How Netanyahu should defend Israel at the UN General Assembly - opinion

He will deliver his, by now, almost annual address of these past 18 years or so, assuming that he’ll be able to enter the building expected to be blocked by activist groups like Within Our Lifetime, which has called for a march to “flood” the UN “for Gaza” on Tuesday, September 23.

His defense of Israel from the august podium will be a formidable task. Hopefully, he’ll be able to downgrade the two-state solution farce. The main topic he’ll need to relate to, it seems, is Israel as a genocide perpetrator.

For Netanyahu to launch a public diplomacy offensive there, not to mention a defensive one, will be a major challenge but a very necessary one. Eye-catching materials, such as the 2012 Iran bomb poster, successful as it was, will not be enough.

False claims, prominently pushed in the media, that Israel is “starving” the population there, generating a man-made “famine,” are meant to replace rational thinking, logic, and facts with emotions that are intended to make people feel good rather than being correct.

At this point in the conflict, Netanyahu will be ascending the podium in that august hall in a complicated state. If the prime minister asked me to provide some ideas and even phrases that he could use, I would make the following observations and provide the following ideas, as well as suggest some phrasing and wording.

On the presumption that he will not be able to display a slide presentation, not to mention a short film, I hope a small booklet is being printed for distribution to all the representatives. Most may be tossed into the nearest trash bin, but the media will have copies. It should deal with the Pallywood phenomenon that has reached immeasurable depths of falsification of reality.

There are other incidental matters that could be dealt with, but foremost, Netanyahu has to meet the onslaught upon Zionism, on the Jewish people’s national identity and character, head-on. He must castigate the antisemitism that has taken advantage of the pro-Palestinian propaganda rhetoric. He should not shy from castigating the Jews who, in promoting their anti-Zionism, not only ignore the failure of that attempt for over a century and a half but also accuse them of aiding those who murder Jews.

“We Jews will prove to you that in Palestine there will be room for the million Arabs of today and for an additional million of their progeny; and for many millions of Jews; and for peace.”

And Netanyahu should not shy from continuing to quote Jabotinsky, who further said: “I have the profoundest feeling for the Arab case, in so far as that Arab case is not exaggerated… the economic position of the Palestinian Arabs… has become the object of envy in all the surrounding Arab countries so that the Arabs from those countries show a clear tendency to immigrate into Palestine.

“I have also shown to you already that, in our submission, there is no question of ousting the Arabs… What I do not deny is that in that process, the Arabs of Palestine will necessarily become a minority in the country of Palestine. What I do deny is that that is a hardship.”

Was Jabotinsky capable of any sympathy for the Arab cause? Yes, but he faced its negative orientation head-on:

“When we hear the Arab claim confronted with the Jewish claim; I fully understand that any minority would prefer to be a majority… the Arabs of Palestine would also preſer Palestine to be the Arab state No. 4, No. 5, or No. 6 [in addition to the three Mandates of Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq] – that I quite understand. But when the Arab claim is confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved, it is like the claims of appetite versus the claims of starvation...”

In those years, following the rise of Nazi Germany, Jews faced a starvation of places to which they could escape. Jews were in distress. It was a real starvation, and its result was six million murdered. These numbers, unlike the Gaza casualties, are not inflated.

He must add that security does not rely solely on military strength but on the resilience of the Jewish people living in the reconstituted Jewish homeland, which includes Judea and Samaria. Moreover, it does not exclude Gaza. Neither will the Temple Mount be off-limits to Jews. We will not tolerate Arab geographical apartheid.

Indeed, Arab Muslim intolerance and fanaticism should be called out. Israel is not genocidal, but what happened in Syria and is happening in Sudan is indeed very much genocidal. The West’s adoption of an anti-Israel double standard should be denounced.

A suggested final hurled-out line could be: “You weak democracies cowering before Islamist intolerance will yet regret your stance of today, and the Jewish people will remind you of your evildoings for generations to come.”