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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Addressing United Nations General Assembly; Netanyahu Slams U.N. as Anti-Israel Flat-Earth Society; Now, Zelenskyy Meeting With Trump to Rally Support for Ukraine. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 27, 2024 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00]

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: But if they don't, but if they don't, we will fight until we achieve victory, total victory. There is no substitute for it.

Israel must also defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span in all continents. It has murdered more Americans and more Frenchmen than any group except Bin Laden. It's murdered the citizens of many countries represented in this room. And it has attacked Israel viciously over the last 20 years, in the last year, completely unprovoked.

A day after the Hamas massacre, on October 7, Hezbollah began attacks against Israel, which forced more than 60,000 Israelis on our northern border to leave their homes, becoming refugees in their own land. Hezbollah turned vibrant towns in the north of Israel into ghost towns.

So, I want you to think about this in equivalent American terms. Just imagine if terrorists turned El Paso in San Diego into ghost towns. Then ask yourself, how long would the American government tolerate that? A day? A week? A month? I doubt they'd tolerate it even for a single day. Yet Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I've come here today to say, enough is enough.

We won't rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes. We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border able to perpetrate another October 7th style massacre. For 18 years, Hezbollah brazenly refused to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which requires it to move its forces away from our borders. Instead, Hezbollah moved right up to our border. They secretly dug terror tunnels to infiltrate our communities and indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets into our towns and villages. They fired these rockets and missiles not from military sites, not from that. They do that too, but they fired those rockets and missiles after they placed them in schools, in hospitals, in apartment buildings, and in the private homes of the citizens of Lebanon. They endanger their own people. They put a missile in every kitchen, a rocket in every garage.

I said to the people of Lebanon this week, Get out of the death trap that Hezbollah has put you in. Don't let Nasrallah drag Lebanon into the abyss. We're not at war with you. We're at war with Hezbollah, which has hijacked your country and threatens to destroy ours. As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice and Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely. And that's exactly what we're doing.

Just this week, the IDF destroyed large percentages of Hezbollah's rockets, which it built with Iran's funding for three decades. We took out senior military commanders who not only shed Israeli blood, but American and French blood as well. And then we took out their replacements, and then the replacements of their replacements. And we'll continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're committed to removing the curse of terrorism that threatens all civilized societies. But to truly realize the blessing of a new Middle East, we must continue the path we paved with the Abraham Accords four years ago. Above all, this means achieving a historic peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

And having seen the blessings that we've already brought with the Abraham Accords, the millions of Israelis who've already flown back and forth across the Arabian Peninsula, over the skies of Saudi Arabia, to the Gulf countries, the trade, the tourism, the joint ventures, the peace, the peace, I say to you, what blessing such a peace with Saudi Arabia would bring.

[10:05:22]

It would be a boon to the security and economy of our two countries. It would boost trade and tourism across the region. It would help transform the Middle East into a global juggernaut. Our two countries could cooperate on energy, water, agriculture, artificial intelligence, and many, many other fields, such a peace I'm sure would be a true pivot of history. It would usher in a historic reconciliation between the Arab world and Israel, between Islam and Judaism, between Mecca and Jerusalem.

While Israel is committed to achieving such a peace, Iran and its terror proxies are committed to scuttling it. That's why one of the best ways to foil Iran's nefarious designs is to achieve the peace. Such a peace would be the foundation for an even broader Abrahamic alliance. And that alliance would include the United States, Israel, Kurds, Arab peace partners, Saudi Arabia, and others who choose the blessing of peace. It will advance security and prosperity across the Middle East and bring enormous benefits to the rest of the world.

With American support and leadership, I believe this vision can materialize and much sooner than people think. And as the prime minister of Israel, I will do everything in my power to make it happen. This is an opportunity that we and the world should not let go by.

Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has made its choice. We seek to move forward to a bright age of prosperity and peace. Iran and its proxies have also made their choice. They want to move back to a dark age of terror and war. And now I have a question. And I pose that question to you. What choice will you make? Will your nation stand with Israel? Will you stand with democracy and peace? Or will you stand with Iran, a brutal dictatorship that subjugates its own people, exports terrorism across the globe?

In this battle between good and evil, there must be no equivocation. When you stand with Israel, you stand for your own values and your own interests. Yes, we're defending ourselves, but we're also defending you against the common enemy that through violence and terror seeks to destroy our way of life. So, there should be no confusion about this, but unfortunately there is, a lot of it. In many countries and in this very hall, as I've just heard, good is portrayed as evil and evil is portrayed as good.

We see this moral confusion when Israel is falsely accused of genocide, when we defend ourselves against enemies who try to commit genocide against us. We see this too when Israel is absurdly accused by the ICC prosecutor of deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza. What an absurdity. We helped bring in 700,000 tons of food into Gaza. That's more than 3,000 calories a day for every man, woman and child in Gaza.

We see this moral confusion when Israel is falsely accused of deliberately targeting civilians. We don't want to see a single person, a single innocent person die. That's always a tragedy. And that's why we do so much to minimize civilian casualties, even as our enemies use civilians as human shields. And no army has done what Israel is doing to minimize civilian casualties. We drop flyers, we send text messages, we make phone calls by the millions to ensure that Palestinian civilians get out of harm's way. We spare no effort in this noble pursuit.

We see yet another profound moral confusion when self-described progressives march against the democracy of Israel. Don't they realize they support the Iranian-backed goons in Tehran and in Gaza, the goons who gun down protestors, murder women for not covering their hair, and hang gays in public squares, some progressives?

[10:10:00]

According to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Iran funds and fuels many of the protestors against Israel, who knows, maybe some of the protesters, or even many of the protesters outside this building now.

Ladies and gentlemen, King Solomon, who reigned in our eternal capital, Jerusalem, 3,000 years ago, proclaimed, he proclaimed something that is familiar to all of you. He said, there is nothing new under the sun. Well, in an age of space travel, quantum physics and artificial intelligence, some would argue that's a debatable statement. But one thing is undeniable. There is definitely nothing new at the United Nations.

Take it from me. I first spoke from this podium as Israel's ambassador to the U.N. in 1984. That's exactly 40 years ago. And in my maiden speech here -- I think it's the same podium, by the way. In my maiden speech here, I spoke against a proposal to expel Israel from this body. Four decades later, I find myself defending Israel against that same preposterous proposal.

And who's leading the charge this time? Not Hamas, but Abbas, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. This is the man who claims he wants peace with Israel, yet he still refuses to condemn the horrific massacre of October 7th. He's still paying hundreds of millions to terrorists who murder Israelis and Americans. It's called pay for slay. The more you murder, the more you get paid. And he still wages unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel's right to exist, and against Israel's right to defend itself. And, by the way, they amount to the same thing. Because if you can't defend yourself, you can't exist, not in our neighborhood, certainly, and maybe not in yours.

Standing in this podium, 40 years ago, I told the sponsors of that outrageous resolution to expel Israel, Gentlemen, check your fanaticism at the door. Today, I tell President Abbas and all of you who would shamefully support that resolution, check your fanaticism at the door. The singling out of the one and only Jewish state continues to be a moral stain on the United Nations.

It has made this once respected institution contemptible in the eyes of decent people everywhere. But for the Palestinians, this U.N. house of darkness is home court. They know that in this swamp of anti- Semitic bile, there's an automatic majority willing to demonize the Jewish state on anything. In this anti-Israel, flat earth society, any false charge, any outlandish allegation can muster a majority.

In the last decade, there have been more resolutions passed against Israel in this hall at the U.N. General Assembly than against the entire world combined, actually, more than twice as many. Since 2014, this body condemned Israel 174 times. It condemned all the other countries in the world 73 times. That's more than 100 extra condemnations for the Jewish state. What hypocrisy. What a double standard. What a joke to the U.N.'s hostility.

So, all the speeches you heard today, all the hostility directed at Israel this year, it's not about Gaza. It's about Israel. It's always been about Israel, about Israel's very existence. And I say to you, until Israel, until the Jewish state is treated like other nations, until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the U.N. will be viewed by fair minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce.

Now, given the anti-Semitism at the U.N., it should surprise no one that the prosecutor at the ICC, one of the U.N.'s affiliated organs, is considering issuing arrest warrants against me and Israel's defense minister, the democratically elected leaders of the Democratic State of Israel.

[10:15:12]

The ICC prosecutors rush to judgment. His refusal to treat Israel with its independent courts, the way other democracies are treated, is hard to explain by anything other than pure anti-Semitism.

Ladies and gentlemen, the real war criminals are not in Israel. They're in Iran. They're in Gaza, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Yemen. Those of you who stand with these war criminals, those of you who stand with evil against good, with a curse against a blessing, those of you who do so should be ashamed of yourselves.

But I have a message for you. Israel will win this battle. We'll win this battle because we don't have a choice. After generations, in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered, and no one raised a finger in our defense, we now have a state, we now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage, and we are defending ourselves. As the book of Samuel says in the Bible, Netzach Yisrael lo yishaker, the eternity of Israel will not falter.

In the Jewish people's epic journey from antiquity, in our odyssey through the tempest and upheavals of modern times, that ancient promise has always been kept and it will hold true for all time. To borrow a great poet's phrase, Israel will not go gently into that good night. We will never need to rage against the dying of the light because the torch of Israel will forever shine bright.

To the people of Israel, and to the soldiers of Israel, I say, be strong and of good courage. (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE). The people of Israel live now, tomorrow forever. Thank you.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. You've been listening to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in front of the United Nations General Assembly. Not the entirety of the General Assembly, as many of those delegates walked out at the beginning of this very fiery speech from the Israeli prime minister. At one point, he referred to the United Nations as an anti-Semitic swamp, and he said the real war criminals are in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon. So, some very fiery words from Netanyahu.

Let me get out to Alex Marquardt at the U.N. Alex, your assessment of the prime minister's speech does not sound like the region is on a path to peace right now if you go by what the prime minister just said.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No, you're absolutely right, Jim. I think that when you listen to the prime minister there, that is not someone who is ready to agree to a ceasefire deal in Lebanon or a ceasefire deal in Gaza, frankly. This was a defiant speech. It was a wide ranging speech. He started by saying that he came here to the United Nations, that he wasn't planning to come, but he decided to come to counter what he called the lies and slanders of other countries during the course of this week.

He was speaking to a largely empty chamber. It was empty-ish before, before he got there. And then, as you noted, there were a couple walkouts, including, according to our teams inside, from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Iran.

There's a lot to get to in the speech. There's a lot of fact-checking that we could do, particularly when it comes to his claims about the amount of aid getting into Gaza, his claims about what they're doing to keep civilians safe in Gaza. But, Jim, by and large, these were familiar themes when it comes to Netanyahu and the U.N. Much of his focus there against talking about Iran and their unremitting aggression. He talked at length about the need to continue the fights against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

He slammed the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, who just spoke yesterday, calling what is going on in Gaza a genocide.

[10:20:04]

And then, as you noted, he also railed against the United Nations claiming that it is an anti-Semitic body, an anti-Israel body, calling it a contemptuous farce.

So, again, this is not someone who appears to be on the verge of accepting this 21-day ceasefire for Lebanon that U.S. and other officials have been working on this week. I just want to quote one thing he said. As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat.

Jim, he did frame this broadly as a choice between curses and blessings, and he held up maps. He brought props, as he has done in the past. The curses would be the power of Iran to reach across the region. He held up a map of showing Iran and its tentacles, as he called it, its proxies all the way to the west of the Mediterranean Sea. And then he talked about the promises of normalization with Saudi Arabia.

But, frankly, that normalization, Jim, is a long way off as we continue to see these conflicts play out in the Middle East. Jim?

ACOSTA: And no question about it. All right, Alex Marquardt, thank you very much.

I want to bring in Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss. Congressman, you've been listening to some of Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech. Your reaction? I mean, he had some, obviously, very fiery language aimed at the United Nations and the people he sees as the enemies of the state of Israel. What did you make of that?

REP. JAKE AUCHINCLOSS (D-MA): The prime minister's always been a powerful orator, and I agree with his strong defense of Israel's right to protect itself and its citizens. I agree that Israel seeks peace and trade, and Iran seeks the destruction of Israel. I agree that Hamas must have no role in post-war Gaza.

But right now, what Israel needs is not just an order. Israel needs a strategist. Israel needs somebody who can connect the righteous objectives of their war, repopulate Northern Israel, get the hostages home, have post-war governance that excludes Hamas and Gaza. They need to connect those objectives with the tactics of the IDF. That's what political leadership is meant to do. Here's what we're trying to fight for. Here's how we're fighting, but then here's how we're going to get that done. And there has been an insufficiently coherent and multilateral strategy from the prime minister. And he needs to take this opportunity to put one in place.

ACOSTA: And when he says we're going to fight until we achieve total victory in Gaza, I mean, that does not sound as though a ceasefire deal is anywhere on the horizon. I mean, how can the Biden administration approach this now? I mean, it seems like Netanyahu's latest cards on the table.

AUCHINCLOSS: I think total victory in Gaza needs to be defined just as much from Sinwar's perspective as from Netanyahu's perspective, which might sound like a startling statement. But what I mean is Sinwar doesn't fear death and destruction in Gaza. Indeed, he welcomes it. What he fears is reconstruction. He fears an alternative to Hamas that offers an agenda of economic redevelopment and security and infrastructure investments and education for the Palestinian people.

And if Israel was able to architect a Palestinian-led, Arab-supported, western-backed alternative to Hamas, that is victory in Gaza. He has yet to do that.

ACOSTA: And, you know, when he refers to the U.N. as an anti-Israel flat earth society, I mean, obviously, you're not known for his diplomatic language, but to go into the United Nations and throw that kind of rhetoric around, I mean, what's your response to that?

AUCHINCLOSS: The United Nations has decades of a shameful double standard when regarding Israel behind it. And so some of that rhetoric is justified by the U.N.'s actions, It's shameful that U.N. delegates couldn't even see fit to sit and listen to a democratic nation talk about its vision and its right to defend itself and its goals to unite the Middle East in peace and trade. So, those delegates should have been sitting there. And they need to stop excoriating Israel to the exclusion of Iran and Syria and North Korea and Venezuela and other states that don't receive nearly the same opprobrium that the Jewish state does.

ACOSTA: All right. Congressman Jake Auchincloss, thanks for coming in. We appreciate it.

More breaking news right now, it's a very busy morning. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump just wrapped up a meeting in New York. We'll talk about what they said in just a few moments. That's next.

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ACOSTA: All right. Just moments ago at Trump Tower in New York City, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with former President Donald Trump. They spoke to the press just moments ago. Let's take a listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Well, very much. It's an honor to have the president with us. And he's been through a lot. He's been through a tremendous amount, like probably nobody else, almost nobody else in history, if you really get right down to it. And we're going to have a discussion and see what we can come up with. But great honor to have you with us. Thank you very much.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: Thank you so much, Mr. President. Thank you so much for this meeting. Five years passed. So we had -- yes, we had meeting again here in New York in September. And now there are a lot of challenges in Ukraine, United States. And, of course, I want to discuss with you. I think where we are together, I think we have common view that the war in Ukraine has to be stopped and Putin can't win and Ukraine has to prevail.

And I want to discuss with you the details of our plan of victory. Thank you so much.

TRUMP: Thank you very much, everybody.

ZELENSKYY: Thank you.

TRUMP: Thank you very much. Do you have a question for the president? Yes?

REPORTER: Why did you decide to meet?

[10:30:00]

ZELENSKYY: I think it's me, or to both of us? Okay, thank you so much.

First of all, it's very important --