Netanyahu’s message

Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered an address to the United Nations General Assembly this afternoon (video below, about 42 minutes, also posted here by C-SPAN). The Prime Minister’s Office has posted the text of the speech here. David Horovitz provides a useful guide to the speech in his column “Netanyahu silently indicts the world.”

This is an angry speech that is directed in part to President Obama, in part to Obama’s friends in Iran, and in part to the rest of the world. It is a speech so full of truth in an institution permeated with defamation and falsehood and evil that the speech itself represents something like an act of moral heroism. I believe that it is a speech portending action, although I am unsure about that. I am sure that it is worthy of your time and attention.

Quotable quote (1): “I know that preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons remains the official policy of the international community. But no one should question Israel’s determination to defend itself against those who seek our destruction. Seventy years after the murder of six million Jews, Iran’s rulers promise to destroy my country. Murder my people. And the response from this body, the response from nearly every one of the governments represented here has been absolutely nothing! Utter silence! Deafening silence. [Here, Netanyahu stared out at the assembly in silence for nearly a minute.]”

Quotable quote (2): “The days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies – those days are over. Not being passive means speaking up about those dangers. We have. We are. We will. Not being passive also means defending ourselves against those dangers. We have. We are. And we will.”

Quotable quote (3): “I stand here today representing Israel, a country 67 years young, but the nation-state of a people nearly 4,000 years old. Yet the empires of Babylon and Rome are not represented in this hall of nations. Neither is the Thousand Year Reich. Those seemingly invincible empires are long gone. But Israel lives. The people of Israel live.”

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