Netanyahu at the UN

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an
ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral
homeland.

I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I
speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
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The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the
horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of
such horrendous events.

Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault
on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium,
spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again
claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There,
on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and
decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that
meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy
of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to
carry out the extermination of the Jews.

Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original
construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those
plans are signed by Hitler?s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a
copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were
murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did
President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed
numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of
all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was
affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father?s two sisters
and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered
by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To
those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I
commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your
countries.

But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my
people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame?
Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who
denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe
out the Jewish state.

What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!

Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only
the Jews. You're wrong.

History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the
Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto
the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries.

In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a
murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims.
It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and
many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of
this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women,
minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally
subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against
faith nor civilization against civilization.

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. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach
of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot
triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent
bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially.

It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone,
decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few
years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can
scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic
code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a
cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.

I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances ? by
leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology,
agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the
world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons,
the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated
victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only
after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind.
That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage
between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of
Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United
Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a
despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for
freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad
daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking
in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most
pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of
Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the
entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of
goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been
protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not
encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian
patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a
recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those
they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars
and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles
were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was
passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing ? absolutely
nothing ? from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there
ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every
inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis.
We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty
miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a
nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they
increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally
forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one
example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's
civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities
during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities,
causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond
differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on
civilians while hiding behind civilians ? Israel sought to conduct surgical
strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes
and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in
ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging
Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.

We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text
messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never
has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's
civilian population from harm's way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN
Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately
defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and
given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged
Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of
truth. What a perversion of justice.

Delegates of the United Nations,

Will you accept this farce?

Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when
the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding
democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic
majority could declare that the earth is flat.

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. And in condemning Israel, this body
would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why.

When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop.
Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international
legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What
self-defense?

The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our
right of self-defense now accuses us ?my people, my country - of war crimes?
And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!

Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report
is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will
you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if
Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that
you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can
defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

All of Israel wants peace.

Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We
made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by
King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government,
and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a
defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish
two states for two peoples ? a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews
accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it.
We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62
years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a
nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to
recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not
foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our
forefathers.

Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of
peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war
no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years
ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the
streets of Jerusalem.

We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected
as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there
and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two
free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.
But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to
govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.

That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't
want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and
perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.

We want peace.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces
of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and
overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community
is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the
"confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized
societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.

Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness
to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking,
the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation
strikes its jarring gong."

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the
"unteachibility of mankind" is for once proven wrong.

I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can
prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago,
let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our
future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.