Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to keep fighting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon until his war objectives were reached and warned that “there is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”
Netanyahu’s speech Friday at the United Nations General Assembly opening came as Israel hit a key Hezbollah target in Beirut. It also comes as the Biden administration is showing frustration with its failure to tamp down escalating tensions it fears will explode into all-out war.
Biden officials are now suggesting Netanyahu acted in bad faith for privately agreeing to a ceasefire deal on the Israel Lebanon border and then publicly walking it back. John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, said the United States would not have made the proposal had it not received reassurances Israel was ready to accept it.
Netanyahu’s speech was unusually blunt, even for a prime minister who has rained fire and brimstone on the body since his first term in office in the late 1990s.
He called the United Nations a “swamp of antisemitic bile,” and his argument appeared bolstered by many of the speeches before his, which excoriated Israel for the devastation of the war without mentioning that Hamas and Hezbollah launched the current round of fighting.
Netanyahu also made his most explicit plea to date for peace with Saudi Arabia, but he began with a militant message of warning to Iran and its allies in the region.
“The curse of Oct. 7 began when Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza,” he said. “But it didn’t end there. Israel was soon forced to defend itself on six more war fronts organized by Iran.” He listed attacks by Hezbollah, missiles launched from Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthi militia and the hundreds of missiles Iran aimed at Israel in April.
“I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran,” he said. “If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that’s true of the entire Middle East.”
Protesters aligned with Israel chant outside the hotel of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of his speech at the United Nations General Assembly later this morning in New York City on Sept. 27, 2024. (Bryan R. Smith / AFP)
It was perhaps the closest Netanyahu has come to acknowledging that Israel has assassinated targets in Iran, most recently a top Hamas official attending a funeral.
Netanyahu was equally blunt in his warnings to Hezbollah. “We took out senior military commanders who not only shed Israeli blood, but American and French blood as well,” he said, just as Israel hit Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut. “And then we took out their replacements, and then the replacements of their replacements, and we’ll continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are gained.”
Of Gaza, where the Biden administration has long sought a ceasefire and the release of hostages still held by Hamas, Netanyahu said that unless Hamas surrenders, “We will fight until we achieve total victory.”
Biden administration officials, who have for months been circumspect in their on-the-record criticisms of Israel, are openly expressing their frustration — if not anger — with Netanyahu for seeming to go along with plans to tamp down the violence, and then reversing himself in the hours after an announcement is made.
Kirby, who in the past has frequently defended Israel’s war conduct, made clear in a call with reporters on Thursday the administration’s frustrations about the latest such apparent reversal.
“There was a lot of care and effort put into that statement,” he said, referring to a multinational call on Wednesday night for an immediate 21 day ceasefire on the Israel-Lebanon border. “We wouldn’t have made that statement, we wouldn’t have worked on that if we didn’t have reason to believe that the conversations that we were having with the Israelis in particular were supportive of the goal there.”
Netanyahu in a statement Friday morning said there had been “misreporting” about the U.S.-led ceasefire proposal, although he had plainly said earlier that he was not ready to abide by it.
“Israel shares the aims of the U.S.-led initiative of enabling people along our northern border to return safely and securely to their homes,” his statement said. “Israel appreciates the U.S. efforts in this regard because the U.S. role is indispensable in advancing stability and security in the region.”
That won’t happen with war raging, Kirby told reporters.
“We still believe an all-out war is not the best way to get people back in their homes,” he said, referring to the tens of thousands of Israeli civilians and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians displaced by the war. “If that’s the goal, an all-out war we don’t believe is the right way to do that.”
In his U.N. speech, Netanyahu also made his most direct plea for peace with Saudi Arabia, which has backed away from tentative normalization talks as war has raged.
“Such a peace, I’m sure, would be a true pivot of history,” he said. “It would usher in a historic reconciliation between the Arab world and Israel, between Islam and Judaism, between Mecca and Jerusalem.”
Netanyahu in his speech lambasted the United Nations for blaming Israel for the war while barely addressing the actors who launched it: Hamas and Hezbollah, backed by Iran.
“The singling out of the one and only Jewish state continues to be a moral stain on the United Nations,” he said. “It has made this once respected institution contemptible in the eyes of decent people everywhere.”
Netanyahu was the third speaker on Friday morning, and as if to illustrate his point the two prime ministers who spoke before him, Robert Golob of Slovenia and Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, blamed only Israel for the war. Neither mentioned Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran.
“I want to say this out loud and clear to the Israeli government, stop the bloodshed, stop the suffering, bring the hostages home and end the occupation,” Golob said, not mentioning that the 100 or so hostages he referred to are being held by Hamas. “Mr. Netanyahu, stop this war now.”
Netanyahu brought families of the hostages with his delegation to the United Nations and recognized them and their suffering. A number of hostage families protested outside the building, calling on Netanyahu to “seal the deal” and agree to Biden’s ceasefire-for-hostages deal.
“Our government is not working for the Israeli nation. They’re working for their own personal survival,” Yehuda Cohen, the father of hostage Nimrod Cohen, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, arguing that Netanyahu had put off a deal in order to continue the war and stay in office and evade his own responsibility for the Israeli negligence that allowed the Oct. 7 attack to happen. “Actual leadership is taking responsibility. This is the last thing he’s doing,”
The hostage families got significant backing on Friday from a group of Jewish organizations, ranging across the political spectrum, that called for Netanyahu to come to an agreement to free the hostages.
“As meetings continue apace around the terms of a possible hostage deal, we call upon the Israeli government to ensure it is prioritizing this issue above all others, and we join the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in calling for them to at long last ‘seal the deal’,” said a statement signed by, among others, the Conservative and Reform movements, the Women’s International Zionist Organization, the American branch of the Jewish National Fund, and the National Council of Jewish Women.
JTA reporter Luke Tress contributed to this report.
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