Full speech on YouTube:
YouTube - Full Netanyahu UN Speech Part 1 of 4
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009. Netanyahu challenged Holocaust deniers, fundamentalist Islam, and war crimes charges in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to directly challenge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations on Thursday.
Waving minutes of a Nazi meeting on Jewish extermination and blueprints of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he staunchly defended Israel’s right to exist in peace. Invoking the courage of Winton Churchill, he sought to rouse to action the international body that had recognized that same right 62 years ago.
His three main points of his speech were:
1) The United Nations has a fundamental mission to prevent another disaster on the scale of the Holocaust. Nothing has undermined this mission more than the “systematic assault on the truth” and the UN must refuse to be a platform for such lies.
2) Iran is fueled by an “extreme fundamentalism” that is behind all modern Islamist terrorism and has pitted civilization against dangerous barbarism. In contrast to Iran’s backwardness, Israel is an innovative global leader in numerous areas, including science and technology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment.
3) The UN Human Rights Council’s recent condemnation of Israel’s conduct during the Gaza war, described in the Goldstone report, is based on a dangerous moral equivalency that would have turned Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt into war criminals.
Establishing the facts of the Holocaust
Mr. Netanyahu lambasted President Ahmadinejad’s bland denial of the Holocaust just a few days earlier and castigated those diplomats who stayed to listen to the Iranian leader speak at the UN Wednesday. Bolstering his argument with everything from historical documents in his hand to the very personal death of at least seven of his wife’s immediate relatives, he warned his listeners that Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic diatribes posed a threat far beyond Israel.
Netanyahu said that the “extreme fundamentalism” that fuels the Iranian regime did not pit Muslim against Jew but was rather an effort to “return humanity to medieval times.”
Moral equivalency
Lastly, Netanyahu vigorously defended Israel’s record during the Gaza war, calling the Goldstone report a farce. He urged the UN to throw out the report, which he said placed Hamas and the government of Israel on equal moral footing – “falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.”
“Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more.”
YouTube - Full Netanyahu UN Speech Part 1 of 4
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009. Netanyahu challenged Holocaust deniers, fundamentalist Islam, and war crimes charges in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to directly challenge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations on Thursday.
Waving minutes of a Nazi meeting on Jewish extermination and blueprints of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he staunchly defended Israel’s right to exist in peace. Invoking the courage of Winton Churchill, he sought to rouse to action the international body that had recognized that same right 62 years ago.
His three main points of his speech were:
1) The United Nations has a fundamental mission to prevent another disaster on the scale of the Holocaust. Nothing has undermined this mission more than the “systematic assault on the truth” and the UN must refuse to be a platform for such lies.
2) Iran is fueled by an “extreme fundamentalism” that is behind all modern Islamist terrorism and has pitted civilization against dangerous barbarism. In contrast to Iran’s backwardness, Israel is an innovative global leader in numerous areas, including science and technology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment.
3) The UN Human Rights Council’s recent condemnation of Israel’s conduct during the Gaza war, described in the Goldstone report, is based on a dangerous moral equivalency that would have turned Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt into war criminals.
Establishing the facts of the Holocaust
Mr. Netanyahu lambasted President Ahmadinejad’s bland denial of the Holocaust just a few days earlier and castigated those diplomats who stayed to listen to the Iranian leader speak at the UN Wednesday. Bolstering his argument with everything from historical documents in his hand to the very personal death of at least seven of his wife’s immediate relatives, he warned his listeners that Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic diatribes posed a threat far beyond Israel.
Civilization vs. barbarism“What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! … History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.”
Netanyahu said that the “extreme fundamentalism” that fuels the Iranian regime did not pit Muslim against Jew but was rather an effort to “return humanity to medieval times.”
He staked out Israel’s role as a regional leader in innovation, as part of movement of nations marching toward progress, which offer a future of unimagined promise. Together these nations will:“It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death. … The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century.”
But in order for humanity to make such progress, he warned, the marriage of religious fanaticism and weapons of mass destruction must be forestalled. He then spelled out the urgent challenge to prevent the “tyrants of Tehran” from acquiring nuclear weapons.Crack the genetic code.
Cure the incurable.
Lengthen lives.
Find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.
Moral equivalency
Lastly, Netanyahu vigorously defended Israel’s record during the Gaza war, calling the Goldstone report a farce. He urged the UN to throw out the report, which he said placed Hamas and the government of Israel on equal moral footing – “falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.”
The last word“If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity.”
“Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more.”