Netanyahu's UN speech: Israel prevented 'the genocide Mamdani's ...

Netanyahu’s UN speech: Israel prevented ‘the genocide Mamdani’s Hamas buddies would have done to us’ PM slams Gaza genocide accusation as ‘lie of the century,’ denounces Qatar for spending billions to ‘brainwash young minds’ to hate Israel and US, insists evil Iranian regime will fall This is the full text of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 24, 2026. Mr. President, before I begin, just a quick announcement: If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall—please do so now. Thank you very much. Ladies and Gentlemen, fourteen years ago, I stood on this podium and I drew a red line. I vowed to prevent Iran’s murderous dictatorship from developing atomic bombs, nuclear weapons aimed at destroying Israel, nuclear weapons that could threaten the entire world. That’s exactly what we did. Now let me say something that might surprise you. Devastating Iran’s nuclear facilities was hard. It was very hard to do. But for me, it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make as prime minister. Because if we hadn’t done it, we’d all be dead. Now, you want to hear the ultimate irony? In defending itself, Israel is also defending many of the countries whose delegates just left this hall! In fact, I want you to know that many of their leaders even thank us privately for taking out Iran’s nukes. It’s hard to imagine more mind-blowing hypocrisy, but that’s exactly what it is. Enemies oppose Jewish state ‘on any boundaries’ This isn’t the first time we were faced with the threat of annihilation. On June 5, 1967, Israel was surrounded by enemies who openly swore to destroy us. We weren’t then in Judea and Samaria, the heart of the historic homeland of the Jewish people. We weren’t in Gaza. We weren’t on the Golan Heights. And, Mr. al-Sharaa, you should know the Jews have been on the Golan Heights since the days of Moses. You can read it in the Bible. At that time, on the eve of the Six Day War in 1967, we weren’t in any of these places. We were on a tiny sliver of land — we still are — that is equal to about one-third of one percent of the landmass of the entire Arab world. Yet they accuse Israel of colonialism. Some colonialism. And who’s accusing us? Among them are people in Britain and in France. For God’s sake, they invented the term. Their colonies braced the entire globe. Colonialism… Give us a break… Another lie. Yet, at the time, on this tiny patch of Earth, no West Bank, no Gaza, no Golan Heights, just the very survival of this one and only Jewish state, because this is what this conflict is about. It’s not about territories; it’s about a Jewish state at any boundaries. And yet at the time we were threatened with annihilation by three Arab armies that were about to invade us. You know what Israelis were doing at the time? They were digging mass graves in preparation of thousands and thousands of casualties. In preparation to bury our dead. At the time, I was an Israeli high school student in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Five days before the war broke out, I flew back to Israel. I found a country in total blackout. Israel braced for impact. I flew back to see my brother Jonathan, Yoni. He was a 21-year-old paratroop officer. And like the rest of the army, his unit was already mobilized. I went to find him. I was told the paratroopers are in camps in the orchards, the orange groves around Ramle. So I went there and I asked some soldiers, “Do you know where Yoni Netanyahu is?” “No”. “No.” Then one guy said “Oh you mean the young guy? Yeah, he’s in the next grove.” So I went there, and suddenly, at the end of a long row of trees, I saw my brother. He was absolutely shocked to see me. “Bibi,” he said, “what are you doing here?” We ran, we hugged each other. Over a cup of makeshift military coffee, I asked him the question that was on my mind, the question that was on everybody’s mind. “So, Yoni,” I said, “what’s going to happen?” He paused. And then he said something I’ll never forget. “We’re going to win,” he said. “We have no other choice.” I remember those words as if it was yesterday. We’re going to win. We have no other choice. And then we did. Nine years later, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a passenger plane headed for Israel. They took it to Entebbe, Uganda. Like the Nazis, the terrorists selected the Jewish passengers—men, women, children, babies. They threatened to kill them all if Israel did not release Palestinian terrorists. And then, on July 4, 1976, the bicentennial of the United States, in one of the most dramatic rescue missions in modern times, Yoni led his brave soldiers to the heart of Africa. Miraculously, they rescued 103 Jewish hostages and brought them all home, every single one of them. My brother, the commander of the storming party, was the only soldier killed in this mission. I want to thank Uganda again for recently erecting a statue of Yoni in the place where he fell. After Oct. 7, ‘instead of collapsing, we delivered crippling blows’ My friends, Yoni’s words are as true today as they were more than half a century ago. We’re going to win. We have no other choice. At no time was this demonstrated more clearly than on October 7, 2023 —the darkest day in Israel’s history. On that horrific day, thousands of Palestinian terrorists stormed into Israel from Gaza. I want you to know there wasn’t a single Israeli in Gaza at the time. Not a civilian, not a soldier. Not one! It didn’t matter one bit. The Hamas terrorists committed the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. They went house to house, shooting Israeli civilians point-blank. They did so with fiendish glee. With sadistic joy, they live-streamed as they murdered. And who did they murder? The very Israelis — their neighbors — who gave them jobs, who picked up Palestinian children at the Gaza border and drove them to Israeli hospitals for cancer treatment, and then brought them back. Can you imagine such monstrosity? These Hamas monsters, they slaughtered Holocaust survivors. They burned babies alive in front of their parents. They beheaded our men. They brutally raped our women and then they murdered them. Altogether, they slaughtered 1,200 Israelis that day. I want to give you an idea of what this means for a country of 10 million. Proportionately, this is equal to 40,000 innocent Americans slaughtered in less than 24 hours. That’s 16 times 9/11. Sixteen 9/11s that occurred not very far from here. On that darkest of days, our enemies expected us to collapse. Well, we didn’t collapse. Instead, we rose and fought like lions. For the past three years, our heroic soldiers have fought day in and day out in a seven-front war! Do you know any other country the size of New Jersey capable of fighting a seven-front war? And for three years? Seven fronts: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, militias in Iraq, militias in Syria, Palestinian terrorists in Judea Samaria. They all ganged up on us to wipe us off the face of the Earth. They failed. Because instead of collapsing, we delivered crippling blows to all of them. With our great American friends, we crushed Iran’s army, navy, air force and nuclear facilities. Israel hammered Hamas. We pummeled Hezbollah. Remember the beepers? Well, I can tell you this, Hezbollah certainly remembers them. Guess what happened to the bulk of Hezbollah’s vast arsenal of 150,000 ballistic missiles and rockets, all aimed at our civilians? They’re gone. Hezbollah’s leaders — dead. Their spirit — broken. The arch-terrorists, the worst mass murderers on Earth, not only killing Israelis, killing Americans, killing Brits, killing citizens of dozens of countries, Khamenei, Dief, Sinwar, Haniyeh and Nasrallah, and thousands of other terrorists who sought to destroy us — they’re all gone too. Settler violence the work of ‘a handful of juvenile delinquents’ The remaining terrorists desperately try to regroup. Every day they try to murder our people. And in particular, they try to murder our people in our historic homeland, in Judea. By the way, that’s where the word Jew comes from. Judea—that’s our land. They try to murder us, thousands of attempts per year on families, peaceful families driving along the roads. They shoot at pregnant women; they shoot entire families. Of course, none of this is covered in the international press or on social media. None of it. What they cover is a handful of juvenile delinquents, about 150 in number, who throw stones, who chop down olive trees, occasionally they light some fires. I can’t stand that. I won’t stand for vigilantism. We’re a country of law. So we put our Shin Bet on them. But that’s what they call settler violence. And the number of casualties a year? Maybe two or three. In the total time this has been discussed, maybe two or three dead. Compared to the thousands of terrorist attacks against the peaceful settlers, honorable people, law-abiding people. What a distortion. It’s an obsession. I hear this discussion here? Leaders of countries seriously talk about that. And they say it with such importance. “We can’t stand settler violence.” You don’t know what you’re talking about. And listen, two days ago… I say this to my colleague Emmanuel Macron. Two days ago, three days ago, a French citizen Netanel Shukrun, a father of six, was gunned down when he visited a spring with his 16-year-old son. And a Hamas terrorist, in Judea and Samaria, comes and fires point-blank at him. And the last words he uttered: “Flee, flee son. Save yourself.” That was three days ago. Two days ago, in Judea and Samaria, a reserves officer, a reserves soldier, Neria Leiter, was mowed down by a Palestinian terrorist. He is fighting for his life now in a Jerusalem hospital. I visited the family right before I boarded the plane to come here. Neria, a father of four, is the son of Yechiel Leiter, our brilliant ambassador to the United States. Three years ago, Yechiel’s oldest son, Moshe, a father of six, was killed while clearing a booby-trapped building in Gaza. Yechiel, my brother, your pain is immeasurable. The entire people of Israel, and many outside of Israel, are praying for Neria’s life. But despite the pain, despite the agony, we do not give in. In a recent post before he was attacked, Neria wrote this: “We have no other country. It is a privilege to defend it.” To Neria, and to all of the heroes of Israel, I pledge a sacred vow: Your sacrifice will not be in vain. We will continue to defend our state. We will continue to win. Because we have no other choice. ‘One nation fighting for one future’ In this battle against the barbarians, we’ve had no greater partner than President Trump. I thank him for his bold leadership. He boldly confronted an enormous danger to America, Israel and the world. Decades ago, he understood that if left unchallenged, the fanatic ayatollahs who chant “Death to America! Death to Israel!” would eventually carry out their mad fantasies. So Israel and America acted together not only to protect ourselves, but to save civilization. Brave American pilots alongside brave Israeli pilots flew joint missions over the skies of Iran. America and Israel also worked together to bring back our remaining hostages. We brought back every last one of them. You ask, why are we winning? Yoni said it simply. We have no other choice. Throughout this long war, our goal never wavered: To win! To win with unwavering resolve. To win with unrelenting courage. Because this is Israel. One nation fighting for one future. Left and right. Young and old. Religious and secular. Do we have our differences? Of course we do. Who doesn’t? But in the critical moments, those moments that shape our destiny, we stand together, because what unites us is so much stronger: our history, our values, our courage. The courage of our brave people who withstood 1,000 massive ballistic missiles that Iran rained down on our cities, on our civilians. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re sitting here, in the General Assembly Hall of the UN. Do you know what one ton — just one — one-ton ballistic missile would do if it hits this place? It would obliterate the entire compound. In fact, two such missiles would obliterate the UN. So you can imagine, think about one thousand gigantic missiles falling from the skies on your cities, on your homes. I salute the courage of the people of Israel. I salute the courage of our brave soldiers—Jews, Christian, Druze, Muslim. The most moral army in the world, the IDF. For three years, they have been valiantly fighting a seven-front war. ‘Super-spreader’ antisemites Qatar, Turkey form war’s 8th front But there is an eighth front to this war. It’s the war for truth. It is waged in the world’s media, and most perniciously, in social media. Several foreign countries have spent untold billions to spread lies about my country. The first to do so was Qatar. Decades ago, it started massively funding American universities and toxic media outlets like Al Jazeera. They did the same in Europe, by the way. Their goal was clear. Brainwash young minds to hate Israel, hate America and hate the West. This is the same Qatar that hosts the Hamas butchers of October 7. The latest country to become a super-spreader of antisemitic lies is Turkey. Erdogan is a tyrant who also hosts the Hamas terror chiefs. He has murdered thousands of Kurdish civilians. He denies the Armenian genocide. He jails journalists and opposition leaders. In fact, I think he holds the world record on this, and that’s a tough call. But I think he’s number one. He illegally occupies Northern Cyprus, an EU member, and he regularly transgresses against Greece, a NATO member. Now he wants to take over Syria. That’s not surprising, because he calls for Israel’s destruction almost every single day. He says he’s going to be the ruler of Jerusalem. No, sir. You won’t. This is our country, our city, our eternal capital. Tyrants the world over seek to threaten us, they seek to undermine our resolve with their campaign of lies. But ultimately, as on the military battlefield, the Jewish people will prevail. ‘Accusing Israel of genocide is the greatest lie of the century’ It will take time. It will take time to vanquish the lies. It will take time for the world to acknowledge what is so plain to see. That Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields. That it used hospitals, schools and mosques as terrorist command posts. That it stole much