Prime Minister Netanyahu’s 2026 UN General Assembly Speech

In his September 24, 2026, address to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s strikes on Iran and its conduct in Gaza, describing the years since October 7 as a seven-front war. Recalling the Six-Day War and his brother Yoni’s role in the Entebbe rescue, he repeated the refrain, “We have no other choice.” Delegates staged a walkout as the speech began, prompting Netanyahu to invite any remaining “moral cowards” to leave. He praised President Donald Trump, rejected accusations of genocide, and sharply criticized New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Qatar, and Turkey. He also voiced support for Iranian protesters and predicted the fall of Iran’s government.

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, 14 years ago, I stood at this podium and drew a red line. I vowed to prevent Iran’s murderous dictatorship from developing atomic bombs, nuclear weapons aimed at destroying Israel and 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.

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 thanked 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. Oh, 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.

No, at that time, on the eve of the Six-Day War, we weren’t in any of these places. We were in a tiny sliver of land. We still are. It is equal to about one-third of one percent of the landmass of the entire Arab world. Yet they accuse Israel, tiny Israel, of colonialism. Some colonialism. And who’s accusing us? Among them are people in Britain and France. For God’s sake, they invented the term. Their colonies spanned the globe. Colonialism? Give us a break. Another lie.

Yet at the time, on this tiny patch of earth, with no West Bank, no Gaza, no Golan Heights, it was the very survival of this one and only Jewish state that was at stake. Because this is what this conflict is about. It’s not about territories. It’s about the existence of a Jewish state at any boundaries.

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 for the thousands and thousands of casualties, 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 paratroops were encamped in the orchards, the orange groves around Ramle. So I went there and asked some soldiers, “Do you know where Yoni Netanyahu is?” “Nope.” Then one guy said, “Oh, you mean the young guy? Yeah, he’s in the next grove.” So I went there. 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 and 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. Then he said something I’ll never forget: “We’re going to win. We have no other choice.” I remember those words as if it were yesterday. We’re going to win. We have no other choice.

And when we did, nine years later, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a passenger airplane 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.

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 the 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 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 then in Gaza, not a civilian, not a soldier, not one. But 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 livestreamed 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, drove them to Israeli hospitals for cancer treatment, and then brought them back. Can you imagine such monstrosity? These are the 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 murdered them.

Altogether, they slaughtered 1,200 Israelis that day. I want to give you an idea 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, which 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 for three years? Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, militias in Iraq, militias in Syria, Palestinian terrorists in Judea and 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. You remember the beepers? Remember these things? 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, killing not only Israelis but Americans, Britons and citizens of dozens of countries: Khamenei, Deif, Sinwar, Haniyeh, Nasrallah, and thousands of other terrorists who sought to destroy us. They’re all gone, too.

The remaining terrorists are desperately trying 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.

There are thousands of attempts per year against 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. What they cover is a handful of juvenile delinquents, about 150 in number, who throw stones, chop down olive trees and occasionally set 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.” The number of casualties a year? Maybe two or three. Maybe two or three killed in all the time this has been discussed, compared with the thousands of terrorist attacks against peaceful settlers, honorable, 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.

Three days ago, and I say this to my colleague Emmanuel Macron, a French citizen, Netanel Shukrun, a father of six, was gunned down when he visited a spring with his 16-year-old son. A Hamas terrorist in Judea and Samaria fired at him point-blank. His last words were, “Flee, son, save yourself.”

Two days ago, in Judea and Samaria, a reserve soldier, Neria Leiter, was mowed down by a Palestinian terrorist driving a vehicle. He’s 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 Yedidya Leiter, 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 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’s a privilege to defend it.”

To Neria and to all 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.

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 fanatical 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 we are winning. Yoni said it simply: We have no other choice. And throughout this long war, our goal never wavered: 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 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 just one one-ton ballistic missile would do if it hit this place? It would obliterate the entire compound. In fact, two such missiles would obliterate the UN. So imagine 1,000 gigantic missiles falling from the skies on your cities and homes.

I salute the courage of the people of Israel. I salute the courage of our brave soldiers, Jews, Christians, Druze and Muslims, the most moral army in the world, the IDF. For three years, our brave soldiers have been valiantly fighting a seven-front war.

But there’s an eighth front to this war. It’s the war for truth. It is waged in the world’s media and, most perniciously, on 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. And 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 superspreader of anti-Semitic lies is Turkey. Erdoğan is a tyrant. He also hosts 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. That’s a tough call, but I think he’s number one. He illegally occupies northern Cyprus, part of an EU member state, and he regularly transgresses against Greece, a NATO member.

Now he wants to take over Syria. Well, 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. 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 of the food we let into Gaza.

While Hamas did everything possible to keep Palestinian civilians in harm’s way, often at gunpoint, Israel did everything possible to get them out of harm’s way. We sent millions of text messages warning civilians to leave combat areas. We made millions of phone calls. We dropped millions of leaflets.

I want to ask you some questions. What genocidal regime gives a million polio vaccinations to the enemy’s population? What genocidal regime enables the distribution of two million tons of food into Gaza? That’s a ton for every person. Accusing Israel of genocide is the greatest lie of the century.

If you want to know how big a lie, if you want to know how absurd it is, listen to Colonel John Spencer. He’s chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. He’s considered one of the world’s, or perhaps the world’s, foremost experts on urban warfare. I think he’s with us today. Colonel Spencer has studied urban wars from antiquity to modern times, from ancient Greece to Mosul to Gaza. And here’s what Colonel Spencer says: “Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any other military in history.” In history. We’ve taken innumerable steps to protect the civilian population. Is this genocide? Of course not. It’s the opposite of genocide.

To all those spreading these lies about my country and our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the anti-Semitic mayor of New York, I say this: Shame on you. Shame on you for distorting the facts. Shame on you for inverting victim and aggressor. Shame on you for spitting in the face of truth.

Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York. They talk to me. They tell me, “This isn’t the city we remember. It changed so quickly.” No wonder. You praise criminals convicted of supporting Hamas. You count as friends people like Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11. Some friends you have.

You invite into your home a Palestinian journalist who filmed Hamas terrorists beating and torturing Israeli hostages and later admitted that he refused to publish the videos in order to protect, you guessed it, the terrorists. Your wife liked a post praising the October 7 massacre. She liked another post saying Tel Aviv shouldn’t exist. You refuse to condemn any of that. You falsely and repeatedly accuse Israel of genocide.

Mr. Mamdani, you try to stop me from coming here. You try to silence me. Well, you can’t silence me. You can’t silence the truth. And here’s the simple truth: Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide. And that’s exactly what Mr. Mamdani’s Hamas buddies would have done to us had we not stopped them. They would have killed every last one of us.

The lies you and other anti-Semites spread about the Jews and the Jewish state have real consequences. In New York, Jews are threatened on the way to synagogue. Jews have been stabbed in the streets. Jews are demonized. They’re targeted simply for being Jews. Jews have been murdered in Sydney, Manchester, Montreal and Boulder, Colorado. They’ve been attacked in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin and Washington, D.C.

The anti-Semites of the world want to terrify our people. I have news for them. The days when Jews were defenseless victims, marched to the slaughter, are over. Today, we have a state. Today, we have an army. Today, we have a people ready and willing to defend ourselves.

So today I have one message for Jews around the world: Raise your head high. Be proud. Be confident. Don’t be intimidated. Stand up. And for everyone else who wants to defend truth and justice, join us in standing up to the barbarians who threaten our common civilization.

But I have to be candid with you. Not everyone is standing up. We saw that. Unlike Israel, some, especially in Western Europe, have chosen not to stand up. The leaders of these countries have chosen to succumb to the anti-Semitic mobs. They’ve chosen weakness. They’ve chosen appeasement. We cannot evade the sad truth before us. Many in the free world are afraid to defend freedom.

And I ask them: What will the world hold for you? The brotherhood of democracies or the Muslim Brotherhood? How long will it take for you to see that these fanatical jihadists are choking your waterways, your energy supply, your economic lifeline?

I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, we in Israel do not wait for others to wake up from their moral slumber. We forge ahead. We seize the future. We pioneer incredible developments in health, agriculture, artificial intelligence, superior intelligence, and we bring these amazing innovations to all of humanity. So Israel has never been stronger. We are not afraid.

But I’ll tell you who is afraid: the tyrants of Tehran. And you know what they’re most afraid of? Their own people, the brave Iranian people who have sacrificed so much for so long. The Iranian regime is especially afraid when their people have this. This is a communications device, Starlink, that allows people to access truth, to exercise choice, to exercise freedom of thought and freedom of speech. That’s why the Iranian regime spends millions and billions of dollars censoring the internet.

Mr. President, I’m going to leave this device with you so you can give it to the Iranian delegation. When they inevitably defect, they too will be able to tell their story freely on social media.

To the protesters outside and to the hypocritical delegates who left this hall, I ask: Where were you when the Iranian tyrants butchered and maimed tens of thousands of unarmed Iranian civilians? Did you organize mass rallies, hunger strikes? Did you protest outside the Iranian mission to the UN? Did you speak out, for that matter, for Christians persecuted in Iran and throughout the Middle East? No, you didn’t, because you’re phony human rights protesters.

Christians: Their numbers are plummeting everywhere in the Middle East where they’re being persecuted and hounded, except one place, my country, Israel, where the Christian community is growing, thriving and succeeding. You didn’t protest when we left Bethlehem. When it was controlled by us, it was 80 to 90 percent Christian. We gave it to the Palestinian Authority, and today it’s 80 to 90 percent Muslim. The Christians were pushed out. Did you protest that? Did you speak about that? Nothing. Nada. And you said nothing about Iran just now.

But I want to give you the good news. Despite your silence, despite your hypocrisy, it’s only a matter of time before something incredible happens in Iran. The power of the people will overcome the people in power. I want you to listen to my words carefully. One day, and it may not be far away, the Iranian people will be free. Their murderous regime will be toppled by its lies, by its corruption, by its cruelty. This evil regime will fall, and we will all celebrate that day.

Ladies and gentlemen, the story of my people, the Jewish people, goes back over 3,000 years. We speak the same language today that we spoke then. We live in the same land in which our ancestors lived then. David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah: That’s our land, the land of Israel.

Our prophets, our purpose and our people are unique in history. Our values have inspired humanity for millennia: the belief in one God, the sanctity of life, the rule of law, our eternal quest for peace, our eternal quest for justice. It is these sacred values that propelled us throughout the ages. It is these values that helped us beat the odds of history.

The great American writer Mark Twain said it best 125 years ago. He said it well before the rebirth of the modern Jewish state, well before the great victories of Israel’s soldiers. Here’s what he said:

The Jew has made a marvelous fight in this world in all the ages, and he has done it with his hands tied behind his back. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream stuff and passed away. Other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his spirits, no slowing of his energies.

Ladies and gentlemen, over the centuries, the tyrannies that tried to destroy us failed time and again. And God willing, they’ll continue to fail. If we muster our courage, if we steel our resolve, we will continue to win. As the Bible says, “The eternity of Israel will not falter.” And the reason is simple: We have no other choice.

“”In his September 24, 2026, address to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s strikes on Iran and its conduct in Gaza, describing the years since October 7 as a seven-front war.””

***

Oh, he covered most things all right. Bibi was on fire today and all those demonic morons that ‘walked out’ in a huff should just keep walking. If it were up to me, they would not be allowed back, since they obviously support terrorists, terrorism and evil.

It is true that the devastation in Gaza is massive. And civilians should not have been used as human shields by Hamas. But it’s hard to imagine what other choices Israel had. The bigger plan was that Hamas and Hezbullah were going to carry out the same type of mass invasion/slaughter at the same time but Hamas jumped the gun or Hezbullah missed the cue or chickened out.

But in any case, how long does Israel have to put up with this? Forget the big wars - it’s been 40 years of escalating intifada and 25 years of near constant terror - suicide bombers on buses, cafes, discos, pizza parlors... constant missile attacks.. and then this Oct 7 mass slaughter and kidnapping. All funded by Iran, Qatar and the UN donors including us. All those tunnels and weapons caches had to be eliminated at some point and there was no negotiating it. They have been negotiation since 1992 and unilaterally surrendered partially in 2005 and made another peace offer in 2008. The truth is that there is nobody in charge when it comes to the Palestinians. Hamas rule(d) Gaza and the WB has the Authority but it is an empty suit. Those territories are run by clans and sectarian zealots that fight it out. It is not anywhere close to being an independent state they are 100% reliant on Israel which is the great irony.

Israel doesn’t want full occupation but the self-rule deal didn’t work either. So their only choice was to go in and erase the threats. Horrible situation but no other country would have been as patient, as cautious, or as forgiving. Concessions are seen as weakness and weakness brought about the attacks and the arming of Hezbullah. Israel has nearly wiped all of it out and we, with Israel, are finishing by going to the one source in Iran. Qatar needs to reform itself I guess but in any case they can give money but it won’t be used to rebuild tunnels and reload weapons caches.

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