The Unyielding Defiance at the Podium: A second speech Prime Minister Netanyahu might have given if he had the time.
Harry Liberman
Image created via AI
https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/prime-minister-netanyahus-2026-un-general-assembly-speech
To the so-called international community gathered here today: I look at a global body that exists in a state of perpetual war with itself. You are divided by borders, fractured by ideology, and locked in primitive conflicts. Yet, in between every one of your internal battles, you routinely find a moment of collective consensus. You take a breath, pause your own wars, and collectively kick the Jew.
I watched you just moments ago. As I stepped up to this podium on September 24, 2026, a theater of coordinated departures took place before my eyes. Scores of delegates stood up, turned their backs, and staged a mass walkout. You intended it as a display of profound diplomatic protest. In reality, it was a display of profound moral cowardice—a collective flight from an inconvenient truth you lack the courage to look in the eye.
To those remaining in this hall, and to those who fled into the corridors to hide from the reality of a sovereign Jewish state: look closely at the empty seats left behind. They are the physical manifestation of an ancient pattern. For centuries, the world grew accustomed to a specific version of the Jewish people. We were a people without land, without sovereign resources, carrying only our contributions and a deep, tragic yearning to be accepted. For generations, the diasporadiasporimentality was forced to ask the societies around us:
“Did I do a good enough job? Did I contribute enough to your medicine, your science, your economy? No?
Okay… kick me. I will try harder. I will try again.”
I stand before you today to tell you that those days are permanently over. Your walkouts no longer move us. Your empty chairs do not break our resolve.
The circle has closed exactly as prophesied. If you listen closely, you can hear the echo of six million souls speaking out through the empty spaces of this assembly hall. They speak not in sorrow, but in absolute, thunderous awe of a reality they never lived to witness: a sovereign Jewish nation standing on its own feet, defending its own children, answering to no tyrant, and unfazed by the theater of diplomatic rejection.
For two thousand years, since the Roman Empire put Judea to the torch, renamed our land Palaestina to erase our name following the bloody conclusion of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, and scattered us into the wind, we were told we were an anomaly destined for extinction. We survived the medieval Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Pogroms, and the systematic industrial slaughter of the Holocaust. Every single time, the world expected us to pass into “dream stuff” and fade away.
But the eternity of Israel does not falter. The six million who went into the night without a flag, without an army, and without a refuge are vindicated today by the very presence of an Israeli Prime Minister holding this podium, whether you choose to sit and listen or run away. We have returned to the soil where David ruled and Isaiah preached. We are no longer auditioning for your acceptance, we are no longer begging for a permission slip to exist, and we will never again cooperate with your wishful dream of turning the Jew into a perennial, helpless victim.
The Theological Axis: The Precision of the Law
Let us confront the philosophical distortion of the sanctity of human life that underpins this current conflict. There is a definitive theological and legal separation between our civilization and those who seek our destruction.
In the Jewish oral law codified in the late Roman era around 200 CE, the absolute value of life is universally and unconditionally proclaimed:
“Therefore, the human being was created single, to teach you that whoever destroys a single soul is considered by Scripture as if they destroyed an entire world; and whoever saves a single soul is considered as if they saved an entire world.” — Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5
This legal framework establishes life as an absolute baseline. It has no footnotes. It has no ideological prerequisites.
Centuries later, this profound ethical baseline was adapted into the Quranic Islamic text, which explicitly notes that this decree was ordained for the Children of Israel. However, the foundational Jewish doctrine of absolute sanctity was fundamentally altered in the Quran by the introduction of a critical, elastic Islamic legal loophole: Mischief / Curiosity !
“Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul—unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land—it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one—it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.” — Quran Surah 5:32
This precise qualification of “mischief in the land” (Fasad fil-Ard) acts as a mechanism of total abrogation. It creates an administrative and religious justification to strip away the universal protection of life.
What constitutes “mischief”? To the totalitarian mind, resisting subjugation is mischief. Sovereign Jewish defense of ancestral land is mischief. Rebellious existence is mischief. The immediate following Islamic verse clarifies the exact physical penalties reserved for this highly subjective offense:
“Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] mischief is no less than that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land.” — Quran Surah 5:33
By transforming an absolute, unconditional Jewish moral imperative into a conditional framework dependent on ideological alignment, the original value of life in Judaism Babylonian Talmud was replaced by an elastic Quranic pretext for state, religious, and asymmetric violence.
This is why Hamas can livestream the slaughter of families on October 7, 2023 with sadistic joy.
Under their doctrine, the victims are not souls; they are creators of “mischief” who have forfeited their humanity.
The Cultural Grifters: “Mackleless” Humanitarianism
Look at the profound hypocrisy that fills the halls of international diplomacy, Western media, and popular culture. Following the horrors of October 7, young Jewish soldiers have sacrificed their lives on the battlefield. Let us be entirely transparent about the strategic reality: Israel possesses the military capability to wipe a hostile population off the map in a single day without losing a single Jewish soldier. Yet, because we hold to the unconditional sanctity of life, we do not.
Instead, the Israel Defense Forces entered the most densely populated urban warfare environment in human history, facing an enemy that openly uses its own children as human shields. Our soldiers took the ground view, risking their own lives to minimize civilian casualties, executing operations under a standard that independent military analysts acknowledge has set a historic precedent for minimizing civilian-to-combatant ratios in urban warfare, as detailed by experts at the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Yet, what do the modern cultural arbiters do?
We live in an era of unprecedented information disorder, where commercial artists like Macklemore weaponize fake news imagery, grifting off the “Children of Gaza” with social media protest tracks like “Hind’s Hall” released in May 2024. His brand of activism completely omits the core tactical reality of the Hamas doctrine of asymmetric baby shields. It is entirely Mackleless—devoid of courage, stripped of historical context, and completely dependent on an illiterate, selective outrage designed to trend on social media algorithms.
These cultural figures perform a curated, sanitized version of empathy that costs them absolutely nothing. They stand on Western stages, wrapped in historical ignorance, singing anthems for a population governed by a terrorist regime that would throw them from the nearest rooftop for their lifestyles. They scream into megaphones about oppression, yet they are entirely silent about the actual, undeniable atrocities taking place in front of their lying eyes.
Where is the track from Macklemore for the ongoing Christian genocide in Nigeria, where international tracking indicates over 52,000 believers have been targeted and butchered by radical Islamist forces since 2009? Where is the anthem for the mass graves and systemic ethnic cleansing in Sudan, where the Rapid Support Forces have generated a staggering humanitarian collapse and displaced millions since April 2023?
Where is the outcry for the quiet, brutal erasure of Christianity across the modern Middle East?
And look at your deafening silence regarding the people of Iran! An estimated 100,000 dead for the crime of “protesting ” , something Israel allows in it;s own country as do all legitimate democracies !While Israel a democratic nation , receives constant scrutiny in corrupt forums like the United Nations General Assembly, authoritarian regimes in Tehran evade any institutional penalties. In fact they receive applause even after slaughtering thousands of their own citizens . Hundreds of thousands of brave Iranian civilians have taken to the streets since the September 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini, shouting “Woman, Life, Freedom” to free themselves from the fundamentalist tyranny of the Ayatollahs. The massive, brilliant diaspora of Iranians living across the globe knows this pain intimately. They cry out for the freedom of their families back home. Yet their plight is invisible to the illiterate anti-Semites marching on Western campuses.
Why? Because a tragedy carries zero political currency within the halls of academia or the music industry unless a Jew can somehow be blamed for it.
The Biafran Precedent
A Blueprint for Nigerian British Oil, Genocide , Starving Children and the complicit Silence of the United Nations :
This selective conscience is not new. The weaponization of imagery used against Israel today relies on a cynical blueprint pioneered during the Nigerian Civil War (the Biafran conflict) from 1967 to 1970. Declassified documents from the British National Archives expose how British economic interests and international apathy allowed a blockade to systematically destroy an entire generation for oil. Driven by geopolitical influence, the United Kingdom secretly flooded the Nigerian federal government with heavy weaponry and strategic backing while millions of Biafran Children starved.
Let us look directly at the cold, legally airtight words etched into history via declassified British Foreign Office logs.
In FCO 65/367, British diplomats laid out their priorities with shocking transparency. Michael Stewart, the British Foreign Secretary, wrote directly to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, stating that the primary objective of British policy was to safeguard their economic footprint in Nigeria .
“The regional oil production of Nigeria is critical to the United Kingdom’s balance of payments. Our direct financial stake in Shell-BP represents an investment of over £200 million. To stop arms shipments would not only jeopardize this supply but destroy our political leverage over Lagos, regardless of the humanitarian outcries.“
Think about that.
As a total land, sea, and air blockade intentionally cut off food to an entire region, turning protein deficiency into a calculated weapon of war, the British Cabinet met to protect their balance of payments. In the declassified Cabinet meeting logs under UK National Archives, CAB 128/43, Prime Minister Harold Wilson privately maintained that stopping arms shipments would damage British trade interests, stating:
“We cannot allow our broader commonwealth policy or domestic emotionalism over the unfolding famine to dictate our strategic arms agreements with the Federal Military Government.” An estimated 2 million Biafran Civilians died of starvation the vast majority of whom were children.
Let that number sink in. Two million people: That is equal to the entire population of Gaza being completely systematically wiped off the face of the earth inside a three-year window. The United Nations looked the other way while two million civilians ,majority children , starved due to a British initiated state blockade. The UN’s adherence to national sovereignty and the diplomatic alignment of veto-wielding powers of the British Colonial Empire blocked international intervention, illustrating how geopolitical financial interests regularly over look the genuine starvation of Children and Genocide .
Where is the historical reporting on this? Where are the front-page retrospectives? Where are the encampments on Western university campuses? Where are the students occupying administrative buildings at Harvard, Columbia, or Oxford screaming for justice for the 1.5 million Black children whose bellies were distended by a British-backed artificial famine?
There are no encampments. There is no historical outrage. There are no viral social media trends. Why? Because no British or American illiterate “celebrities and artists” can use that tragedy to grift. There is zero political currency in a humanitarian catastrophe—even one that starved an entire population equivalent to Gaza in three years—unless a Jew can somehow be blamed for it.
The Virus Resurgent: Never Again is Now
You take a legal concept explicitly codified in international law—a word invented by a Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term in 1944 and tirelessly lobbied the United Nations to adopt the 1948 Genocide Convention. You take the word “genocide”—forged from the ashes of our own destruction—and you weaponize it against the very people who suffered it, turning his legacy into a grotesque tool of antisemitic propaganda.
This is the return of the ancient virus. It mutated from a religious virus in the Middle Ages, to a racial virus in the 19th and 20th centuries, and today it has returned as a political virus under the guise of “anti-Zionism.” It is the exact same pathogen. It aims for the exact same result: the de-legitimization, isolation, and eventual destruction of the Jewish people.
October 7, 2023 was not a political dispute over borders. It was the virus breaking through the skin of civilization. It was the Roman torch, the Spanish stake of the 1492 Inquisition, and the Nazi gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau operating in real-time on social media streams.
To the anti-Semites of the world who think this campaign of lies, campus riots, and diplomatic theater will terrify our people—whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the anti-Semitic mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani—I have news for you. The days when Jews were defenseless victims, marched to the slaughter while relying on the hollow promises of an international community, are over.
The six million souls who look down upon this hall today do so with a holy awe, witnessing the prophecy fulfilled through the very defiance of our survival. Go ahead and walk out. Empty this room. Turn your backs. Asking to be recognized by this broken assembly is a joke.
The post-colonial Roman era over Judea is finished. The era of the helpless Jewish victim is buried. Today, Israel stands resilient, sovereign, and fully equipped for self-defense. We will persist in building, standing, and prevailing without apologizing for our existence or your recognition.
This selective blindness is a historical continuum; when the actual genocide of European Jewry was unfolding, the world deliberately looked the other way. At the 1938 Évian Conference, thirty-two nations gathered only to offer hollow sympathy while systematically refusing to lift immigration quotas for desperate Jewish refugees. This international apathy was reinforced by the Western media, most notably documented in Laurel Leff’s Buried by the Times, which exposes how major press institutions consistently minimized, diluted, and hid reports of Hitler’s “Final Solution” on obscure back pages. We remember the hypocrisy of the past, we see the double standards of the present, and we know the truth. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The global surge in antisemitism following the October 7 attacks has shattered a long-maintained illusion.
For decades, the world comforted itself with the claim that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” or that targeting the Jewish state was merely a political critique. But when synagogues are vandalized, Jewish schools face threats, and individuals are targeted globally simply for being Jewish, the veil is permanently lifted.
Anti-Zionism has proven to be the modern mask for the world’s oldest hate.
If the world harbored a deep hostility toward Jews before 1948, the restoration of Jewish sovereignty only magnified that animology. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
The reality is simple: bullies do not like their victims to win.
Global institutions and cultural structures are comfortable with minority groups only when they fit neatly into the paradigm of the subdued victim.
We see this dynamic play out vividly in modern political pageantry, such as the approach to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation framework regarding First Nations. Governments readily hand out a paid day off as a token of acknowledgement, yet consistently fail to provide the actual restoration of land or systemic transformation.
Why?
Because a subdued, tokenized community serves as a manageable artifact of history—a victim narrative that asks for permission rather than exercising true power. The tragic consequence of this framework is that while the Canadian federal government implements administrative changes, the structural reality on the ground remains devastatingly stagnant. Historically designed to isolate and restrict, the Canadian reserve system has instead institutionalized severe socio-economic crises. Rather than thriving sovereign territories, many reservations function under systemic constraints where communities are fractured by generational trauma, substance abuse, and substandard living conditions. Reports from Canada’s Auditor General and the United Nations have consistently highlighted the distressing gap in basic human development indicators—including infrastructure deficits, poverty, and an inability to build true community equity.
By prioritizing symbolic holidays that serve the average Canadian over economic self-governance and meaningful land restitution, state policy reinforces a cycle of dependency, leaving vulnerable populations trapped within the institutionalized walls of an outdated British Canadian (Kanatian) colonial system. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Another paid day off work for every Canadian living on First Nations Colonial lands is not designed to restore land back to the 1.1 million indigenous First Nations peoples : National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (colloquially known as Orange Shirt Day) is a mandatory paid statutory holiday across Canada [1, 2]
The Jewish experience, however, refuses to cooperate with this script.
The strategy of artists like Macklemore relies completely on a calculated information disorder omits the core tactical reality of the Israel Gaza conflict. Independent geopolitical watchdogs like the Middle East Forum have documented how international commentary selectively relies on narratives that omit verified operational parameters, while organizations like UN Watch have exposed systemic institutional failures to objectively address human-shield tactics. UN Watch. [1, 2, 3, 4] Hillel Neuer, the Executive Director of UN Watch, is a prominent alumnus of Mc Gill University [1, 2]
The historical arc of academia exposes a profound and deeply unsettling shift.
Historically, McGill University actively enforced a systemic, institutionalized discrimination against Jewish students. For decades during the early-to-mid 20th century, McGill—alongside several prominent North American institutions—implemented strict Jewish quotas designed to artificially cap or outright restrict the enrollment of Jewish individuals, forcing applicants to meet vastly higher academic thresholds just to be considered. Decades later, that institutional exclusion has transitioned into an environment of active, targeted hostility. Today, McGill find itself at the centre of major legal battles over its failure to maintain a safe campus. The Superior Court of Quebec officially authorized a landmark $5-million class-action lawsuit against McGill University, launched by Jewish students who allege they were subjected to systemic antisemitic and anti-Zionist activities, harassment, intimidation, and physical assault following the events of October 7, 2023. [1, 2] This climate is not unique to McGill; it mirrors a systemic crisis sweeping across Canada’s elite academic institutions:
Concordia University: Faces a major $15-million class-action lawsuit filed by students and faculty alleging the administration failed to investigate antisemitic incidents, effectively creating a “safe space” for Jew-hatred to proliferate. [1]
York University & Toronto Metropolitan University: Are actively being sued in expansive class-actions spearheaded by national law firms like Diamond & Diamond, targeting both university administrations and student unions for fostering hate speech, silencing Jewish voices, and permitting explicit threats of violence. [1]
The profound irony remains that Hillel Neuer, who spent his career at UN Watch systematically exposing global double standards, graduated from the very faculty of law [1] now forced to answer in a court of law for its failure to protect Jewish students from modern, unmitigated bigotry. [1]
Jews are an indigenous ethno-religion that has finally broken the cycle of permanent displacement.
Over 3,000 years of persecution culminated in the Holocaust—the most systematic, industrialized genocide in human history. Yet, we did not remain subdued. We did not wait for the world’s charity or look for excuses. Instead, the Jewish people wiped off the dust of genocide, exercised absolute agency, and fulfilled the ancient prophecy carried through centuries of exile: L’Shana Haba’A B’Yerushalayim—next year in Jerusalem. [1, 2]
This refusal to stay down is exactly what triggers the bully’s rage. By refusing to be broken, the Jewish people have forced a full-circle return to their homeland, building a thriving, sovereign nation.
Our response to centuries of physical, political, and psychological persecution has never been to withdraw our gifts from a hostile world. Instead, we have delivered voluminous, undeniable contributions to human progress. From foundational religious ethics to breakthrough advancements in modern science, medicine, agriculture, physics, the arts, and the cinematic landscape, the architecture of modernity is inextricably bound to Jewish innovation. The profound irony remains that the very societies and institutions that routinely delegitimize Jewish existence rely heavily on the inventions and intellectual frameworks we have given to the world. [1]
Even within our own community, this unyielding drive manifests as a perpetual process of self-improvement and refinement. We are a culture built on sacred intellectual friction. When Jews agree on a matter, they will readily debate the exact same topic from a different angle. This is not fractiousness; it is a relentless effort to improve the outcome, sharpen the mind, and demand better of ourselves.
Jewish Survival alone is not a static endpoint to be celebrated and forgotten. It is a continuous journey.
The Torah is our foundational gift, but agency is our enduring message. We do not look for charity, and we do not break under the weight of global double standards. When faced with adversity, we figure it out, we adapt, and we try until we succeed.
To be a member of this resilient minority is to inherit a legacy of unbroken courage that defies the standard rise and fall of civilizations.
The “International Communities ” selective outrage has exposed the underbelly of global hate. It has laid bare the thin, transparent lie that your obsession is merely “criticism of a state.” If your animus was about human rights, your dockets would be filled with the world’s actual tyrants. But your obsession is, and has always been, the winning Jew.
The world tolerated the Jew hiding behind a rock. You cannot tolerate the Jew who stands under his own flag, defends his own borders, and wins. [1, 2]
We see you clearly. And we are not afraid. No weak knees now, and never again.
June 22, 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [1, 2]
We do not look to this fractured international community for our validation or our safety. While our brave soldiers guard the borders, we know our destiny is ultimately overseen by a higher power. The Almighty set the stage for this unique, unbroken journey, and no amount of global pressure can undo an eternal promise. [1]
I am a proud Jew. Tied to an ancient Judean /Jewish land, an unyielding faith, and a legacy of survival that has outlived every empire that ever tried to break us and I would not have it any other way.
Primary Factual Appendix & Document Logs
- Israeli Prime Minister UN Address (Sept. 24, 2026): Jewish Virtual Library Archive
- Roman Palestine Retitling (135 CE): World History Encyclopedia – Bar Kokhba Campaign
- Mishnah Sanhedrin Codex (circa 200 CE): Sefaria Bilingual Database – Sanhedrin 4
- Quranic Exegetical Texts: Quran.com – Surah Al-Ma’idah Verses 32-33
- Urban Warfare Standards (Gaza Metrics): Modern War Institute at West Point
- Biafra Arms Log Policy Cables: UK National Archives Record FCO 65/367During the Biafran War (1967–1970), an estimated 500,000 to 2 million Biafran civilians died of starvation and disease , the vast majority of whom were children. At the height of the crisis in 1968, human rights organizations calculated that nearly 6,000 children were dying each day from severe protein deficiency and acute malnutrition (kwashiorkor). [1, 2, 3, 4]
- The British Role and Oil Interests The British government, led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Labour administration, was the primary supplier of heavy weapons and military intelligence to the Nigerian Federal Government. [1, 2]
- London’s policy was explicitly driven by protecting corporate oil interests, notably the massive investments of the state-backed Shell-BP venture in the oil-rich Niger Delta. When Nigeria imposed a total economic and maritime blockade on the breakaway Eastern Region (Biafra), starvation was openly utilized as a “legitimate weapon of war” to break the rebellion.[1, 2, 3]
- Evidence of Genocide ignoring the starving children of Biafra , the British government continued its arms shipments, dismissing the catastrophic famine as “Biafran propaganda”. [1, 2]
- British Cabinet Meeting Minutes (Wilson Administration Famine Memo): UK National Archives Record CAB 128/43
- UN Genocide Convention Formulation (1944-1948): United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention
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