Benjamin Netanyahu famous quotes

To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle and lose the war,
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#War #Winning #Isis

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#War #Israel #Law

If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Country #Iran #Want

We [Israel people] always blame Moses, that he was our greatest leader and one of the most gifted people in the world. He brought us the moral code and so on, belief in one God, but then he was a bad navigator. He brought us to the only part of the Middle East without any gas, without any oil.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Oil #Israel #People

The enemy of your enemy is your enemy!
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Enemy

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #People #World

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Light #Israel #Iran

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. They're timid, they're afraid to actually stand up to these killers. 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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Two #Israel #Safety

My opinion of Christian Zionists? They're scum. But don't tell them that. We need all the useful idiots we can get right now.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Christian #Hate #Scum

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #Causes #Results

Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Pay #Responsible #Hamas

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 that.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Ideas #Enemy #Democracy

The truth is that 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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#War #Israel #Would Be

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Past #America #Israel

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Fire #Victory #Tactics

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #Organization #President

If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #Stand Alone

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Country #Israel #People

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Holocaust #Effort #Twenties

Israel does not target civilians. It targets the terrorists.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #Doe #Target

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #People #Jerusalem

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#War #Army #Doe

I'm a proud member of the rabble.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Proud #Members

My level of intervention in the press, trying to control stories, is zero. Subzero.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Zero #Trying #Stories

Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Blow #Dry #United States

When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims -- national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#War #Civilization #Impact

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Tunnels #Want #Rockets

I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Winning #Election #Polls

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Country #Party #Israel

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #America #Jerusalem

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Independent #Order #People

Our policy is very simple. The Jewish state was set up to defend Jewish lives, and we always reserve the right to defend ourselves.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Simple #States #Policy

Israel is very much endangering.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel

We will take whatever action is necessary to protect our people,including against the terror tunnels that they are trying to dig against us.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Tunnels #People #Trying

Hamas is responsible and Hamas should held accountable for civilian deaths.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Responsible #Should #Hamas

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Country #Tunnels #Israel

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #People #Operations

The Israelis wanted to sabotage the Palestinian - Palestinian reconciliation.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Palestinian #Sabotage #Wanted

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Army #Israel #Enemy

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Home #School #Cities

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

#Organization #Democracy #Shields

We wanted peace and we wanted to come to terms with the Israelis.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Term #Wanted

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Independent #Israel #Want

The only peace that can endure is a peace that can be defended,
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Endure

American leaders worry about the security of their country. Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Country #Worry #Leader

The people of Israel have come home never to be uprooted again,
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Home #Israel #People

You know, I said in the U.N., I said to President Abbas, 'Look, we're in the same city, we're in the same building, for God's sake, the U.N. Let's just sit down and begin to talk peace.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Cities #President #Looks

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Simple #Talking #Opposites

Leaders must see reality as it is, not as it ought to be.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Reality #Leader

You can only end a negotiation for peace if you begin it.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Negotiation #Ends

Hamas is ISIS, and ISIS is Hamas. They're branches of the same tree. People who wantonly rocket our cities and want to conduct mass killings. And when they can, they murder children, teenagers, shoot them in the head. Throw people from the sixth floor, their own people. ... They're the enemies of peace, they're the enemies of Israel, they're the enemies of all civilized countries. And I believe they're the enemies of the Palestinians themselves.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Country #Children #Teenager

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Thinking #Israel #Giving

If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ‎violence. If the Jews put ‎down their weapons ‎today, there would be no ‎more Israel'‎
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #Would Be #Weapons

If diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Military #Chance #Threat

I'm not naturally manipulative.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Manipulative

I've been right more than I've been wrong.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Mean #Insecure #Israel

The Romans used to say that courage is not the only virtue, but it's the only one that makes the other virtues possible.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Virtue #Used

We'll attack anyone who tries to harm our citizens
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Trying #Citizens #Harm

Every time an Arab leader truly wanted peace, they got it. If the Palestinians truly want peace, we will make peace.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Leader #Want #Palestinian

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Fashion #Religious #Fighting

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Country #Czech Republic #Canada

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Real #Government #Agreement

If there is willingness on the Palestinian side to reach an agreement, it is possible. We are conducting the negotiations with goodwill.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Agreement #Sides #Negotiation

If the Palestinians do their part, we shall do our part and we shall have an agreement.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Agreement #Palestinian

I told John Kerry and General Allen, the Americans’ expert, ‘We live here, I live here, I know what we need to ensure the security of Israel’s people.’
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #People #Experts

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Thinking #Agreement #Rivers

Don't be fooled. The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn't turn Iran into a friend of America.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Isis #Iran #America

But ... the days that the Jewish people remain passive in the face of genocidal enemies — those days are over.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#People #Enemy #Faces

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Powerful #Israel #United States

There's no one in Israel who appreciates more than me the importance of American support for Israel.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #Appreciate #Support

Populism is dangerous.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Dangerous #Populism

I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Moving #Thinking #Israel

I say that to my colleagues, by the way, in the internal Cabinet meetings, I say, 'Look, I want to be very clear about what I want.' I just - I don't want a peace process, I want a peace result.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Want #Way #Cabinets

You don't have people chanting 'Death to America' in Israel.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Israel #America #People

The greatest threat facing humanity is a radical Islamist regime meeting up with nuclear weapons.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Humanity #Nuclear #Weapons

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.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu

#Independent #Israel #Citizens