{"id":629248,"date":"2026-09-27T16:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T16:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/629248\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T16:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T16:50:10","slug":"netanyahus-un-speech-history-settler-violence-and-israels-security-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/629248\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu\u2019s UN speech: History, settler violence, and Israel\u2019s security threats"},"content":{"rendered":"

As usual, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s speech at the United Nations General Assembly<\/a> last Thursday was an impressive piece of rhetoric, but less of an accurate historical rendering.<\/p>\n

It is said that this speech was directed at Netanyahu\u2019s political base in Israel toward the approaching elections, and to a lesser extent, at the delegations of a minority of UN member states who sat in the UN General Assembly plenum while the speech was being delivered.<\/p>\n

Since I do not belong to Netanyahu\u2019s base and am not part of a delegation of a foreign state, this speech was certainly not intended for me.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I would like to react to an aspect of the speech that I fully support, another one that I totally disagree with, and a third that left me \u201cbewitched, bothered, and bewildered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"THISTHIS TIME, Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s United Nations General Assembly address was meant to reflect an Israeli prime minister standing up to a hostile world. The question is whether this will reach the voters it was meant to impress, the writer wonders. (credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The part of the speech with which I agree is that dealing with the issue of genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has not committed, which it never planned to commit, but of which it is being accused.<\/p>\n

The most Israel can be accused of is that some members of the current coalition don\u2019t have any feelings of remorse about the large number of Palestinian civilians killed in the past three years (around 50,000) because they believe that there are no innocent Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

In addition, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu stated in November 2023 that throwing an atomic bomb on the Gaza Strip is an option.<\/p>\n

While it is a shocking statement, it is a fact that the US threw an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, which killed 70,000-80,000 persons immediately \u2013 the same number as the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip since October 2023 \u2013 and no one ever accused the US of committing genocide in Japan.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu stated in his speech that a country that delivered \u201ca million polio shots\u201d and allowed the delivery of international food aid amounting to \u201ca ton per person\u201d to the Gaza Strip cannot be accused of genocide.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the truth is that in earlier stages of the war, Israel sought to cut off all foreign aid, water, and electricity to the Gaza Strip, and was dissuaded from this intention by the US and the international community. But this in itself does not amount to genocide.<\/p>\n

The issue Netanyahu spoke about with which I differ concerns the alleged existence of \u201cJewish settler terror<\/a>\u201d against random Palestinian communities in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

In his speech, Netanyahu stated that \u201cI won\u2019t stand for vigilantism. We\u2019re a country of law. So, we put our Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on [those who act violently against Palestinians]. But that\u2019s what [foreign leaders and the foreign media] call settler violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the number of casualties a year? Maybe two or three\u2026 compared to the thousands of terrorist attacks against the peaceful [Jewish] settlers, honorable people, law-abiding people. What a distortion. It\u2019s an obsession\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders of countries seriously talk about that. And they say it with such importance: \u2018We can\u2019t stand settler violence.\u2019 You don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about!\u201d<\/p>\n

As he has done in the past, Netanyahu claimed in his speech that all this talk about violence relates to 150 juvenile delinquents from outside Judea and Samaria, who \u201cthrow stones,\u201d \u201cchop down olive trees,\u201d and occasionally \u201clight fires.\u201d<\/p>\n

The truth is that there are many more than 150 Jewish culprits involved, and they are not all \u201cjuvenile delinquents\u201d from outside Judea and Samaria.<\/p>\n

They engage in destroying or burning Palestinian property and agricultural fields, stealing or killing livestock herds, and frightening civilians into leaving their homes and property. They have also maimed or caused the deaths of many more than just \u201ctwo or three\u201d Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Worse still, they are occasionally accompanied by uniformed men and are rarely stopped, reprimanded, or taken into custody.<\/p>\n

On November 22, 2024, Defense Minister Israel Katz actually stopped Jews being placed under administrative detention in Judea and Samaria, which makes dealing with these lawbreakers, whether by the Shin Bet or anyone else, an almost impossible task.<\/p>\n

Besides, the current Shin Bet head, David Zini, has gone on record as saying that \u201cthere are no Jewish terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Netanyahu’s concluding message<\/p>\n

Netanyahu’s message that left me bewitched, bothered, and bewildered was that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, that is constantly under threat of annihilation by its enemies \u2013 whether the Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan<\/a>, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others who repeatedly declare their intentions.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu described the situation before the outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War. \u201cWe weren\u2019t then in Judea and Samaria, the heart of the historic homeland of the Jewish people. We weren\u2019t in Gaza. We weren\u2019t on the Golan Heights\u2026 We were on a tiny sliver of land\u2026 that is equal to about one third of one percent of the landmass of the entire Arab world\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cYet they accused Israel of colonialism. Some colonialism. And who\u2019s accusing us? Among them are people in Britain and in France. For God\u2019s sake, they invented the term. Their colonies braced [sic] the entire globe. Colonialism? Give us a break!<\/p>\n

\u201cYet, at the time\u2026 we were threatened with annihilation by three Arab armies that were about to invade us. You know what Israelis were doing at the time? They were digging mass graves in preparation for thousands of casualties. In preparation to bury our dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of the Six Day War, Netanyahu was not yet 18 and still in high school in Philadelphia. Five days before the outbreak of the war, he flew to Israel to seek out his brother Yoni, a 21-year-old paratrooper officer at the time.<\/p>\n

According to Netanyahu, the first question he asked Yoni when they met was: \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen?\u201d To which Yoni answered: \u201cWe\u2019re going to win \u2013 we have no other choice.\u201d Whether or not this is what happened doesn\u2019t really matter. This alleged answer has always been conventional wisdom in Israel \u2013 so why was Yoni Netanyahu mentioned?<\/p>\n

Yoni\u2019s death 11 years later, during the successful Israeli military operation he led to release 105 Israeli and Jewish hostages, who were hijacked in an Air France flight to Entebbe in Uganda by Palestinian and German terrorists, who threatened to kill them all unless numerous Palestinian terrorists (most of them from Israel) were released and ransom money paid, was also mentioned by Netanyahu in his speech.<\/p>\n

He took the opportunity to thank the Ugandan government<\/a> for placing a statue of Yoni at the spot where he had been killed. Another red herring.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s conclusion: \u201cOver the centuries, the tyrannies that tried to destroy us failed time and again. God willing, they\u2019ll continue to fail. If we muster our courage, if we steel our resolve, we will continue to win. And the reason is simple: we have no other choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past, Netanyahu predicted that since Israel is becoming internationally isolated, it will have to turn into a super-Sparta. Never has he suggested that Israel should seek non-military means \u2013 especially diplomacy \u2013 to extricate itself from this isolation, for which he himself is largely responsible. Give us a break\u2026<\/p>\n

The writer has written journalistic and academic articles, as well as several books, on international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994 to 2010, she worked at the Knesset Library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As usual, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s speech at the United Nations General Assembly last Thursday was an impressive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,85,46,2723,43,2621,77,234733],"class_list":["post-629248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-gaza","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-katz","tag-news","tag-united-nations-general-assembly","tag-west-bank","tag-yoni-netanyahu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}