United Nations, Sep 25 (IANS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defiantly defended his country’s bombing of Iran claiming, “If we hadn’t done it, we’d all be dead”.
In his address to the General Assembly on Thursday, he also shot down accusations of carrying out a “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza, calling it “the greatest lie of the century”.
On Iran, he said, “Israel and America acted together, not only to protect ourselves, but to save civilization”.
“In this battle against the barbarians, we’ve had no greater partner than President (Donald) Trump”, he said.
Both countries bombed several targets in Iran, killing its Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and several leaders.
That attack, however, led to Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz and choking off 20 per cent of petroleum and gas supplies that pass through it, setting off an economic crisis that affects many countries.
The US and its allies have not been able to bring the conflict to an end.
As he stepped up to the podium to speak, delegates from dozens of countries walked out, and Netanyahu shouted at them, “Cowards”.
His supporters countered, shouting in Hebrew, “Am Yisrael Chai,” meaning “Nation of Israel Lives”.
Netanyahu projected a powerful country that was fighting on seven fronts, against “Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, militias in Iraq, militias in Syria, Palestinian terrorists in Judea Samaria (West Bank)”.
“They all ganged up on us to wipe us off the face of the Earth. They failed”, he said.
When Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza in October 2023, he said, “We didn’t collapse. Instead, we rose and fought like lions”.
In Israel’s massive retaliation, 70,000 people are said to have died.
Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas, who spoke before Netanyahu, had accused Israel of conducting a “genocidal war” in Gaza.
“Accusing Israel of genocide is the greatest lie of the century”, he said and asked rhetorically if it was a “genocidal regime”, would it have given a million polio vaccinations to the enemy’s population or enabled the distribution of two million tons of food in Gaza.
One of the many leaders he attacked was Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom he called “a tyrant who also hosts the Hamas terror chiefs”.
He accused the leaders of Western countries of having “chosen to succumb to the antisemitic mobs”.
Some countries, Britain being the latest, have put limited sanctions on Israeli products from the West Bank.
“Many in the free world are afraid to defend freedom”, he asserted.
He brushed aside the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank as the work of “a handful of juvenile delinquents”.
Even though it is magnified in the media, he said, he doesn’t tolerate them and is taking action because “we’re a country of law”.
–IANS
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