Netanyahu tells UN of brother Yoni's 1967 vow, 'We have no other choice'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly on 24.09.2026, beginning with a jab at delegates who had walked out before he spoke and going on to defend Israel's campaign against Iran's nuclear programme, according to the transcript published by the Israeli government. He built much of the speech around a personal story: a conversation with his late brother, Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, on the eve of the Six Day War in 1967.

The line he took from that conversation, which he repeated several times, was a phrase attributed to his brother: "We're going to win." and "We have no other choice." The Hebrew news channel News.co.il reported the following day that the New York Post had put Netanyahu on its front page with that line, pairing the post with a remark suggesting, apparently with irony, that nobody was interested in the speech.

What the General Assembly is

The General Assembly is the UN body in which every member state holds a seat. Heads of state and government address it in turn during an annual high-level gathering in New York. Israeli prime ministers have long used the platform to speak to an international audience, and walkouts by some delegations during Israeli addresses are a recurring feature. Netanyahu's opening words invited any remaining "moral cowards" to leave the hall. The transcript does not say which delegations had left or how many.

Iran and the 'red line'

Netanyahu reminded the Assembly that fourteen years earlier he had drawn a red line on the same stage, pledging to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. He told delegates Israel had done so, describing the strikes on Iran's nuclear sites as very difficult to carry out but one of the easiest decisions of his time in office. He said Israel had acted together with the United States against Iran's army, navy, air force and nuclear facilities, and claimed that leaders of some countries whose delegates walked out had privately thanked Israel.

1967, Entebbe and the family story

Netanyahu recalled that in 1967 he was an Israeli high school student in Philadelphia and flew home five days before the war began. He described finding his brother, then a 21 year old paratroop officer, in the orange groves near Ramle, a city in central Israel, where the question on everyone's mind was what would happen next.

He also recounted the 1976 hijacking of a plane bound for Israel, which was diverted to Entebbe in Uganda. Israeli forces rescued 103 hostages; Yoni Netanyahu, who commanded the assault team, was the only soldier killed. The prime minister thanked Uganda for recently putting up a statue of his brother at the spot where he died.

On territory, he argued the conflict was about the existence of a Jewish state rather than borders, noting that in 1967 Israel did not hold Gaza, the Golan Heights or what he called Judea and Samaria. That is the biblical name the Israeli government uses for the West Bank. In a passage on the Golan, the plateau on Israel's north-eastern frontier with Syria, he addressed remarks to a "Mr. Ashara", saying Jews had lived there since biblical times. He rejected accusations of colonialism, singling out critics in Britain and France.

October 7 and the war since

Netanyahu described the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 as the darkest day in Israel's history, saying 1,200 Israelis were killed. He compared the toll, for a country of 10 million, to 40,000 Americans, or 16 times 9/11. He described killings, sexual violence and other abuses carried out during the attack.

He said Israel had spent three years fighting on seven fronts, naming Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran, militias in Iraq and Syria, and Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank. He referred to Hezbollah's arsenal, which he put at 150,000 missiles and rockets, and made a passing reference to "the beepers" without further explanation in the published text.

What the reports do not say

The government transcript available to us breaks off mid-sentence, so the remainder of the speech, including any policy announcements on Gaza, hostages, Lebanon or diplomacy, is not covered here. Neither report says how many delegations walked out, which countries they represented, or how long the speech lasted. The identity of the "Mr. Ashara" Netanyahu addressed is not given in the material. The New York Post front page is known to us only through the News.co.il post, and that post offers no detail on how other outlets or governments responded. Many of the figures above, including the casualty comparisons and the size of Hezbollah's arsenal, are the prime minister's own claims as delivered in the speech.