Netanyahu promises to continue fighting in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip

By Ron Kampeas

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue fighting in Gaza and Lebanon until his war goals are achieved, warning: “There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”

Netanyahu's speech on Friday at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly came as Israel struck a key Hezbollah target in Beirut. The Biden administration is also frustrated by its failure to contain escalating tensions that it fears could lead to all-out war.

Biden officials now suspect that Netanyahu acted in bad faith by privately agreeing to a ceasefire agreement on the Israel-Lebanon border and then publicly withdrawing it. John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said the United States would not have made the proposal unless it had received assurances that Israel was prepared to accept it.

Netanyahu's speech was unusually blunt, even for a prime minister who has rained fire and brimstone since his first term in office in the late 1990s.

He called the United Nations a “swamp of anti-Semitic bile,” and his argument appeared to be supported by many of the speeches before him condemning Israel for the war's devastation, without mentioning that Hamas and Hezbollah started the current round of fighting .

Netanyahu also made his most explicit plea yet for peace with Saudi Arabia, but began with a militant warning message to Iran and its allies in the region.

“The curse of October 7th began when Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza,” he said. “But it wasn’t all. “Israel was soon forced to defend itself on six additional war fronts organized by Iran.” He listed attacks by Hezbollah, rockets fired by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia from Yemen and the hundreds of rockets fired by Iran fired at Israel in April.

“I have a message to the tyrants of Tehran,” he said. “If you beat us, we will beat you. There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that applies to the entire Middle East.”

It was perhaps the closest Netanyahu has ever come to admitting that Israel has assassinated targets in Iran, most recently a senior Hamas official who was attending a funeral.

Netanyahu warned Hezbollah just as bluntly. “We have eliminated senior military commanders who have shed not only Israeli blood, but also American and French blood,” he said, just as Israel attacked Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut. “And then we took out their successors, and then the successors of their successors, and we will continue to degrade Hezbollah until all of our objectives are achieved.”

Referring to Gaza, where the Biden administration has long sought a ceasefire and the release of hostages still held by Hamas, Netanyahu said: “As long as Hamas does not surrender, we will fight until we achieve complete victory.”

Biden administration officials, who have been cautious in their official criticism of Israel for months, are openly expressing frustration – if not anger – with Netanyahu for appearing to agree to plans to curb violence and then reversing them hours after the announcement.

Kirby, who has often defended Israel's wartime behavior in the past, made clear in a phone call with reporters Thursday the administration's frustration with the latest apparent reversal.

“A lot of care and effort was put into this declaration,” he said, referring to a multinational call on Wednesday evening for an immediate 21-day ceasefire on the Israel-Lebanon border. “We wouldn’t have made that statement, we wouldn’t have worked on it, if we didn’t have reason to believe that the conversations we were having, particularly with the Israelis, supported the goal there.”

Netanyahu said in a statement Friday morning that there had been “false reporting” about the U.S.-led ceasefire proposal, despite previously saying clearly that he was unwilling to abide by it.

“Israel shares the goals of the US-led initiative to enable people along our northern border to return safely to their homes,” its statement said. “Israel appreciates U.S. efforts in this regard because the U.S. role is essential to promoting stability and security in the region.”

“That won’t happen while the war rages,” Kirby told reporters.

“We still believe that an all-out war is not the best way to get people back to their homes,” he said, referring to the tens of thousands of Israeli civilians and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians displaced by the war. “If that is the goal, we believe all-out war is not the right way to achieve it.”

In his speech to the United Nations, Netanyahu also made his clearest appeal for peace with Saudi Arabia, which has withdrawn from tentative normalization talks amid the ongoing war.

“Such a peace would certainly be a real turning point in history,” he said. “It would usher in a historic reconciliation between the Arab world and Israel, between Islam and Judaism, between Mecca and Jerusalem.”

In his speech, Netanyahu criticized the United Nations for blaming Israel for the war, while barely addressing the actors who started it: Hamas and Hezbollah, backed by Iran.

“The exclusion of the only Jewish state continues to be a moral stain on the United Nations,” he said. “It has made this once respected institution contemptible in the eyes of decent people everywhere.”

Netanyahu was the third speaker on Friday morning, and as if to illustrate his point, the two prime ministers who spoke before him, Robert Golob of Slovenia and Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, blamed Israel alone for the war. Nobody mentioned Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran.

“I want to say this loud and clear to the Israeli government: Stop the bloodshed, stop the suffering, bring the hostages home and end the occupation,” Golob said, not mentioning the 100 or so hostages he was targeting referred to being held by Hamas. “Mr. Netanyahu, end this war now.”

Netanyahu and his delegation brought the families of the hostages to the United Nations and recognized them and their suffering. Several hostage families protested outside the building, demanding Netanyahu “seal the deal” and agree to Biden's hostage ceasefire agreement.

“Our government does not work for the Israeli nation. They are working for their personal survival,” Yehuda Cohen, the father of hostage Nimrod Cohen, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, arguing that Netanyahu postponed a deal to continue the war, stay in office and shirk his own responsibilities for Israeli negligence that made the October 7 attack possible. “Actual leadership means taking responsibility. That's the last thing he does.”

The hostage families received significant support Friday from a group of Jewish organizations across the political spectrum who called on Netanyahu to reach an agreement to release the hostages.

“While meetings continue to take place expeditiously around the terms of a possible meeting hostage We call on the Israeli government to ensure that it prioritizes this issue above all others, and we agree with that hostages and Missing Families Forum, calling on them to finally 'seal the deal,'” said a statement from the Conservative and Reform movements, the Women's International Zionist Organization, the American branch of the Jewish National Fund and others The National Council of Jewish Women signed the agreement.

JTA reporter Luke Tress contributed to this report.