Netanyahu to Iran at UN: If you strike us, we will strike you

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran not to directly attack the Jewish state, as he addressed the high-level portion of the opening session of the 79th United Nations General Assembly.

“If you strike us, we will strike you,” Netanyahu said on Friday morning, a few hours before Israel targeted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

“There is no place in Iran where the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”

“Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel will fight back,” the prime minister said, adding that “We are winning.”

Netanyahu spoke to the plenum as his country is fighting a multi-front war against Iranian proxies, namely Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

He was greeted by loud applause from the Israeli delegation, while the entire Iranian delegation walked out as he strode to the podium.

Netanyahu explained that he had not wanted to come to the UN in the middle of those wars but felt bound to so that he could speak Israel’s “truth” to the world.

Israel, he said, stands between “the curse of Iran [and] the blessing of a historic normalization between Arabs and Jews.”

He held up two maps, one showing what he described as Iran’s long, aggressive arm and the other showing the regional potential of expanding Israeli-Arab ties. One map was titled “The Curse” and the other “The Blessing.”

“Iran’s aggression will endanger every single country in the Middle East and many countries in the rest of the world,” he said.

“For too long, the world has appeased Iran and turned a blind eye to its internal oppression and external aggression,” Netanyahu said.

He pledged not to allow Iran to acquire or develop nuclear weapons and asked the 

Netanyahu recalled the Hamas-led invasion of October 7, which sparked the Israel-Hamas War, as well as the Hezbollah attack on October 8, which sparked the constrained cross-border war along the northern border. This was followed by attacks from the Houthis in Yemen and a direct Iranian attack.

Turning to Gaza, he called on Hamas to release the remaining 101 hostages and pledged not to end the war in Gaza until it does so.

“All that has to happen” to end the war “is for Hamas to surrender, lay down its arms, and release all the hostages,” Netanyahu said.

“If they do not, we will fight until we achieve total victory – there is no substitute,” he said. A small group of relatives of hostages were in the gallery, listening to his speech.

“Hamas has got to go,” Netanyahu stated. “Just imagine, for those who say Hamas has to stay, it has to be part of a post-war Gaza – imagine in a post-war situation – in World War II, imagine allowing the defeated Nazis in 1945 to rebuild Germany.

“It’s inconceivable. It’s ridiculous. It didn’t happen then, and it’s not going to happen now,” the prime minister said.

With respect to Hezbollah, he charged that it was “the quintessential terror organization in the world today; it has murdered more Americans and Frenchmen than any [terror] group, except Iran.”

“Don’t let Hezbollah drag Lebanon into the abyss,” Netanyahu said, explaining that as long as Hezbollah remained on Israel’s northern border, “Israel has no choice and every right to remove this threat and return our citizens” safely to their homes.

Israel-Saudi normalization

The prime minister spoke of the potential for Israel-Saudi normalization, noting that this could happen sooner than anyone could imagine.

“We’re committed to removing the curse of terrorism that threatens all civilized societies,” Netanyahu said.

“But to truly realize the blessing of a new Middle East, we must continue the path we paved with the Abraham Accords four years ago. Above all, this means achieving a historic peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” he stressed.

The prime minister took issue with the UN’s treatment of Israel, recalling that when he was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, he had fought against attempts to oust Israel from the global body. Now, he said, he finds himself in that same battle some 40 years later, with the latest push to drive Israel out of the UN coming from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, not Hamas.

The UN General Assembly and the body itself has a long history of bias against the Jewish state, he said, adding that in its “swamp of antisemitic bile,” there is an “automatic majority that is willing to demonize the Jewish state.

“In this anti-Israel, flat earth society, any false charge, any outlandish allegation has a majority,” he stated, adding that since 2014, this body has condemned Israel 174 times, more than twice as many as all the other countries in the world combined (73).

“What hypocrisy, what a double standard – what a joke,” he exclaimed.

He took particular issue with the recent resolution that sought to strip Israel of its right to self-defense, which he said was the same thing as determining that it should not exist.

“If you can’t defend yourself, you can’t exist – not in our neighborhood and maybe not in yours,” he stated. Those who stand with Israel “should be ashamed of yourselves,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel will “win this battle” because “we do not have a choice.”

The Israeli leader quoted from the Bible, stating that “the eternity of Israel will not falter,” and from the famed poet Dylan Thomas:

“Israel will not go gently into that good night. We will never cease to rage against the dying light, Israel will forever shine bright,” he said.

“The people of Israel live: now, tomorrow, and forever,” he declared.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.