129 Quotes by Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu, a prominent Israeli politician, has had a significant impact on the country's politics and foreign policy during his tenure as Prime Minister. Serving multiple terms, Netanyahu has been recognized for his staunch conservatism and strong leadership. Throughout his career, he has prioritized Israel's security and taken a firm stance on issues such as defense, terrorism, and regional stability.
Netanyahu's policies have emphasized the importance of maintaining a strong military and protecting Israeli interests in a volatile region. He has also been an advocate for economic reforms and technological advancements, fostering Israel's reputation as a startup nation.
However, Netanyahu's leadership has been controversial, with critics raising concerns over his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, settlements in the West Bank, and the peace process. Despite divisions, Netanyahu's enduring influence on Israeli politics and his commitment to Israel's security have shaped the country's trajectory and left a lasting impact on the region.
Benjamin Netanyahu Quotes
If Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war.
You can make peace with an enemy, if the enemy abandons the idea of destroying you. That is the critical test. Democracies fail to understand what I just said.
Peace is purchased from strength. It's not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats.
I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That's like accusing America of Americanizing Washington, or the British of Anglicizing London. You know why we're called 'Jews'? Because we come from Judea.
Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But I know that Israel does not stand alone. I know that America stands with Israel.
When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.
History has shown us time and again that what is right is not what is popular.
Certainly the international community is putting a lot of pressure on Iran and making clear that its nuclear program must stop. If it stops with the sanctions, the combinations of sanctions, diplomacy, other pressures, I, as the prime minister of Israel, will be the happiest person in the world.
I'm the prime minister who removed 400 checkpoints, barriers, road-blocks and so on to facilitate the growth of the Palestinian economy.
The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith.
I don't want to govern the Palestinians. I don't want them as subjects of Israel or as citizens of Israel. I want them to have their own independent state but a demilitarized state.
First of all, Arafat is wrong. Jerusalem is Israel's capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, the capital of the Jewish people, for ever and ever.
Our policy is very simple. The Jewish state was set up to defend Jewish lives, and we always reserve the right to defend ourselves.
The purpose of the Jewish state is to secure the Jewish future. That is why Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, against any threat.
The Israeli government has proved over the past year its commitment to peace, both in words and deeds. By contrast, the Palestinians are posing preconditions for renewing the diplomatic process in a way they have not done over the course of 16 years.
If I have to reduce all of the laws of war into a single sentence, it is this. You divide the world into two, combatants and noncombatants. You can attack deliberately combatants, but not deliberately noncombatants. Israel acts that way. It attacks combatants and accidentally kills noncombatants. But in the case of the terrorists, it's the exact opposite. They deliberately attack combatants - noncombatants, civilians, deliberately.
Terrorism is carried out purposefully, in a cold-blooded, calculated fashion. The declared goals of the terrorist may change from place to place. He supposedly fights to remedy wrongs -- social, religious, national, racial. But for all these problems his only solution is the demolition of the whole structure of society. No partial solution, not even the total redressing of the grievance he complains of, will satisfy him -- until our social system is destroyed or delivered into his hands.
American leaders worry about the security of their country. Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.
Leaders must see reality as it is, not as it ought to be.
In my office in Jerusalem, there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu.
I'm not consumed with political machinations.
The history of warfare has not yet enabled any army, any civilized army, the army of a democracy like Israel, to be able to deal with a ruthless terrorist enemy that uses civilians as a human shield without having some incidental civilian casualties.
In order to restore security for Israeli citizens, every home, mother and child in Israel, and to establish a stable and strong government that will unite the nation...I hereby declare my candidacy.
No one yet knows what awaits the Jews in the twenty-first century, but we must make every effort to ensure that it is better than what befell them in the twentieth, the century of the Holocaust.
We'll attack anyone who tries to harm our citizens.
If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country.
And by the way, a piece of news, Israel is the one country in which everyone is pro-American, opposition and coalition alike. And I represent the entire people of Israel who say, 'Thank you, America.'' And we're friends of America, and we're the only reliable allies of America in the Middle East.
Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world's security. You couldn't make this thing up.
I can tell you one thing, Iran is closer to developing nuclear weapons today than it was a week ago, or a month ago or a year ago. It's just moving on with its efforts.
I'm a proud member of the rabble.
Those in the international community that refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.
President Abbas, you've dedicated your life to advancing the Palestinian cause. Must this conflict continue for generations, or will we enable our children and our grandchildren to speak in years ahead of how we found a way to end it? That's what we should aim for, and that's what I believe we can achieve.
Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders.
Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.
If there is a birthrate demographic problem, and there is, it is with the non-White races Israeli Arabs who are American will remain Israeli citizens.
If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.
I don't know of any army that does more than an Israeli army does to avoid civilian casualties. But incidental and unintended casualties accompany every war.
Everything should be done to prevent Iran, the world's most dangerous regime, from developing the world's most dangerous weapons.
The right combination is between a free economy and social policy that addresses the needs of society and creates equal opportunity.
May God bless the state of Israel and may God bless the United States of America.
Populism is dangerous.
Saving lives is more important than preserving the quality of life. Quality of life is always amenable to improvement. Death is permanent.
Israel does not target civilians. It targets the terrorists.
I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day.
The Czech Republic stood with the U.S., Canada and a handful of other countries against the prevailing international current, but history has shown us time and again that what is right is not what is popular.
90 percent, 85 to 90 percent of Israeli citizens in Judea-Samaria, in the West Bank, live in clusters, in urban blocks. Everybody understands that if we were to have a solution then those blocks would stay in Israel. And that's where you saw these cranes; that's where Israelis live. In the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, everybody understands, they will stay.
You can only end a negotiation for peace if you begin it.
The only peace that can endure is a peace that can be defended.
You know, I'm just not going to get into American politics.
Iran is a country that talks about, denies the Holocaust, promises to wipe out Israel, is engaged in terror throughout the world. This is a regime that is giving vent to the worst impulses that you see right now in the Middle East. They deny the rights of women, deny democracy, brutalize their own people, don't give freedom of religion.
Donald Trump feels very warmly about the Jewish state, about the Jewish people and about Jewish people. There's no question about that.
I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.
If diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat.
As far as a nuclear weapons-free zone, you know, when the lion lies down with the lamb, and you don't need a new lamb every day to satisfy the lion, then we might have this kind of transformation in the Middle East.
Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving a base for attacks to the radical Islam against Israel.
The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.
The Israelis wanted to sabotage the Palestinian - Palestinian reconciliation.
Why are we talking about talking? Why negotiating about negotiating? It's very simple. If you want to get to peace, put all your preconditions on the side, sit down opposite a table, not in a studio, by the way.
Some will criticize me no matter what I do.
I think that a strong Israel is the only Israel that will bring the Arabs to the peace table.
The Romans used to say that courage is not the only virtue, but it's the only one that makes the other virtues possible.
To subdivide this land into two unstable, insecure nations, to try to defend what is indefensible, is to invite disaster. Carving Judea and Samaria out of Israel means carving up Israel.
The greatest threat facing humanity is a radical Islamist regime meeting up with nuclear weapons.
We should stay focused on the real problem in the Middle East. It's not Israel. It's these dictatorships that are developing nuclear weapons with the specific goal of wiping Israel away.
My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin - Binyamin - the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Samaria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.
Every time an Arab leader truly wanted peace, they got it. If the Palestinians truly want peace, we will make peace.
Well, this is an unfortunate part of the UN institution. It's the - the theater of the absurd. It doesn't only cast Israel as the villain; it often casts real villains in leading roles: Gadhafi's Libya chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights; Saddam's Iraq headed the UN Committee on Disarmament.
Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.
If we accept the notion that terrorists will have immunity because as they fire on civilians they hide behind civilians, then this tactic will be legitimized and the terrorists will have their greatest victory.
I know Donald Trump. I know him very well. And I think his attitude, his support for Israel is clear.
The days that the Jewish people remain passive in the face of genocidal enemies — those days are over.
Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.
The Palestinians want a state, but they have to give peace in return. What they're trying to do in the United Nations is to get a state without giving Israel peace or giving Israel peace and security. And I think that's, that's wrong. That should not succeed. That should, that should fail.
The relationship between Israel and the United States is a bond of - it’s just a very powerful bond. It was, it is, and will be and will continue to be.
I will say that I think Israel enjoys strong bipartisan support in the United States. It's really above and beyond American politics.
There is a great danger to the world, not only to my country [Israel] but to the United States, to the Middle East, to peace, to all of humanity, from the prospect that such regimes that brutalize its own people, that sponsors terrorism more than any other regime in the world - that this regime acquires atomic bombs is very, very dangerous.
Israel has no better friend than America. And America has no better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism.
In the frameworks of a peace agreement, a government under my leadership would agree to make real territorial concessions but will not compromise our security borders. We want there to be less friction. We want to remove outposts to help the Palestinian population. We will not reoccupy the Palestinian population.
We want to end this misery of the Palestinian people in order for us really to live with dignity as human beings in an independent state side by side with the Israeli state.
I'm very proud of the fact that Israel is the one country in a very broad radius that - in which Arabs have free and fair elections. That's sacrosanct. That will never change. I wasn't trying to suppress a vote. I was trying to get something to counter a foreign-funded effort to get votes that are intended to topple my party. And I was calling on our voters to come out.
I would say we want to stop the firing of rockets, for sure. But we also want to dismantle the terror - the tunnel - the terror tunnel networks that we have uncovered.
We are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles.
You don't have people chanting 'Death to America' in Israel.
I've been right more than I've been wrong.
Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems, like refugees and Jerusalem, which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down.
The idea of imposing peace from the outside doesn't work.
I don't want a single state. And I talked about two states where a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state, and I stand by that. I haven't retracted my position; I haven't changed it.
The Palestinian society is split into two - those who are openly calling for Israel's destruction like Hamas, and those who are not calling openly for Israel's destruction but refuse to confront those who do. And that's the Palestinian authority. I think they're timid, they're afraid to actually stand up to these killers. And I think that they're afraid, maybe for their own sake, for their own political hides, sometimes for their own physical safety. And they don't take that necessary plunge.
Israel has to accommodate the Palestinian demands and aspirations for ending occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. That is the only answer. The Israeli aggression on Gaza does not bring peace to Israel. We know that. We want end of occupation.
The rules of engagement have become so rigid that governments often straightjacket themselves in the face of unambiguous aggression.
I'm not naturally manipulative.
Israel can make peace with an organization that seeks its destruction. That's Hamas. But Israel can make peace with the Palestinian Authority. It requires a lot of courage from both sides including President Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
There is an irreplaceable ally. It's called the United States of America.
The people of Israel have come home never to be uprooted again.
Israel has done enormous amount of, for peace. I myself have done things that no prime minister previously had done.
They're in the red zone. They're in the last 20 yards, and you can't let them cross that goal line. You can't let them score a touchdown, because that would have unbelievable consequences, grievous consequences for the peace and security of us all, of the world really.
The real reason we haven't had peace is because of a persistent refusal of the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state in any border.
The minute Mr. Putin decided to put his military forces in Syria, I went to see him. And I said, "Look, here's what I'm doing. I'm not intervening in Syria. But at the same time, if Syria tries to intervene with us, if Iran tries to use Syria to attack us, we'll stop it.
The only good thing I can say about the deal with Iran is that it brought the Arab states and Israel closer together.
The prime minister of Israel is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously. But we don't want to see this turned into some great political football
We will take whatever action is necessary to protect our people, including against the terror tunnels that they are trying to dig against us.
The Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would be infinitely more costly than any scenario you can imagine to stop it.
Hamas is responsible and Hamas should held accountable for civilian deaths.
We will respond with a heavy hand to the brutal murder of Jews who came to pray and were killed by lowly murderers.
Israel is doing what any other country would do, and certainly the U.S. would do. If 80 percent of your population were under fire and you had 60 seconds or 90 seconds to get into bomb shelters, if terror tunnels were dug underneath your border in order to come in and explode your kindergartens and massacre your people and kidnap American citizens.
Hamas is simply continuing all its operations. And Israel will not let this terror operation decide when it's convenient for them and not convenient for them to attack our people.
I don't think that anyone should doubt Israel's determination to defend itself against terror and destruction.
There’s no one in Israel who appreciates more than me the importance of American support for Israel.
I don't want a one-state solution. But I certainly don't want a zero-state solution, a no-state solution, where Israel's very existence would be jeopardized. And that's what the people of Israel overwhelmingly elected me to do.
I want to tell you that Israel is a democracy and every citizen is automatically registered to vote. There's a commitment in our declaration of independence, guaranteed under Israel's law, that all our citizens, Arab and Jews, alike, have the right to vote.
There is a fundamental situation in which the country has reached rock bottom, that a mother can't send her children out of the house in the morning. The country has reached rock bottom and this needs to be changed.
The people of Israel will have to be convinced that the Palestinians are ready for peace.
The US-Israel partnership transcends politics and it always will
If the world powers are not prepared to insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal is signed, at the very least they should insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal expires.
I don't want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that circumstances have to change.
There is a structural difference between the way that Europe views Israel, and America views Israel. The European view is informed by the importance of colonialism in Europe's past. So for Europeans we are like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. Strange interlopers in somebody else's land. But in fact, we [Israeli] have been here for 4,000 years. This is our ancestral homeland.
We wanted peace and we wanted to come to terms with the Israelis.
The instability in the region is not a result of Israel and the Palestinians. That was never the cause of this instability. Instead, the disfunctionality of many of these societies that have failed to modernize.
The application of military force, or the prospect of such application, inhibits terrorist violence.
The entire world is focusing on the compromises that are necessary from Israel's side. But people [in the world] are not focusing on the fact that the Palestinians refuse to make the necessary compromises that are required on their side for peace.
Israel is so tiny. It's, you know, a little less than the length of Manhattan, without the West Bank, without Judea and Samaria.
Israel produces more conceptual products than any other country.
Israel has, enjoys bipartisan support - both Democrats and Republicans - and we extend bipartisan hospitality to both Democrats and Republicans.
Our friendship will weather the current disagreement as well, to grow even stronger in the future.
Hamas is firing at our cities, at our people, firing from these areas, from these homes, from these schools, from mosques, from hospitals. They are actually using them as weapon storage, as command posts and as firing positions, or right next to them.
My level of intervention in the press, trying to control stories, is zero. Subzero.
A legitimate democracy cannot act against a terror organization because it is using civilians as a human shield, and therefore it should absorb attacks on its own civilians.
― Benjamin Netanyahu Quotes
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Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
