Speech to the United Nations.

AuthorJones, David T.
PositionBenjamin Netanyahu

Text:

Speech to the United Nations

By Bemjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel

Text and video: http://www.policymic.com/articles/15409/netanyahu-speech-at-ungeneral-assembly-full-transcript-and-video

Reviewed by David T. Jones

By now virtually every American Diplomacy reader will have encountered media assessments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 28 September address to the United Nations. They will have absorbed his "red lines" warning regarding the Iranian nuclear program and seen the cartoon anarchist bomb that he displayed to illustrate his points.

But more than a mechanical surveyor' exercise of politico-rhetoric, Netanyahu spoke with a defiant tone. We have been where we are for 3,000 years; we are here now; we will not be moved; we are not going away ("... the Jewish state will live forever ... We will never be uprooted again.").

Netanyahu sees a global battle between "the modern and the medieval" and Israel stands for modernity with all equal before the law and Israeli technical creativity harnessed for human progress.

But the velvet glove lies thinly over the iron fist. Netanyahu dismissed Palestinian rhetoric seeking statehood without bilateral negotiations with Israel, saying in effect that only a demilitarized...

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