Netanyahu Faces UN Walkouts, Warns World Leaders in UN Speech: ‘Israel Is Fighting Your Fight’

Delegations walked out of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a fiery speech defending Israel’s war in Gaza, insisting that the battle “has everything to do” with people around the globe. “Our enemies are your enemies,” he declared.

Netanyahu opened his remarks with what he called a pop quiz, holding up a poster asking, “Who shouts ‘Death to America’?” He answered himself: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran – “All of the Above.”

He then asked, “Who has murdered Americans and Europeans in cold blood?” The audience replied with a similar answer. “Our enemies hate all of us with equal venom,” Netanyahu said. “They want to drag the modern world back to the past, to a dark age of violence, fanaticism, and terror.”

“You know deep down that Israel is fighting your fight,” he continued, adding that leaders who publicly attack Israel admit privately that they rely on Israeli intelligence services that have prevented attacks in their capitals.

The prime minister praised President Donald Trump, saying he understands more than any other leader that “Israel and America face a common threat.” He credited Trump with showing Iran “there is a price to pay” for funding terror groups, killing Americans, and even plotting to assassinate him.

Netanyahu accused European leaders of turning their backs on Israel after initially expressing solidarity in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 massacre. “But that support quickly evaporated, what Israel did what any self-respecting nation would do in the wake of such a savage attack. We fought back.”

He vowed that Israel is dismantling Hamas in Gaza so that “this savagery will never threaten Israel again.” But, he said, many governments “buckled under the pressure of a biased media, radical Islamist constituencies, and antisemitic mobs.”

“For many countries, when the going got tough, you caved,” Netanyahu charged. “As we fight the terrorists who murdered many of your citizens, you are fighting us. You condemn us. You embargo us. And you wage political and legal warfare, lawfare, against us.”

“This is not an indictment of Israel,” he declared. “It’s an indictment of you. It’s an indictment of weak-kneed leaders who appease evil rather than supporting a nation whose brave soldiers guard you from the barbarians at the gate. They’re already penetrating the gate.”

“When will you learn? You can’t appease your way out of jihad. And you won’t escape the Islamist storm by attacking Israel,” he said.

The prime minister dismissed accusations of genocide in Gaza as “blood libels.” Quoting West Point urban warfare expert John Spencer, he said Israel is “applying more measures minimizing civilian casualties than any military in history.”

He pointed out that Israel’s civilian-to-combatant ratio is “astoundingly low,” even lower than NATO’s in Afghanistan and Iraq. Netanyahu detailed Israel’s efforts to warn civilians — “millions of leaflets, millions of text messages, and countless phone calls” urging them to leave Gaza City.

Almost 700,000 people evacuated, he said, asking, “Would we tell them, ‘Get out,’ if we wanted to commit genocide? Did the Nazis ask the Jews to kindly leave, go out?”

By contrast, he said, Hamas “uses civilians as human shields and as props in its propaganda war against Israel, a propaganda war that the Western media buys hook, line, and sinker.”

He rejected claims that Israel is starving Gaza, saying, “Israel is deliberately feeding the people of Gaza.” He accused Hamas of looting trucks and stealing food.

Those who “peddle blood libels and lies against Israel are no better than those who peddled blood libels against Jews in the Middle Ages,” he said, warning that such lies fuel antisemitic attacks in Canada, Australia, The Netherlands, France, the UK, and the US.

Netanyahu praised the Trump administration for confronting antisemitism, while accusing other leaders of “rewarding the worst antisemites on earth.”

Turning to this week’s moves by several Western governments, Netanyahu denounced France, Britain, Australia, Canada, and others for recognizing Palestinian statehood.

“They did so after the horrors committed by Hamas on October 7,” he said. “Horrors praised on that day by nearly 90% of the Palestinian population. They celebrated. They danced on the rooftops. They threw candies. That’s both in Gaza and in Judea Samaria, the West Bank, as you call it.” He added that Palestinians had done the same after 9/11.

He warned those leaders that their recognition “sent the message that murdering Jews pays off. Well, I have a message for these leaders. When the most savage terrorists on Earth are effusively praising your decision, you didn’t do something right. You did something wrong, horribly wrong. Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere. It will be a mark of shame on all of you.”

He mocked the talk of a two-state solution: “There’s only one problem with that. The Palestinians — they don’t believe in this solution. They never have. They don’t want a state next to Israel. They want a Palestinian state instead of Israel.”

“Every time they were given territory, they used it to attack us,” Netanyahu said, citing Gaza. “What did they do with that state? Peace? Coexistence? No. They attacked us time and time again. Totally unprovoked. They fired rockets into our cities. They murdered our children. They turned Gaza into a terror base from which they committed the October 7 massacre.”

“The persistent Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state in any bout is what has driven this conflict for over a century,” he said. “It is still driving it. It’s not the absence of a Palestinian state. It’s the presence and existence of a Jewish state.”

He accused the Palestinian Authority of paying terrorists to kill Jews and glorifying mass murderers by naming buildings and schools after them. On promises of reform, he said, “They always promise. They never deliver… They use the same textbooks as Hamas… They teach their children to hate Jews and destroy the Jewish state. Christians don’t fare much better.”

“Giving the Palestinians a state one mile from Jerusalem after October 7 is like giving Al Qaeda a state one mile from New York City after September 11. This is sheer madness. It’s insane, and we won’t do it,” Netanyahu thundered.

“I want to give a message to those Western leaders,” he said. “Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats. We will not commit national suicide because you don’t have the guts to face down a hostile media and antisemitic mobs demanding Israel’s blood.”

He emphasized that this view is shared across Israel’s political spectrum, noting that a Knesset vote last year saw 99 out of 120 members oppose a Palestinian state. “It’s not a fringe. It’s not the prime minister who himself is extreme, or he’s held hostage by extreme parties to his right. It’s over 90% of Israelis.”

“My opposition to a Palestinian state is not simply my policy or my government’s policy. It’s the policy of the state and people of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

“Western leaders may have buckled under the pressure,” he concluded, “I guarantee you one thing, Israel won’t.”

Shifting tone, Netanyahu said Israel’s “victories over the Iranian terror axis” have opened doors to peace. He revealed that Israel has begun serious negotiations with Syria’s new government, a prospect once “unimaginable.”

He recalled Israel’s intervention to save Druze lives from jihadist slaughter in Syria, calling the Druze “our brothers in arms.”

Turning to Lebanon, he urged its government to follow through on pledges to disarm Hezbollah and enter direct peace talks with Israel. Until then, he said, Israel will act to protect itself and maintain the ceasefire.

“Victory over Hezbollah has made peace possible with our two Arab neighbors in the north, victory over Hamas will make peace possible with nations throughout the Arab and Muslim world,” he said, predicting “a dramatic extension and expansion of the historic Abraham Accords, which President Trump brokered.”

He pointed to “encouraging words” from Indonesia’s president at the UN, noting the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation underscored the need for Israeli security.

“Forward-looking Arabs and Muslim leaders know that cooperating with Israel will provide them with ground-breaking Israeli technologies,” he said, listing advances in medicine, agriculture, water, defense, and AI.

On Iran, Netanyahu predicted, “Many of those who wage war on Israel today will be gone tomorrow. Brave peacemakers will take their place. And nowhere, nowhere will this be more true than in Iran. The long-suffering Iranian people will regain their freedom. They will make Iran great again. Our two ancient peoples, the people of Israel and the people of Iran, will restore a friendship that will benefit the entire world.”

Concluding, Netanyahu drew a historical arc from Jewish exile to modern Israel. “Jewish blood was cheap. Jews were killed with impunity. We had to beg others to defend us. The rise of Israel did not mean that the attempts to destroy us would end. It meant that we could fight back.”

“Our sons and daughters fought like lions. Our brave soldiers donned their uniforms and rushed into battle. They were armed with the dreams of the hundred generations of Jews who came before them: The dream of living as a free people in the land of Israel… The dream of having an army to defend ourselves, and the dream of being a light unto the nations.”

“On October 7, the enemies of Israel tried to extinguish that light,” he said. “Two years later, the resolve of Israel and the strength of Israel burn brighter than ever. With God’s help, that strength and that resolve will lead us to a speedy victory and to a brilliant future of prosperity and peace.”

After the speech, Hamas hailed the walkouts as proof of Israel’s global standing. “Boycotting Netanyahu’s speech is one manifestation of Israel’s isolation and the consequences of the war of extermination,” said Taher al-Nunu, adviser to the head of Hamas’s political bureau.