Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday, with some delegates walking out of the chamber as he began his speech.
Opening his address, Netanyahu criticised those who had left the hall, calling them “moral cowards”, before turning to Iran, Hamas, the war in Gaza, Israel’s military operations and antisemitism.
He also praised United States President Donald Trump, criticised several countries and leaders, and defended Israel’s actions in the Middle East.
Below is the full text of Netanyahu’s address:
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.
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 that 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.
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 mobilised. I went to find him. I was told the paratroops 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.” 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.
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 Oct. 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 neighbours—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!
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