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It’s unthinkably rare to hear a speech of piercing moral clarity at the United Nations, but Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered one Friday.
As his nation continues its just and humane counterattack against Hamas and has launched a new phase of pushback against the terror threat menacing from the north, Netanyahu’s thunderous remarks reveal that he is no spent force.
As if the brilliant successes of Israel’s surgical attacks against Hezbollah’s communications, men and armaments weren’t indication enough of that, including a bullseye on the terror cadre’s Beirut HQ delivered barely an hour after Bibi finished speaking — coupled with its utter decimation of Hamas forces and infrastructure in Gaza.
He rightly framed the fight as not merely an existential battle for Israel, but one for the West and its allies as a whole.
“Our enemies seek not only to destroy us but to destroy our common civilization and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror,” he declared.
Too true. And would that President Biden, Veep Kamala Harris and the rest of the equivocators admit this plain fact.
Bibi pointed out, repeatedly, that Iran is Israel’s main antagonist via its proxy forces in Gaza and Lebanon’s south, and made clear to Tehran what is coming for them:“If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”
Of Hezbollah, he rightly asked: “Imagine if terrorists turned San Diego and El Paso into ghost towns. How long would the American government tolerate that? I doubt they’d tolerate it for a single day.”
For Hamas, he had a stern admonition about the remaining hostages: “Let them go. All of them. Those alive today must be returned alive.”
And for the larger assembly, which is as ever naked in its hostility toward the Jewish state (and Jews), he brought a most unwelcome message from the battlefields.
“We are winning . . . . We will fight until we achieve total victory. There is no substitute for it . . . . Israel will win this battle because we don’t have a choice.”
The larger frame of his speech invoked ancient ideas of good and evil, citing the “blessing” that Israel offers — peace and prosperity in the Middle East — and the “curse” proffered by Iran: ever more terror, bloodshed and chaos.
It is to our lasting shame that Biden lacks the spine to speak this simple and obvious truth.
And he cried out to the wider world, “What choice will you make? In this battle between good and evil, there must be no equivocation . . . . Yes, we’re defending ourselves, but we’re also defending you.”
That is the central point, the one desperately ignored by the blinged-out kleptocrats, gutter antisemites and their First World lackeys who comprise the UN — which Bibi accurately called an “anti-Israel Flat Earth society” —and staged a pusillanimous walkout before he spoke.
Israel is fighting a strategic enemy for its life and battling on behalf of the values Americans and Europeans hold dear.
Or the values they claim to hold dear.
Until they truly show they stand with the Jewish state, Netanyahu and every other right-thinking person must condemn them.