Compare reactions to speech of terrorist Netanyahu
TEHRAN, Sep. 28 (MNA) – Let's compare two different reactions to the speech of the blood-stained prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, in the US Congress and United Nations General Assembly amid the Zionist regime's genocidal war against Gaza.
US legislators clapp for blood-stained Netanyahu in Congress
On July 2024, the Israeli regime's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is responsible for the deaths of over 42,000 Palestinians since the start of the Gaza war, delivered a speech to Congress, taking on protesters inside the House chamber and thousands gathered outside the Capitol.
It was his first address to US lawmakers in nearly a decade and the first since the start of the genocidal war of the Zionist regime after Hamas' Oct. 7 operation.
As US legislators clapped for Netanyahu inside the domed edifice, activists outside called for him to be tried for abuses linked to Israel’s war in Gaza. Many argued that Netanyahu is a war criminal who belongs in jail, not in the halls of Congress.
Delegates walk out of UN general assembly chamber as Benjamin Netanyahu takes podium
On September 27, scores of diplomats walked out of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations General Assembly, in protest against the devastating war on Gaza and the latest Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Several diplomats could be seen walking out in haste as Netanyahu entered the great hall to speak from the rostrum, with the presiding diplomat having to shout "order, please" as the Israeli leader took to the stage.
Despite Washinton's support for the criminal regime of Tel Aviv in killing innocent people of Gaza and Lebanon, many countries and international communities have realized the real identity of Israel. The measure of diplomats in leaving Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations General Assembly proves this fact.
The continuation of the Israeli regime's crimes will isolate the Zionist regime more and more both in the region and international arena.
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Delegates walked out as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was called to address the UN General Assembly's 79th session yesterday. Tel Aviv has continued what UN experts have called a 'genocidal war' on Gaza for almost a year, killing over 41,500 Palestinians, and this week launched its biggest bombing campaign on Lebanon in almost 20 years killing more than 700 people. UN calls for a ceasefire have failed to stop the US-backed attacks, which Netanyahu has vowed to continue.
September 28, 2024
A group of diplomats, including the Iranian delegation, interrupted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Friday before the United Nations (UN) as they walked out of the General Assembly headquarters in New York.
An Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent reported that diplomats left the hall upon Netanyahu’s arrival.
His speech began amid chants inside the General Assembly before he spoke and the departure of a number of delegations.
Netanyahu said in his speech: “Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. Israel has made peace and will make peace again. Yet we face savage enemies who seek our annihilation, and we must defend ourselves against them. These savage murderers, our enemies, seek not only to destroy us, but they seek to destroy our common civilisation and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror.”
Netanyahu made these comments as Israel continues to bomb targets belonging to the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in southern Lebanon amid fears that the attacks could spiral into a full-scale regional war.
In his speech, Netanyahu sought to pin the blame for the conflict on Israel’s arch-enemy, Iran, saying Israel was defending itself against Tehran on seven fronts, stressing: “We must all do everything in our power to ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons.”
READ: In UN speech, Netanyahu holds map showing West Bank, Gaza as part of Israel
“Yes, we’re defending ourselves, but we’re also defending you against a common enemy that, through violence and terror, seeks to destroy our way of life,” he said, adding: “I didn’t intend to come here this year. My country is at war, fighting for its life. But after I heard the lies and slanders levelled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight.”
The Israeli prime minister added: “A normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed closer than ever. But then came the curse of October 7th. We will not rest until the remaining hostages are brought home.”
Netanyahu also claimed that the Israeli army has killed or captured more than half of Hamas’s 40,000 fighters and destroyed 90 per cent of its rockets.
He expressed his concern that: “If Hamas stays in power, it will regroup, rearm and attack Israel again and again and again. We are ready to work with regional and other partners to support a local civilian administration in Gaza, committed to peaceful coexistence.”
He declared: “This war can come to an end now. All that has to happen is for Hamas to surrender, lay down its arms and release all the hostages.”
As for Hezbollah in Lebanon, he remarked: “Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I’ve come here today to say enough is enough. We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes. We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border, able to perpetrate another October 7th-style massacre. As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice.”
Regarding normalisation with Arab countries, Netanyahu indicated: “We must continue the path we paved with the Abraham Accords four years ago. Above all, this means achieving a historic peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.”
He added: “The ICC prosecutor’s rush to judgment, his refusal to treat Israel with its independent courts the way other democracies are treated, is hard to explain by anything other than pure antisemitism.”
Amid Lebanon strike, defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares that Israel is ‘winning’
Netanyahu bulldozed his way through his visit, castigating Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself, offering no diplomatic concessions, and ordering an airstrike in Beirut that may have killed Israel’s long-hunted archnemesis, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
Michael Crowley Published 28.09.24,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. His speech comes after he offered mixed signals on efforts by the United States and other nations to broker a three-week pause in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.(Dave Sanders/The New York Times)
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, he seemed to be entering a lion’s den.
Speaker after speaker at the annual gathering of world leaders had portrayed Israel as a global villain. Police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who called Netanyahu a war criminal. His public rebuttal of a Biden administration plan to pause the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raised tensions between the two governments.
But Netanyahu bulldozed his way through his visit, castigating Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself, offering no diplomatic concessions, and ordering an airstrike in Beirut that may have killed Israel’s long-hunted archnemesis, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The strike landed even as Netanyahu delivered defiant remarks to a U.N. General Assembly hall — largely emptied after dozens of diplomats walked out in protest — in which he triumphantly declared of Israel’s multiple conflicts: “We are winning.”
It is an assessment some U.S. officials say could reflect short-term truth while skirting past the risk of a larger conflict that could be devastating for all involved.
Hours later, senior Israeli officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military operation, expressed remarkable confidence about their military and sabotage campaign against Hezbollah. Their blows against the group over the past two weeks and Nasrallah’s possible death could be a turning point, they said, in their ongoing struggle with Iran, which arms and funds Hezbollah, Hamas and other proxy forces in what the officials portrayed as a plan to destroy Israel.
“It seemed to me a prime minister who’s got the wind at his back,” said Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a think tank with close ties to Netanyahu’s conservative government.
Given Israel’s recent successes against Hezbollah, Makovsky said, Netanyahu “can feel like, for the first time, we’re really turning things around on the Iranians.”
“I think the Israelis have been surprised at how successful they’ve been versus Hezbollah,” Makovsky said. He added that Israel was also satisfied with the severe damage it has inflicted on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, despite its failure to win the release of the remaining Israeli hostages seized Oct. 7 and international condemnation of its military campaign.
Even as they insisted that Israel faced an existential threat from Iran’s proxy forces, Israeli officials downplayed the threat of Iranian retaliation for Friday’s airstrike in Lebanon. When Iran last mounted a direct attack on Israel, in mid-April, Israel and the United States successfully intercepted hundreds of Iranian projectiles. Some analysts said it was an embarrassment for Iran, one compounded a week later by an Israeli counterstrike on one of Iran’s premier air defense systems.
And amid tensions with Biden officials who believe that Israel has incurred too much risk in its attacks on Hezbollah, the Israelis warned that little would encourage their enemies more than even a hint of daylight between the two allies.
Projecting strength has become a signature for Netanyahu, whose speech to the U.N. made no apologies after what he called “lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium” during the course of the week. Despite calls for de-escalation, he warned Israel’s enemies, including Iran, “If you strike us, we will strike you.”
And he assailed the U.N. itself as a “swamp of antisemitic bile” that offers a forum for foreign leaders who “stand with evil against good” in support of Israel’s enemies.
Even Netanyahu’s very presence in New York was disruptive. Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators swarmed Manhattan landmarks before his arrival Thursday, protesting Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza at venues like the New York Public Library and Grand Central Station. Police reported dozens of arrests.
Netanyahu’s defiant posture in New York left his critics more exasperated than ever.
“The threats Israel faces are serious, but Netanyahu’s continued warmongering approach is only putting millions of Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese civilians at risk as the whole region is on the brink of an all-out war,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Israel advocacy group J Street, said in a statement after the Israeli leader’s speech.
U.S. officials avoided openly criticizing Israel’s strike but repeated calls to avoid further escalation of the conflict, even as some Israeli officials spoke of a potential Israeli ground offensive to clear out Hezbollah positions near its northern border.
“The question is not does Israel have a right to deal with existential threats to its security and enemies across its borders with the avowed intent to destroy Israel — of course it does,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters at a news conference Friday in New York City. “But the question is, what is the best way to achieve its objectives?”
Blinken said diplomacy was a better choice than force. But Netanyahu showed little interest in negotiated solutions during his visit. His U.N. address did not even mention a U.S.-led plan unveiled Wednesday that calls for an immediate 21-day cease-fire to pause months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Nor did Netanyahu meet with Blinken in New York.
The new cease-fire initiative, developed with French officials and supported by several other nations, was presented with fanfare Wednesday in the hope of pausing a grinding conflict that U.S. officials fear could lead to a wider war that draws in Iran and the United States.
But Netanyahu quickly appeared to reject the cease-fire plan upon his arrival in New York, vowing to keep attacking Hezbollah with “full force” and saying Israel would “not stop until we achieve all our goals.”
The remarks infuriated U.S. officials who said they believed Netanyahu had given them his support for the proposal.
Netanyahu’s office soon issued a statement to “clarify,” asserting that Israel shares the proposal’s goal of “enabling people along our northern border to return safely and securely to their homes.” How that might be achieved — through force or diplomacy — was not specified, however.
Fears of a cross-border assault like the one Hamas mounted Oct. 7 have driven some 60,000 Israelis from their homes since Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas last fall, and analysts say Netanyahu enjoys strong public support for forceful efforts to reestablish security in the area. On Friday, Blinken called that “a legitimate and important objective.”
A senior Israeli official said that a genuine misunderstanding was to blame for the confusion around Israel’s position on the cease-fire plan. But it was just one of many instances where Netanyahu’s public remarks have seemed to undercut what U.S. officials insisted were private assurances about the Israeli leader’s commitment to diplomacy.
U.S. officials have tried for months to forge an agreement under which Hezbollah would withdraw the forces it has positioned along Lebanon’s southern border, in defiance of a United Nations resolution meant to create a buffer zone there.
U.S. officials also say a cease-fire halting the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza could quickly defuse the Lebanon crisis. Nasrallah has said that Hezbollah would halt its attacks on Israel when there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
But talks to resolve that conflict have been stalled for months, with each side blaming the other.
On Friday, Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the impasse, saying the Palestinian militant group should “surrender, lay down its arms, and release all the hostages.”
“But if they don’t, we will fight until we achieve victory — total victory,” he added. “There is no substitute for it.”
The New York Times News Service
Netanyahu bulldozed his way through his visit, castigating Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself, offering no diplomatic concessions, and ordering an airstrike in Beirut that may have killed Israel’s long-hunted archnemesis, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
Michael Crowley Published 28.09.24,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. His speech comes after he offered mixed signals on efforts by the United States and other nations to broker a three-week pause in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.(Dave Sanders/The New York Times)
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, he seemed to be entering a lion’s den.
Speaker after speaker at the annual gathering of world leaders had portrayed Israel as a global villain. Police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who called Netanyahu a war criminal. His public rebuttal of a Biden administration plan to pause the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raised tensions between the two governments.
But Netanyahu bulldozed his way through his visit, castigating Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself, offering no diplomatic concessions, and ordering an airstrike in Beirut that may have killed Israel’s long-hunted archnemesis, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The strike landed even as Netanyahu delivered defiant remarks to a U.N. General Assembly hall — largely emptied after dozens of diplomats walked out in protest — in which he triumphantly declared of Israel’s multiple conflicts: “We are winning.”
It is an assessment some U.S. officials say could reflect short-term truth while skirting past the risk of a larger conflict that could be devastating for all involved.
Hours later, senior Israeli officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military operation, expressed remarkable confidence about their military and sabotage campaign against Hezbollah. Their blows against the group over the past two weeks and Nasrallah’s possible death could be a turning point, they said, in their ongoing struggle with Iran, which arms and funds Hezbollah, Hamas and other proxy forces in what the officials portrayed as a plan to destroy Israel.
“It seemed to me a prime minister who’s got the wind at his back,” said Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a think tank with close ties to Netanyahu’s conservative government.
Given Israel’s recent successes against Hezbollah, Makovsky said, Netanyahu “can feel like, for the first time, we’re really turning things around on the Iranians.”
“I think the Israelis have been surprised at how successful they’ve been versus Hezbollah,” Makovsky said. He added that Israel was also satisfied with the severe damage it has inflicted on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, despite its failure to win the release of the remaining Israeli hostages seized Oct. 7 and international condemnation of its military campaign.
Even as they insisted that Israel faced an existential threat from Iran’s proxy forces, Israeli officials downplayed the threat of Iranian retaliation for Friday’s airstrike in Lebanon. When Iran last mounted a direct attack on Israel, in mid-April, Israel and the United States successfully intercepted hundreds of Iranian projectiles. Some analysts said it was an embarrassment for Iran, one compounded a week later by an Israeli counterstrike on one of Iran’s premier air defense systems.
And amid tensions with Biden officials who believe that Israel has incurred too much risk in its attacks on Hezbollah, the Israelis warned that little would encourage their enemies more than even a hint of daylight between the two allies.
Projecting strength has become a signature for Netanyahu, whose speech to the U.N. made no apologies after what he called “lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium” during the course of the week. Despite calls for de-escalation, he warned Israel’s enemies, including Iran, “If you strike us, we will strike you.”
And he assailed the U.N. itself as a “swamp of antisemitic bile” that offers a forum for foreign leaders who “stand with evil against good” in support of Israel’s enemies.
Even Netanyahu’s very presence in New York was disruptive. Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators swarmed Manhattan landmarks before his arrival Thursday, protesting Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza at venues like the New York Public Library and Grand Central Station. Police reported dozens of arrests.
Netanyahu’s defiant posture in New York left his critics more exasperated than ever.
“The threats Israel faces are serious, but Netanyahu’s continued warmongering approach is only putting millions of Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese civilians at risk as the whole region is on the brink of an all-out war,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Israel advocacy group J Street, said in a statement after the Israeli leader’s speech.
U.S. officials avoided openly criticizing Israel’s strike but repeated calls to avoid further escalation of the conflict, even as some Israeli officials spoke of a potential Israeli ground offensive to clear out Hezbollah positions near its northern border.
“The question is not does Israel have a right to deal with existential threats to its security and enemies across its borders with the avowed intent to destroy Israel — of course it does,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters at a news conference Friday in New York City. “But the question is, what is the best way to achieve its objectives?”
Blinken said diplomacy was a better choice than force. But Netanyahu showed little interest in negotiated solutions during his visit. His U.N. address did not even mention a U.S.-led plan unveiled Wednesday that calls for an immediate 21-day cease-fire to pause months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Nor did Netanyahu meet with Blinken in New York.
The new cease-fire initiative, developed with French officials and supported by several other nations, was presented with fanfare Wednesday in the hope of pausing a grinding conflict that U.S. officials fear could lead to a wider war that draws in Iran and the United States.
But Netanyahu quickly appeared to reject the cease-fire plan upon his arrival in New York, vowing to keep attacking Hezbollah with “full force” and saying Israel would “not stop until we achieve all our goals.”
The remarks infuriated U.S. officials who said they believed Netanyahu had given them his support for the proposal.
Netanyahu’s office soon issued a statement to “clarify,” asserting that Israel shares the proposal’s goal of “enabling people along our northern border to return safely and securely to their homes.” How that might be achieved — through force or diplomacy — was not specified, however.
Fears of a cross-border assault like the one Hamas mounted Oct. 7 have driven some 60,000 Israelis from their homes since Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas last fall, and analysts say Netanyahu enjoys strong public support for forceful efforts to reestablish security in the area. On Friday, Blinken called that “a legitimate and important objective.”
A senior Israeli official said that a genuine misunderstanding was to blame for the confusion around Israel’s position on the cease-fire plan. But it was just one of many instances where Netanyahu’s public remarks have seemed to undercut what U.S. officials insisted were private assurances about the Israeli leader’s commitment to diplomacy.
U.S. officials have tried for months to forge an agreement under which Hezbollah would withdraw the forces it has positioned along Lebanon’s southern border, in defiance of a United Nations resolution meant to create a buffer zone there.
U.S. officials also say a cease-fire halting the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza could quickly defuse the Lebanon crisis. Nasrallah has said that Hezbollah would halt its attacks on Israel when there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
But talks to resolve that conflict have been stalled for months, with each side blaming the other.
On Friday, Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the impasse, saying the Palestinian militant group should “surrender, lay down its arms, and release all the hostages.”
“But if they don’t, we will fight until we achieve victory — total victory,” he added. “There is no substitute for it.”
The New York Times News Service
