David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Trump administration, told Newsmax on Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a great speech in front of a U.N. General Assembly in New York that hasn’t lifted a finger to help the Jewish state fend off attacks from Iranian-back terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Dozens of diplomats walked out during Netanyahu’s speech in which he called the General Assembly a "swamp of antisemitic bile" and tore into the immense international criticism of Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip.
"It is a morally bankrupt den of iniquity," Friedman told “Rob Schmitt Tonight” about the General Assembly. "What a horrible place. What an embarrassment for the world.
"The speech was great. I wish more people heard it, but the speech was great. He laid out the reality of what's really happening in the Middle East, which is that Israel is the subject of these barbaric attacks, almost no one is coming to its defense."
Especially now that Israel is facing a fight on two fronts against Iranian terror proxies, Hamas to the south in Gaza in response to the group’s barbaric Oct. 7 terror attack, and to the north, where Hezbollah has been raining rockets and missiles into Israel in response to the Jewish state’s retaliation against Hamas.
Israel’s actions against Hezbollah have escalated in the past week. Israel Defense Forces targeted Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on the terror group's main headquarters in Beirut on Friday night, a week after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed two top Hezbollah military commanders, including Ibrahim Aqil, believed to be behind the bombings of a U.S. Marines barracks and the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon in 1983.
The attack that killed Aqil happened just days after a wave of explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies used by the group killed dozens and wounded thousands. Israel is believed to have been responsible for those attacks but has not claimed responsibility.
"Israel has said, Look, we don't want to invade Lebanon," Friedman said. "We don't want to have any territorial aspirations with regard to Lebanon. Just have them stop firing at our people. We've got 60,000 citizens in the north that have been displaced, that are refugees in their own land. Just stop that."
Friedman criticized diplomatic efforts from the likes of President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who have "achieved absolutely nothing because they were never willing to confront Iran, which is, of course, directing all these activities."
"They were never willing to impose sanctions on Iran that would be meaningful to Iran," Friedman said. "So, after 11 months of this, Netanyahu said, OK, enough. … Look, Israel, left to their own devices, will win this war. They can defeat Hezbollah.
"By the way, it will be a blessing to the whole world. Very few organizations in the world have the blood of more Americans on their hands than Hezbollah. And yet it's Israel and only Israel which is being permitted to fight this fight."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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