59as nothing more than a contemptuous farce.
02:03OK, terminology that we've kind of heard with Donald Trump in the past,
02:07talking about draining the swamp, this time the swamp at the UN.
02:10After taking aim at the UN, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of last year's October the 7th attacks.
02:15He said it was reminiscent of the Holocaust.
02:17Vowed again to bring back the hostages from Gaza, and said enough was enough with Hezbollah,
02:23that it was time for Israeli citizens to return to border towns and the shelling.
02:27Now, the main vent of his anger was left for Iran,
02:30warning Tehran there was no place Israel couldn't reach.
02:33He told The Room Israel was winning.
02:37There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach,
02:43and that's true of the entire Middle East.
02:46Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel's soldiers have fought back
02:52with incredible courage and with heroic sacrifice.
02:56And I have another message for this assembly and for the world outside this hall.
03:01We are winning.
03:05Let's go to New York. Let's bring in our correspondent, Jessica Limizzorio.
03:08Jessica, great to have you on the programme.
03:10Tell me what your takeaway was from this speech.
03:18Well, Netanyahu sounded angry, bellicose and defiant,
03:23and he did not sound like somebody who wants to pursue diplomacy,
03:27but rather someone who wants to send more bombs.
03:31He kept making reference to the fact that he was on a holy mission
03:35and that he won't stop until it's completed.
03:38He had brought some of the family members of hostages being held in Gaza
03:43and they applauded at several moments throughout his speech.
03:47He promised that he would return their loved ones and complete the mission
03:52he is on so that families who have had to leave the north of Israel
03:56can also go back to their homes.
03:59He said he had a warning for Iran in particular,
04:04that there is nowhere in the Middle East that Israeli missiles cannot reach.
04:09And he said, well, we're winning.
04:11And he portrayed this war, this battle as a fight between good and evil,
04:16in which Israel are the good guys.
04:19He really talked about the forces of light and darkness
04:22and talked about how, in his mind,
04:25the way things are being perceived from the UN are topsy turvy.
04:28He took aim at the UN, criticising it for criticising Israel
04:33and saying that they've got it all wrong.
04:35Because the fact of the matter is that most member states here at the UN
04:40think that the way Israel is behaving is in violation of international law
04:44and is entirely wrong.
04:46Major powers have been pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza for months now.
04:52That still hasn't happened.
04:53They're pushing for a ceasefire in Lebanon.
04:55But it appears that Netanyahu is ignoring that
05:00and that he is pushing on.
05:02He held up these two maps.
05:04He loves to bring props every time he comes here to the UN
05:07when he's up on his stage there in the General Assembly Hall.
05:10And he had these two props, two maps,
05:12and they represented his vision for a future Middle East,
05:16a Middle East in which Israel has its way
05:20and the sort of bad guys Middle East.
05:23And he called them the cursed map and the blessing map.
05:27And he talked about, well, if Israel has its way
05:29and it forges partnerships, then we can turn the Middle East
05:32into this juggernaut of trade and tourism.
05:35But if you let the bad guys win, then it's going to be doom and gloom.
05:38And so he gave this really aggressive, powerful,
05:41and at times, as you mentioned, Trumpian-sounding speech,
05:45even making a reference saying, well, something like,
05:47would you accept, making reference to the towns in the north of Israel
05:51that have now become ghost towns since people have evacuated
05:54out of fear of getting bombed by Hezbollah,
05:56he said, well, would you accept that happening in El Paso
05:59or in San Diego?
06:01So sounding quite Trumpian there.
06:04Jessica, stay with us.
06:06I want to bring in Rawat Tahat in Beirut
06:09at the same time that you're on with us here from New York
06:12because, Rawat, it's very good to have you on the programme.
06:16Just give us an idea of what you're experiencing there
06:19in Beirut tonight.
06:22Roughly around 20 minutes ago, I was in Beirut
06:25and we heard the loudest explosion that we've ever witnessed
06:29in the capital since the start of the conflict this week
06:33and over the past year since the start of this war of attrition.
06:37Now, what we know for a fact is that Israel has attacked
06:40Beirut's southern suburb and an entire neighbourhood
06:43in Beirut's southern suburb has completely collapsed.
06:47The entire neighbourhood was carpet bombed by Israel
06:50with an initial estimate of at least 10 rockets.
06:55Also, preliminary information suggests that these were
07:002,000-pound bunker buster bombs.
07:03What we're hearing from Israeli media is that possibly
07:07the target of the assassination was Secretary General
07:10of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and that's what was attacked
07:13was Hezbollah's headquarters located underground
07:16below those at least six residential buildings.
07:21Still no confirmation whatsoever of what's going on here in Beirut.
07:27However, it is estimated that the death toll from this carpet bombing
07:32of this residential neighbourhood is going to be potentially
07:36very, very high and whether really Nasrallah and the rest
07:41of Hezbollah's command structure was under those buildings
07:45is something that we don't know up until this moment.
07:50All I can say is tense moments ahead and a lot of uncertainty.
07:55Yes, so we're talking about...
07:57As we're watching these live images from Beirut,
07:59you can see smoke rising from the capital as well.
08:02You're talking about an area being, you say, pretty much wiped off the map,
08:06razed from the suburbs.
08:08What we're hearing from the Israeli military in the past few minutes,
08:11this is a spokesperson, Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari, saying this.
08:16The HQ of Hezbollah, he said, which is in Dahir area,
08:20where you're talking about in the south of Beirut, Rawad,
08:24saying that, quote, it was intentionally built
08:27under residential buildings.
08:29He goes on to say, as part of Hezbollah's strategy
08:32of using Lebanese people as human shield,
08:34Israel is doing everything it can.
08:37What every sovereign state would do, he says,
08:40if they had a terrorist organisation seeking to destroy them on the border,
08:44taking necessary action to protect our people and Israeli families.
08:48So they call it a precision strike,
08:50but what you're hearing is a huge amount of devastation, Rawad.
08:56There's an entire neighbourhood in Beirut's southern suburbs
08:59that was completely wiped out, at least six buildings.
09:04We still don't know if these buildings were evacuated beforehand or not,
09:09but probably not, because we haven't written any mass evacuations
09:12out of Beirut's southern suburbs,
09:14unlike the evacuations we saw in the south.
09:18This is unfolding to be some sort of a catastrophe
09:22in terms of the number of casualties involved in this attack.
09:26Regarding whether Hezbollah's headquarters
09:29is really under those buildings or not,
09:32this is something that I cannot confirm,
09:34and no security official in Lebanon has confirmed that just yet.
09:39And regarding whether this assassination was successful
09:42is also something that we are not aware of,
09:45but definitely from the preliminary information,
09:50this is a mass casualty event in Beirut's southern suburbs.
09:54As we're talking, Rawad,
09:55there's an AP journalist who's just filed this,
09:58an eyewitness who's saying that there were multiple strikes
10:01taking place about 700 to 800 metres from a school
10:04where displaced people from the south of Lebanon
10:07have been taking refuge, to the south, to Beirut, by the school.
10:11Quote, at the beginning, everyone, including the reporting team,
10:14thought it was a strong sonic boom as a result of Israeli jets.
10:18Then the sounds of explosions continued round after round
10:21for about 90 seconds.
10:22People rushed out the building,
10:23women and children screaming and crying.
10:25The reporter says he saw people faint, falling on the ground.
10:29The man in charge of civil defence there
10:31was trying to calm people down, saying there were only sonic booms.
10:34But as soon as they saw what we've seen as well tonight,
10:37these live images, smoke coming from the area behind the buildings,
10:40and, as you say, these...
10:42..what appears to be the raising of a huge area.
10:46Now, Rawad, how far were you
10:48from where these strikes were taking place?
10:51Currently, I'm in downtown Beirut,
10:54so I'm roughly around 4km away from the location of the strikes,
10:59more or less, roughly around 4 or 5km.
11:02And even here, in the building in which I was in,
11:06the entire building shook.
11:08The sound of the series of explosions,
11:11roughly around eight or nine explosions back-to-back,
11:14was something that we've never heard,
11:18at least recently in Beirut.
11:21It was not something that we heard.
11:24So, over the past week,
11:26we saw that there was a number of assassinations
11:28that were conducted in Beirut's southern suburbs,
11:30but they were conducted using probably precision missiles
11:35or targeting certain floors of apartment buildings.
11:38And back then, we didn't even hear the sound of explosions in Beirut.
11:43Which is only 4km away from its suburbs, from Dahi.
11:48But the sound of those 10 attacks,
11:53the sound was immense.
11:56Initially, we realized that...
11:59I first looked at the window and I imagined that
12:02this cannot be 4km away.
12:04My initial estimate was
12:06this is somewhere around the corner of the street.
12:09But then we realized that, no,
12:12this is in Beirut's southern suburbs.
12:14But the scale of the attack was too huge
12:17and the bombs used were too huge.
12:19Some are already talking that they are 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs.
12:23So, the entire city shook altogether.