Netanyahu’s Speech to the UN
By Benjamin Netanyahu , Prime Minister of Israel
Reviewed by David T. Jones, co-author of Uneasy Neighbo(u)rs
Text: www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/09/25/speech_at_the_un_general_assembly_97205.html

The annual speeches by world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly normally are an exercise in political rhetoric, personal posturing, and media manipulation rather than thoughtful substantive commentary.  The speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not fully escape from these parameters, but nevertheless is worth special attention because Netanyahu:

— Excoriated those who would deny the Holocaust by presenting inter alia Nazi plans for the concentration camp/extermination center Auschwitz-Birkenau, and asking rhetorically “Is this a lie?”

— warned emphatically against a nuclear armed Iran, noting that “greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction” and  urged international action to prevent such a development; and

— flayed the UN Human Rights Council (“a misnamed institution if there ever was one”) for its report condemning Israel for human rights violations during its December 2008 actions against Hamas “terrorists” in Gaza.  He suggested that given its standards, the Council “would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals” and urged the UN to reject the report.

Thus for Netanyahu, “The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging.”

One doubts that Netanyahu expected to convince a single UN listener of the merits of his arguments.  This was not the forum for new Middle East peace proposals and there was nothing substantively new in his parameters for agreement with Palestinians.  This was an occasion for reviewing the bidding, and in so doing, Netanyahu simply deepened Israel’s lines drawn in the sand.