A belligerent Benjamin Netanyahu has shattered the weak and contradictory signals that Israel was willing to accept the US and French ceasefire proposal to stop the escalation of the war in Lebanon. “As long as Hezbollah opts for war, Israel will not stop,” he warned; “We are going to win this battle because we have no other option, we fight for our survival.” The prime minister’s speech before the UN General Assembly, interrupted on several occasions by boos and discreet applause to the point that the president of the session had to call the room to order twice, has been a repetition of the argument of his Government during the war; and his defiant tone, the same one he showed in his message to the US Congress at the end of July. Less than 24 hours after arriving in New York, and just two hours after his speech, the Israeli leader decided to bring forward his return to the country due to events on the ground, specifically the powerful bombing of Beirut, as announced by his office in Jerusalem.
His speech was a rhetorical flight forward—and geopolitics, in a forum in which the majority of countries have demanded a ceasefire in Gaza, but also in Lebanon—in which he attacked everything: against the legitimacy of institutions such as the UN or the International Criminal Court, whose accusations against Israel he called “absurd”; against the forum that hosted him and whom he openly accused of being anti-Semitic. Netanyahu assured that the war against Hezbollah will not stop until the 60,000 Israelis displaced from the north of the country can return to their homes. In his speech there were more protagonists than Hamas, which became almost a footnote due to the frequent allusions to Iran as the instigator of the attacks against Israel and the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli demonstrations that have swept the world since the war in Gaza began.
Although in recent hours the Israeli Prime Minister’s office had issued signals of considering the ceasefire proposal in its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Netanyahu’s tone in the speakers’ gallery was responsible for extinguishing them. With a map of school design, simple and impressive, which in his opinion exemplarily reflects the only two options for the future that the Middle East, and by extension the world, has (the axis of good and the axis of evil, in his words, literally, that of “the blessing” versus that of “the curse”), he once again cried out against Iran. “A future of hope versus a future of despair,” he stressed, accusing Tehran of seeking to “impose its radicalism far beyond the Middle East.”
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“I wasn’t planning on coming this year. [a la ONU]because my country is at war for its survival, but after hearing the lies and defamations against my country by numerous speakers in this forum, I have decided to come to set the record straight. “This is the truth: Israel wants peace, longs for peace, has achieved peace and will achieve it again, but to do so it must defeat savage enemies,” an emboldened Netanyahu began his speech despite the express emptiness of numerous delegations, which were They were absent during his speech, and the loud boos. Among those absent were the diplomats of Saudi Arabia, to whom Netanyahu extended his hand to, “with the help of the United States,” advance his particular regional map of good after the alliances forged by his country with other Arabs in recent years.
As he has been doing since the beginning of the war, Netanyahu attacked the UN, which he accused of blatant anti-Semitism and a double standard that condemns Israel exponentially “much more than the rest of the countries put together,” in reference to the resolutions issued by the Security Council and the Assembly and turned into a dead letter by his Government. “This hypocrisy [de la ONU y la comunidad internacional] It’s not for Gaza, it’s for Israel, until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, there will be no equivalence in the deal. There is pure and simple anti-Semitism, the real war criminals are not in Israel, they are in Iran, in Gaza, in Lebanon,” stressed the Israeli Prime Minister, calling the arrest order against him by the Criminal Court “absurd.” International.
Much of his speech was, as he did before the US Congress, against Iran. Netanyahu boasted that Israeli actions – a veiled but clear allusion to the attacks against several scientists – have managed to delay the Iranian nuclear program by at least “ten years”, but that is not enough, he assured, to avert what he presented as a a threat not only regional, but global. “I have a message for the tyrants in Tehran: if you attack us, we will attack you. In Iran there is no place that the long Israeli arm cannot reach, and that goes for the entire Middle East. (…) We are winning. Israel defends itself against Iran on several fronts [de Yemen al Líbano pasando por Gaza]the line between blessing [el bien] and the curse [el mal] “It couldn’t be clearer.”
Regarding the Gaza conflict, about to turn one year old, Netanyahu celebrated the “major military operations” that ended “23 of the 24 tunnels” in the Strip from which, he said, terrorists operated, a network “of similar dimensions.” to the New York subway route.” He promised the families of the hostages still held by Hamas not to rest until he returned them to their homes, personally greeting several relatives present in the room. The head of the most far-right and nationalist government in the history of Israel accused Hamas of stealing the food that has entered the enclave thanks to the scarce humanitarian aid and of setting “exorbitant prices” to keep the civilian population captive, spreading the story of Israel’s turned off aid tap. Looking ahead to the hypothetical day after, he completely ruled out Hamas having a place in Gaza. “Imagine that after World War II we had allowed the Nazis to rebuild Germany, it is ridiculous, that is not going to happen, that is why we are not going to allow Hamas any space in Gaza after the war, we want a demilitarized Gaza and for that we are working” with countries and regional actors. “This war can end now, what has to happen is for Hamas to surrender, it just has to hand over its weapons and return all the hostages,” he stressed, alluding to his initial message, received with more boos from the room, regarding Israel’s will for peace.
Netanyahu’s long-awaited speech at the UN, especially due to his predictable allusions to the escalation of war in Lebanon, concluded practically at the same time that new clouds of smoke appeared in the sky over Beirut due to the impact of projectiles. The prime minister made it clear: not a single mention of the truce defended by the United States and France; On the contrary, a resounding no to temporizing with Hezbollah. “That’s enough,” he said briskly. “We will not rest until our citizens can return to their homes, we will not tolerate a terrorist Army being located on our international border, shooting indiscriminately against our towns and cities, and also doing so after placing those rockets and missiles in schools, hospitals and buildings. of homes, endangering its own population (…) As long as Hezbollah opts for war, Israel will not stop.”
