Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the United Nations a “joke” in his address to the opening of the General Assembly in New York on Friday, as he noted its obsession with attacking Israel, inverting good and evil.
Netanyahu spoke after a countless heads of state had demonized Israel for “genocide” in Gaza, and with his country facing a war on seven fronts against Iran and its terrorist proxies.
“In this swamp of antisemitic bile, there’s an automatic majority willing to demonize Israel on anything,” he noted, calling it an “anti-Israel flat-earth society.”
Netanyahu presented the substantive case for Israel’s fight against terror. He noted his speech from one year ago, on the eve of potential peace with Saudi Arabia, when he presented the world with a Biblical choice between a “blessing” and a “curse.”
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
While peace talks with Saudi Arabia had been a “blessing,” the “curse” came in the form of the terror attack of October 7, and the attacks against Israel from Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran itself over the past year.
In Gaza, Netanyahu said, Israel had shattered Hamas, and was only facing remnants of the terror organization. He demanded that Hamas let the remaining 97 Israeli hostages — at least 33 of whom are presumed dead — return home.
He added that Hamas could not be part of postwar Gaza, noting that the terrorists stole aid and sold it to Palestinian residents at exorbitant prices. Israel would not resettle Gaza, he said, but would “demilitarize” and “deradicalize” it.
In Lebanon, he noted, Hezbollah had violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, dragging the country into war. He appealed to the Lebanese people, telling them Israel was not at war with them, and not to let Hezbollah drag them into the “abyss.” He added that Israel will never again allow Hezbollah to return to the border, where it could carry out an October 7-style attack. “We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes,” he said.
He added that Hezbollah was a global threat, reminding the nations in the chamber — many of whom had condemned Israel — that Hezbollah had killed their citizens, and was responsible for more American and French deaths than any other terror group except Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.
Netanyahu reiterated his commitment to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Israel had only delayed it thus far, but would stop Iran “for the sake and security of all your countries, for the sake and security of the entire world.”
He returned to a vision of peace: “To truly realize the blessing of the Middle East … means achieving a historic peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” he insisted.
Finally, he turned to the United Nations itself. Delegates from several countries — not just Arab and Muslim countries — had walked out when Netanyahu began speaking, almost as if to bolster his attack on the organization as little more than a forum for antisemitism and prejudice.
Delegates leave the General Assembly as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Noting that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had urged the body earlier in the week to expel Israel from membership, Netanyahu recalled that his first speech at the United Nations, as Israel’s ambassador in 1984, had been against exactly the same proposal. Citing Ecclesiastes, who said that “there is nothing new under the sun,” he noted: “There is definitely nothing new at the United Nations.”
He went on to castigate the “moral confusion” of the United Nations, where “good is portrayed as evil, and evil is portrayed as good,” and where Israel, the victims of a genocidal attack, could be falsely accused of “genocide.”
Observing that the United Nations had condemned Israel condemned 174 times, but the rest of world, full of dictators and real human rights abuses, only 73 times. “What a double standard. What hypocrisy. What a joke!” he declared.
He slammed pending arrest warrants at the International Criminal Court against him and against Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant as “nothing other than pure antisemitism,” noting that “the real war criminals … are in Iran.”
Netanyahu closed by noting that while the world abandoned Jews during the Holocaust, Israel can now defend itself, and fulfill the Biblical promise of continuity.
“Am Israel chai — The people of Israel live — now, tomorrow, forever.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
