You know, in the United States they say that President Trump does everything that I ask him to do, and in Israel they say that I do everything that he wants me to do. Well, neither is true. We’re leaders of independent and proud countries. We stand for our interests. I stand for the interests of Israel and for its security. And often we see eye to eye. Sometimes we don’t. But we respect each other’s sovereignty, leadership and commitment to our people.
So, last year, standing on this stage, I spoke about decisions. Difficult decisions. Historic decisions. Decisions that many at the time, many of those running against me, said I shouldn’t have taken at the time.
They told me not to enter Rafah. I entered Rafah. I was told not to strike Hezbollah. We struck Hezbollah. They told me not to confront Iran. We confronted Iran.
And today, I want to begin with a simple question: What have we achieved?
Because these same people and their cronies in the press are trying to diminish our achievements. In fact, they are trying to erase them completely. So what is it that we achieved? Here’s what we achieved.
We have prevented Iran from carrying out a plan to annihilate us, and today they would have had a nuclear weapon, an atomic bomb, to do so. We prevented that from happening. We removed an existential danger. And had we not acted in “Operation Rising Lion” and then in “Operation Roaring Lion,” Iran would have had atomic bombs. And let me tell you something: They would have used them. That’s what we prevented.
Together with our American friends, the American Air Force and the American military, we carried out the largest airstrike in our history.
We destroyed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
We knocked out 20 of their top nuclear scientists—12 in “Rising Lion,” another eight in “Roaring Lion.” And when you take out the nuclear scientists, it’s very hard to make a nuclear weapon. Exceedingly hard.
We decapitated the leadership of the terror regime. We shattered their missile industry. We knocked out their navy, we knocked out their air force.
We attacked their military industries, their bridges—we attacked so many targets that the cumulative damage that we did to the IRGC economy is not counted in the millions, it’s not counted in the hundreds of millions, it’s not counted in the billions; it’s counted in the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. And it will take them a long time to recover. A long time. And they may not recover.
Because once you deal these blows, and once the rift between the regime and the people is so deep, you cannot tell when such a regime will fall. And I think we created the condition for its future fall. That is what will be the real triumph—when the Iranian people take their own destiny in their hands and they knock out this brutal regime that is terrorizing them and terrorizing the rest of the world.
But we didn’t just confront Iran. We shattered Iran’s terror axis.
We took out Sinwar. We took out Haniyeh. We took out Deif. We took out tens of thousands of terrorists.
And despite those who said it could not be done, we brought back to Israel every single hostage. Every last one of them.
That too—some of my critics don’t want to be reminded of, but they said: Stop before Rafah. Make a deal. Let’s get our hostages out. We don’t have to enter Rafah. We don’t have to take the Philadelphi Corridor. We don’t have to take down Hezbollah and, for God’s sake, we shouldn’t take on Iran.
We didn’t listen to them and we did it. Because we put our brave soldiers, our incomparably heroic soldiers, right into their stronghold in Gaza, and they capitulated. We brought back every last hostage and I think it’s an achievement that the entire people of Israel and the entire people of the free world should be proud of. We brought them back.
In Lebanon, we exploded—I don’t know if I should call it the beepers or the pagers. What do you use in America? Beepers. We exploded the beepers. We took out Nasrallah. We decimated Hezbollah’s military machine.
We prevented the Radwan Force from invading the Galilee. We destroyed over 90% of the 150,000 rockets and missiles Hezbollah amassed against us.
We established a security zone in Gaza. We established a security zone in Syria. We established a security zone in Lebanon. And we shall keep it as long as is necessary to protect our people.
I’ll tell you what other achievement, which I think, in many ways, as Sara tells me and I listen to... you know what they say in the Bible, everything—Sarah said to Abraham: you know what God said, everything that Sarah says, you should listen to her. Well, I’m not Abraham, but I listen to my Sara.
I think the greatest achievement that we’ve made is to break through the barrier of fear.
For years, people told us you cannot attack the soil of Iran. Yes, you can do Mossad operations, and we did quite a few. I authorized many. But you cannot send our military to Iran. But we changed that.
We sent our brave pilots over the skies of Iran and they took out targets—regime targets, terror targets, missile batteries, missile-production sites and nuclear sites.
We changed Israel’s security doctrine. We initiate. We attack. We surprise. And we attack those enemies that seek our destruction, that seek to kill us. We attack them before they have a chance to do so.
If you know Hebrew: “Ha’ba lehorgecha, hashkem lehorgo.” Kill them first.
I came here on the 50th anniversary of my brother’s fall in Entebbe, from Mount Herzl, at his gravesite. Yoni fell in Entebbe, leading his soldiers in what is regarded as the greatest rescue operation of modern times.
Entebbe showed that a free people, if they mobilize their courage and muster their strength—and they will—can overcome the worst tyrannies in the world, however threatening, however challenging.
And indeed, after the Entebbe rescue, the rash of hijackings that was covering the entire world stopped, almost completely.
But the terror regimes did not disappear. In fact, they continue to grow, and the worst of them is Iran, the greatest sponsor of terrorism on the planet.
Thirty-five years after Yoni fell in Entebbe, in 2010, my father celebrated—or rather, they celebrated for him—his 100th birthday at the Begin Institute, not far from here.
Historians spoke of his research on the Spanish Inquisition and the origins of Zionism.
And those who knew the story of his actions in the United States to muster support for the Jewish state during World War II, his meetings with Eisenhower and many others, spoke about that too.
After a day of lectures, compliments and praise, my father came to the stage unaided. He was 100 years old.
And he said this: “Thank you for your compliments. Thank you for these kind words. But time is short, so let me get right to the point.”
And here’s what he said: “Iran vows to destroy the Jewish state. The people of Israel are showing the world how a nation should behave when faced with an existential threat. Stare unflinchingly at the danger, calmly consider what needs to be done and what can be done, and be ready to enter the fray at the proper moment.”
And then he ended his words. These are the last public words in my father’s life:
“This leads to my certain belief,” he said, “that our people will roll back this danger to our existence.”
Well, 16 years later, we did just that. And I say to you now what I said at my brother’s grave a few hours ago today.
I said: No matter what happens in the talks, with an agreement, without an agreement, I pledge to you that Iran, as long as I am prime minister of Israel, will never have a nuclear weapon. Never. As long as I am the prime minister of Israel, I will not let that happen.
And I said something else about Lebanon, and I repeat it here. As long as we need to protect our people, we will remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon.
And the reason is perfectly understood. No country would be asked to do otherwise.
Can you imagine the United States with an army of thousands of terrorists across the border who pelt your cities and towns with rockets, ballistic missiles and killer drones? They kill your soldiers, they kill your citizens, they kill your children. And they threaten them every day.
Well, what would America do? Would it say, “There’s nothing we can do. Let’s hold our fire”? Is that what America would say?
No. You know damn well what America would do. It would cross the border, create a security zone, kill the terrorists and protect its people until the threat is removed.
That is exactly what we are doing. And let me tell you something else. No country would do it better. Because the terrorists not only target civilians; they also hide behind their own civilians. They are, by the way, committing a double war crime by doing that.
So the question is: What do you do about that?
We target the terrorists, but there are some civilian casualties in every such war, every such urban war. And normally, the ratio of non-combatants to combatants killed is about 7 to 1, 8 to 1. In Gaza, it was much, much lower than that, despite all the lies and vilifications aimed at Israel.
But I asked our people, our research arm in the Defense Ministry: “What is the ratio in Lebanon?”
And they said to me—today, I just got the document today—“Prime Minister, it’s 5 to 1.” No, not five civilians killed for every terrorist. Five terrorists killed for every civilian that is harmed in the process. Five to one. Unheard of.
Because no army goes to such lengths as the Israeli army to target terrorists and minimize civilian casualties.
We should be commended for it, not condemned. We do everything in our power to protect our people. We don’t have a war with Lebanon. We have a war with Hezbollah, which terrorizes Lebanon and seeks our destruction.
And when that proxy of Iran is no longer a threat, whether it’s dismantled or disarmed, yes, we’ll have peace with Lebanon and I look forward to signing it.
By the way, Mark [addressing American broadcaster Mark Levin, who introduced the prime minister before his speech], I intend to be here for quite a while. I want you to know that. These and other matters are the interests and security of the State of Israel. I’ve devoted my life to protecting the security of the State of Israel and nothing will change that. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I can do so because I have the support of my dear family, my wife and my children, but I also have the support of the vast majority of the people of Israel.
Our people are so strong. They’re so strong. Our soldiers are brave. There are no braver soldiers on the planet. They’re so heroic.
And we are determined, we are resolved, to protect our country, whatever the cost.
But let me tell you something else that I know troubles every one of you. We see the rising tide of antisemitism. It afflicts every country in the world right now, and it afflicts the United States of America.
Now let me tell you how antisemitism works down the ages. Ever since we lost our country and became defenseless, we were defenseless not only against physical attack, but against the vilifications that often preceded them. We were faced in one country with such vilifications and that led, eventually, to one of two things: exile or massacre.
Then we went to another country and faced exactly the same thing—the vituperations and vilifications that we were poisoning the wells, that we drank the blood of slain children, that we carried vermin. And by the way, these are the exact lies that continued right up to the Nazi Holocaust.
So we were faced with these vilifications, then we were massacred, then we were pushed to another country, and another country, and the same thing happened over and over again.
Well, here’s where the change happened. It happened with the rise of the State of Israel and the creation of the Israeli army.
We may not be able to stop the vilifications. They come and go in a predictable cycle, as my historian father told me. But the change is that when they come to slaughter us, we fight back.
We don’t let them do that. We fight back and we roll them back. Exactly as we have done now in the last three years.
I pledge to you that we will also fight this battle against antisemitism around the world.
We will fight on the eighth front as well—the battle against delegitimization, the battle against the calumny directed against the Jewish people.
But I ask you, the Jews of America and the Jews of the Diaspora, to do one thing:
Stand up. Don’t cower. Don’t be afraid. Fight back. Because people will only respect us if we respect ourselves. When they level lies at us, throw back the truth—and do it standing up.
Stand up for the truth. Stand up for Israel. Stand up for the Jewish people. Stand up for the Jewish future.
