Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said Israel is feeding Gaza, not starving it, and asked, “Did the Nazis ask Jews to leave?” as dozens of delegates walked out during his 80th UN General Assembly address.
“Israel is accused of deliberately starving people of Gaza, when Israel is deliberately feeding people of Gaza,” Netanyahu said as he denied claims that Israel is intentionally starving Gazans.
If there are Gazans that don't have enough food it is because Hamas "steals it, hoards it and sells it", he said.
Rejecting allegations of genocide, Netanyahu asked asked if a country committing genocide would plead with a population to get out of harm's way: "Did the Nazis ask the Jews to leave?"
Netanyahu called accusations that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza false.
"The opposite is true," he said, stating that Israel has dropped "millions of leaflets and sent millions of texts" to get civilians to evacuate Gaza City.
He accused Hamas of embedding itself in mosques, schools, hospitals and apartment buildings to force civilians to remain in danger, sometimes threatening them at gunpoint.
On the recognition of a Palestinian state by countries including France and the United Kingdom, Netanyahu called the move "national suicide" and said Israel would never accept it and the decision is sheer madness.
Netanyahu revisited a map he displayed last year entitled "The Curse," which he said represents Iran’s terror axis. He described the axis as a threat to global peace, regional stability and Israel’s existence.
He claimed Israel had struck the Houthis, destroyed the bulk of Hamas’s terror infrastructure, wiped out Hezbollah and devastated Iran’s atomic weapons and ballistic missile program.
Netanyahu named leaders targeted by Israel, including Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and key Iranian atomic scientists, asserting that all are gone.
He recalled the attacks of 7 October 2023, when Hamas killed around 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages.
Netanyahu said Israel has brought home 207 of these hostages and confirmed that 20 of the remaining 48 in Gaza are alive.
He read their names from a list and addressed them through loudspeakers on the Gaza border, promising Israel would not rest until all hostages are freed.
Netanyahu called on the remaining Hamas leaders to lay down their arms, release the hostages and warned that failure to comply would result in Israel hunting them down.
The Israeli Prime Minister praised US President Donald Trump, saying he understands better than any other leader that Israel and America face a common threat.
Netanyahu added that support from other world leaders, which emerged after the 7 October attack, has largely evaporated.
As Netanyahu spoke, applause broke out at the table when he referenced assassination attempts against Trump.
The Israeli delegation gave Netanyahu a standing ovation. Many observers in the balcony also stood, pumping their fists in support, in contrast to the largely empty official delegate seats below where dozens had walked out in protest.
The recent conflict in Gaza has resulted in at least 65,502 deaths since 7 October 2023, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.