PM Netanyahu’s Speech at the United Nations General Assembly
Israel
His Excellency Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister
26 September 2025
80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly
Benjamin Netanyahu
“Mr. President,
The families of our dear hostages languishing in the dungeons of Gaza,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Last year, I stood at this podium, and I showed this map. It shows the curse of Iran’s terror axis.
This axis threatened the peace of the entire world. It threatened the stability of our region and the very existence of my country Israel.
Iran was rapidly developing a massive nuclear weapons program and a massive ballistic missile program. These were meant not only to destroy Israel, they were meant also to threaten the United States and blackmail nations everywhere.
From Gaza, Yahya Sinwar dispatched waves of Hamas terrorists. They stormed into Israel on October 7th and committed acts of unspeakable savagery.
From Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah had launched thousands of missiles and rockets at our cities, terrorizing our citizens.
In Syria, the murderous dictator Assad hosted Iran’s forces, tightening a noose of death around our throats.
In Yemen, the Houthis launched ballistic missiles at Israel, while choking global trade at the mouth of the Red Sea.
So what’s happened over the past year?
We’ve hammered the Houthis, including yesterday.
We crushed the bulk of Hamas’s terror machine.
We crippled Hezbollah, taking out most of its leaders and much of its weapons
arsenal. Remember those beepers, the pagers? We paged Hezbollah. And believe me, they got the message — and thousands of terrorists dropped to the ground.
We destroyed Assad’s armaments in Syria.
We deterred Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq.
And most importantly, and above everything else that I could say to you or that we did in this past year, in this past decade: We devastated Iran’s atomic weapons and ballistic missile programs.
Here’s where things stand today.
Half the Houthi leadership in Yemen — gone. Yahya Sinwar in Gaza — gone. Hasan Nasrallah in Lebanon — gone. The Assad regime in Syria — gone.
Those militias in Iraq? Well, they’re still deterred. And their leaders, if they attack Israel, will also be gone.
And for Iran’s top military commanders and its top atomic bomb scientists – well, they’re gone too.
Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, which I renamed Operation Rising Lion — that’s from the Bible — this 12-day war will go down in the annals of military history.
Our daring pilots neutralized Iran’s missile defenses and took control of the skies over Tehran. And you saw this, Israeli fighter pilots and American B2 pilots bombed Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites.
I want to thank President Trump for his bold and decisive action.
President Trump and I promised to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. And we delivered on that promise. We removed an existential threat to Israel, and a mortal threat to the civilized world. We lifted a dark cloud that could have claimed millions and millions of lives.
But, Ladies and Gentlemen, we must remain vigilant. We must remain absolutely clear-minded and vigilant. We must not allow Iran to rebuild its military nuclear capacities. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, these stockpiles must be eliminated.
And tomorrow, UN Security Council sanctions on Iran must be snapped back.
Thanks to the resolve of our people, the courage of our soldiers, and the bold decisions we took, Israel rebounded from its darkest day to deliver one of the most stunning military comebacks in history.
But we’re not done yet. The final remnants of Hamas are holed up in Gaza City. They vow to repeat the atrocities of October 7th again and again and again, no matter how diminished their forces.
That is why Israel must finish the job, and that is why we want to do so as fast as possible.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Much of the world no longer remembers October 7th. But we remember, Israel remembers October 7th.
On that day… I’ll tell you, you can remember October 7th too. You see this large pin here? It’s a QR code. What I ask you to do is hold up your phones, zoom in, and you too will see why we fight, and why we must win. It’s all in here.
On October 7th, Hamas carried out the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. They slaughtered 1,200 innocent people, including over 40 Americans, and foreign nationals from dozens of countries represented here.
They beheaded men. They raped women. They burned babies, alive. They burned babies alive in front of their parents. What monsters.
These monsters took more than 250 people hostage. Those included Holocaust survivors, grandmothers, grandmothers and their grandchildren. Who takes hostage grandmothers and grandchildren? Hamas does.
So far, we’ve brought home 207 of these hostages. But 48 still remain in the dungeons of Gaza. 20 of them are alive — starved, tortured, deprived of any daylight, deprived of humanity.
These are the names of the 20 living hostages:
Matan Angrest
Gali and Ziv Berman – Brothers
Elkana Bohbot
Rom Braslavski
Nimrod Cohen
Ariel and David Cunio – another pair of brothers
Guy Gilboa Dalal
Evyatar David. You saw the picture of Evyatar David. Emaciated, forced to dig his own grave.
Maxim Herkin
Eitan Horn
Segev Kalfon
Bar Kuperstein
Omri Miran
Eitan Mor
Yosef-Haim Ohana
Alon Ohel
Avinatan Or
and Matan Zangauker
Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to do something I’ve never done before — I want to speak from this forum directly to those hostages through loudspeakers.
I’ve surrounded Gaza with massive loud-speakers connected to this microphone
in the hope that our dear hostages will hear my message.
I will say it first in Hebrew, and then in English.
[Hebrew]
Our brave heroes, this is Prime Minister Netanyahu, speaking to you live from the United Nations.
We have not forgotten you. Not even for a second.
The people of Israel are with you. We will not falter, and we will not rest, until we bring all of you home.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thanks to special efforts by Israeli intelligence, my words are now also being carried, they’re streamed live to the cellphones of Gazans.
So to the remaining Hamas leaders, and to the jailors of our hostages, I now say:
Lay down your arms! Let my people go! Free the hostages! All of them. The whole 48. Free the hostages now!
If you do, you will live. If you don’t, Israel will hunt you down.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
If Hamas agrees to our demands, the war could end right now.
Gaza would be demilitarized, Israel would retain overriding security control, and a peaceful civilian authority would be established by Gazans and others committed to peace with Israel.
Of course, you understand that the war in Gaza has affected every Israeli. But I am sure there are people in New York, London, Melbourne and elsewhere who are probably thinking – what does all of this have to do with me?
The answer is… EVERYTHING.
Because our enemies are your enemies.
Let’s do something else, another first at the UN. Let’s do a pop quiz. Raise your hand if you know the answer.
Here’s the first question. Who shouts “Death to America”?
Is it A) Iran, B) Hamas, C) Hezbollah, D) the Houthis or E) All of the above?
All of the above. Correct. All of the above.
Second question. Who has murdered Americans and Europeans in cold blood. Is it A) Al Qaeda, B) Hamas, C) Hezbollah, D) Iran or E) All of the above?
Correct again, all of the above.
So here’s the point I want to make: Our enemies hate all of us with equal venom. They want to drag the modern world back to the past, to a dark age of violence, fanaticism, and terror.
I think many of you are already feeling in your own societies the radical Islamist surge. I’m sure you do.
You know deep down that Israel is fighting your fight.
I want to tell you a secret. Behind closed doors, many of the leaders who publicly condemn us, privately thank us. They tell me how much they value Israel’s superb intelligence services that have prevented time and again terrorist attacks in their capitals, time and again saving countless lives.
General George Keegan, former head of US air force intelligence, once said:
“If the United States had to gather on its own the intelligence that Israel gives us,
we would have to establish five CIAs.”
Five CIAs.
This past June, when Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, German Chancellor Merz admitted the truth. He said, “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us.”
President Trump understands better than any other leader that Israel and America face a common threat.
He showed the world that when Iran and its proxies murder Americans, take Americans hostage, shout “Death to America”, burn American flags and try to assassinate the President of the United States – not once, but twice — he showed them there is a price to pay for all that.
Regrettably, many leaders who are represented in this hall, they send a very different message. Sure, in the days immediately following October 7th, many of them supported Israel. But that support quickly evaporated when Israel did what any self-respecting nation would do in the wake of such a savage attack.
We fought back.
Just imagine, just sit back for a second and imagine, an attack against America proportionate to the attack against Israel on October 7th. Imagine a regime, a terror regime dispatching thousands of terrorists to invade the United States.
They massacre 40,000 Americans. They take 10,000 Americans hostage. What do you think America would do?
Do you think America would leave that regime standing? You don’t think that. No way. Not a chance!
The United States would wipe out that terror regime and ensure that such savagery would never threaten America again.
This is precisely what Israel is doing in Gaza. We’re wiping out the terror regime of Hamas and ensuring that its savagery will never threaten Israel again. That’s what we’re doing. That’s what any self-respecting government would do.
Yet, and it’s a yet that I’m sorry to say here, yet over time, many world leaders buckled. They buckled under the pressure of a biased media, radical Islamist constituencies, and antisemitic mobs.
There’s a familiar saying: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, for many countries here, when the going got tough, you caved!
And here’s the shameful result of that collapse. For much of the past two years, Israel has had to fight a seven-front war against barbarism with many of your nations opposing us. Astoundingly, as we fight the terrorists who murdered many of your citizens, you are fighting us. You condemn us. You embargo us. And you wage political and legal warfare, it’s called lawfare, against us.
I say to the representatives of those nations: This is not an indictment of Israel. It’s an indictment of you!
It’s an indictment of weak-kneed leaders who appease evil, rather than support a nation whose brave soldiers guard you from the barbarians at the gate — they’re already penetrating the gate.
When will you learn? You can’t appease your way out of Jihad, and you won’t escape the Islamist storm by sacrificing Israel. To overcome that storm, you have to stand with Israel. But that’s not what you’re doing.
As the prophets of Israel foretold in the Bible, you’ve turned good into evil … and evil into good.
I want to drill down on this.
Take the false charge of genocide. Israel is accused of deliberately targeting civilians.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the opposite is true.
The head of urban warfare studies, Col. John Spencer, he’s perhaps the world’s greatest expert on urban warfare, and he says: “Israel is applying more measures to minimize civilian casualties than any military in history.”
And because we’re doing that, the ratio of non-combatant to combatant casualties is less than 2 to 1 in Gaza. That’s an astoundingly low ratio, lower than NATO’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially when you consider that Gaza is one of the most densely populated urban areas on earth.
It has hundreds of miles of terror tunnels underground, and it has countless terror towers above ground, and thousands of terrorists embedded in these tunnels and in these towers in civilian areas.
If you want to see what measures Israel takes to avoid civilian casualties in this war, just look at what we’re doing now in Gaza City, the last Hamas stronghold, one of the two last strongholds.
For three weeks, Israel dropped millions of leaflets, sent millions of text messages and made countless phone calls urging civilians to leave Gaza city before our military moves in.
At the same time, Hamas implants itself in mosques, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings and tries to force these civilians not to leave, to stay in harm’s way. It often threatens them at gunpoint if they try to do so.
For Israel, every civilian casualty is a tragedy; for Hamas, it’s a strategy.
Hamas uses civilians as human shields and as props in its sick propaganda war against Israel. A propoganda war that the western media buys hook, line and sinker.
Despite Hamas’s threats, close to 700,000 Gazans, almost three quarters of a million, have already heeded our calls and moved to safe zones.
Now, I want to ask you a simple question. A simple logical question. Would a country committing genocide plead with the civilian population it is supposedly targeting, to get out of harm’s way? Would we tell them get out if we’re trying to commit genocide? We’re trying to get them out. And Hamas is trying to keep them in.
This charge is so baseless, the comparison to genocide, wholesale slaughter of populations. Did the Nazis ask the Jews to leave, kindly leave, go out? Did others? Do you want me to name all the genocidal leaders of history. Just go one by one. Did anyone do this? Did they say “get out so we can come in”?
Of course not. The truth has been turned on its head.
Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization whose charter calls for the murder of all Jews on the planet, this genocidal organization is given a pass. It’s barely mentioned.
While Israel, which does everything it can to get civilians out of harm’s way — Israel is put in the dock.
What a joke!
Want to hear another one? Israel is accused of deliberately starving the people of Gaza, when Israel is deliberately feeding the people of Gaza.
Since the beginning of the war, Israel has let into Gaza more than 2,000,000 tons of food and aid. That’s one ton of aid for every man, woman and child in Gaza; nearly 3,000 calories per person, per day.
Some starvation policy!
If there are Gazans who don’t have enough food, it’s because Hamas is stealing it. Hamas steals it, hoards it and sells it at exorbitant prices to fund its war machine.
Last month, even the UN, not exactly a supporter of Israel. You’re supposed to laugh, by the way. Last month, even the UN admitted that Hamas and other armed groups looted 85% of the trucks. That’s why you have deprivation.
Those who peddle the blood libels of genocide and starvation against Israel
are no better than those who peddled blood libels against the Jews in the Middle Ages, when they falsely accused us of poisoning wells, spreading plague and using the blood of children to bake Passover Matzas.
Antisemitism dies hard. In fact, it doesn’t die at all. It just keeps coming back with its libelous lies, refurbished, regurgitated, over and over again.
And I want to tell you something else. These antisemitic lies have consequences.
In recent months, Jews have been assaulted in Canada, Australia, Britain, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
Here in America, an elderly Holocaust survivor was burned to death in Colorado. And a beautiful young couple from the Israeli Embassy in Washington was brutally gunned down right in front of the Holocaust Museum there.
Thankfully, President Trump’s administration is forcefully fighting the scourge of antisemitism. And every government here should follow its lead.
But instead, many do the opposite. They actually reward the worst antisemites on earth.
This week, the leaders of France, Britain, Australia, Canada and other countries unconditionally recognized a Palestinian state. They did so after the horrors committed by Hamas on October 7th — horrors praised on that day by nearly 90% of the Palestinian population.
Let me say that again. Nearly 90% of Palestinians supported the attack on October 7th. Not supported it — they celebrated. They danced on the rooftops, they threw candies. That’s both in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria — the West Bank, as you call it.
And it’s just the way they celebrated another horror — 9/11. They danced on the rooftops, they cheered, they threw candy.
You know what message the leaders who recognized a Palestinian state this week sent to the Palestinians?
It’s a very clear message. Murdering Jews pays off.
Well, I have a message to these leaders:
When the most savage terrorists on earth are effusively praising your decision,
you didn’t do something right, you did something wrong.
Horribly wrong.
Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews, and against innocent people everywhere.
It will be a mark of shame on all of you.
But, but, but, wait a minute, Mr. Prime Minister, they tell me. Wait a minute. We believe in a two-state solution, where the Jewish state of Israel will live side by side in peace with a Palestinian state.
There’s only one problem with that. The Palestinians – they don’t believe in this solution. They never have.
They don’t want a state next to Israel. They want a Palestinian state instead of Israel.
That’s why every time they were offered a Palestinian state but were required to end the conflict with Israel and recognize the Jewish state, every time over the decades, they turned it down.
That is why every time they were given territory — they used it to attack us.
In fact they effectively had a Palestinian state — in Gaza.
What did they do with that state? Peace? Co-existence?
No, they attacked us time and time again, totally unprovoked, they fired rockets into our cities, they murdered our children, they turned Gaza into a terror base from which they committed the October 7 massacre.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: The persistent Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state in any boundary is what has driven this conflict for over a century. It is still driving it.
It’s not the absence of a Palestinian state, it’s the presence of a Jewish state.
And I find it amazing, amazing, that the foreign chancelleries and the ministries and all those who pontificate about this, and the leaders, how can they not see this basic truth when it is repeated again and again and again ad nauseum?
And I want to say something else.
This rejection of a Jewish state not only applies to Hamas.
It also applies to the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority.
You should know that the Palestinian Authority pays terrorists to slay Jews.
The more Jews the terrorists slay, the more the Palestinian Authority pays.
The Palestinian Authority names its government buildings, its public squares, its schools after the mass murderers of Jews, which they glorify as martyrs.
They pay and glorify not just the killers of Jews but also killers of Christians.
Christians like Taylor Force – an American veteran, who was brutally murdered in Israel by Palestinian terrorists.
“But, but, but,” Again, but that I hear from the Western Leaders. They tell me the PA promised us it will reform. And I know this time, Prime minister, it will be different.”
Yeah, right.
We’ve heard these promises for decades.
They always promise.
They never deliver.
The Palestinian Authority is corrupt to the core.
They haven’t held elections in 20 years.
They use the same textbooks as Hamas. Exactly the same textbooks.
They teach their children to hate Jews and destroy the Jewish state.
And Christians don’t fare much better.
When Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, was under Israeli control, 80 percent of its residents were Christians.
But since the PA took control, that number has dwindled to under 20 percent.
These are the people you want to give a state to?
What you’re doing is giving the ultimate reward to intolerant fanatics who perpetrated and supported the October 7th massacre.
Giving the Palestinians a state one mile from Jerusalem after October 7th is like giving Al-Qaeda a state one mile from New York City after September 11th.
This is sheer madness. It’s insane, and we won’t do it.
So here’s another message for these Western leaders: Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats.
We will not commit national suicide because you don’t have the guts to face down a hostile media and antisemitic mobs demanding Israel’s blood.
I want you to grasp something else that is also distorted in the media. I say this not only in my name or the name of my government but on behalf of all the people of Israel.
Last year, there was a vote in the Knesset, our parliament, whether or not to oppose the imposition of a Palestinian state.
You want to guess what the results were?
Out of the 120 members of our parliament, 99 voted against. And only 9 supported. That’s over 90%. It’s not a fringe group, it’s not the prime minister who is extreme or is held hostage by extreme parties to his right.
So my opposition to a Palestinian state is not simply my policy or my government’s policy.
It is the policy of the state and people of the State of Israel.
Western leaders may have buckled under pressure.
I guarantee you one thing, Israel won’t.
Israel’s victories over the Iranian terror axis have opened up possibilities for peace that were unthinkable two years ago.
Take Syria.
For decades, the very idea of peace between Israel and Syria seemed unimaginable.
No more.
Today we have begun serious negotiations with the new Syrian government.
I believe an agreement can be reached that respects Syria’s sovereignty and protects both Israel’s security and the security of the minorities in the region, including the Druze minorities.
From the founding of Israel, Jews and Druze have been brothers in arms. We have fought together, bled together, we built our lives together.
When I was a young commander in Israel’s special forces, my own life was saved by the invaluable advice given to me by a great friend, Salem Shufi, a heroic Druze IDF veteran.
That’s why I could not sit idly by, nor could Israel sit idly by, while the Druze were being slaughtered by Jihadists. And I instructed our forces to stop the massacre. Which they promptly did.
Peace between Israel and Lebanon is possible as well.
I call on the Lebanese government to also begin direct negotiations with Israel.
I commend it for its declared aim to disarm Hezbollah.
But we need more than words.
If Lebanon takes genuine and sustained action to disarm Hezbollah,
I am sure we can achieve a sustainable peace. Of course, until that happens, we will take whatever action we need to defend ourselves and to maintain the conditions of the ceasefire that was established in Lebanon.
Our goal is not merely to monitor Hezbollah’s actions, but to prevent them from violating the ceasefire and attacking us at any time. I’m sure that if the Lebanese government persists in its goal of disarming Hezbollah, peace will come very speedily and very readily.
Victory over Hezbollah has made peace possible with our two Arab neighbors in the North.
Victory over Hamas will make peace possible with nations throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
Our victory would lead to a dramatic expansion of the historic Abraham Accords, which President Trump brokered between Arab leaders and myself five years ago.
I took note, as I’m sure you did too, of the encouraging words spoken here by the President of Indonesia.
This is the country with the world’s largest Muslim population of all nations.
It’s also is a sign of what could come.
Forward looking Arab and Muslim leaders know that cooperating with Israel will provide them with ground-breaking Israeli technologies including in medicine and science, agriculture and water, defense and AI and so many other fields.
I believe that in the coming years, the Middle East will look dramatically different.
Many of those who wage war on Israel today will be gone tomorrow.
Brave peacemakers will take their place.
Nowhere will this be more true than in Iran.
The long-suffering Iranian people will regain their freedom.
They will Make Iran Great Again!
And our two ancient peoples, the people of Israel and the people of Iran, will restore a friendship that will benefit the entire world.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The horrors that happened on one dark day, October 7th, those horrors happened countless times during the centuries of my people’s exile among the nations.
Jewish blood was cheap.
Jews were killed with impunity.
We had to beg others to defend us.
The rise of Israel did not mean that the attempts to destroy us would end.
It meant that we could fight back against those attempts.
That is exactly what Israel has done since October 7th.
Our sons and daughters fought like lions.
Our brave soldiers donned their uniforms and rushed into battle.
They were armed with the dreams of the 100 generations of Jews who came before them.
The dream of living as a free people in the Land of Israel, our beloved homeland for more than 3000 years.
The dreams of living in our own independent state.
The dream of having an army to defend ourselves.
And the dream of being a light unto the nations — a beacon of progress, ingenuity and innovation for the benefit of all humanity.
On October 7th, the enemies of Israel tried to extinguish that light.
Two years later, the resolve of Israel, and the strength of Israel burn brighter than ever.
With God’s help, that strength and that resolve will lead us to a speedy victory and to a brilliant future of prosperity and peace”.
Read More
- Modern history of Palestine and Zionism since 1516
- UN Adopts New York Declaration on Israel-Palestine Two-State
- Statement of Donald Trump of the US (80th Session UNGA) Debate
- Why a Palestinian State Remains an Impossible Fantasy
