Netanyahu’s Speech Broke All Records … for Lying (Part 1)
Netanyahu’s Speech Broke All Records … for Lying (Part 1)
Was he unhinged? Of course. Did he tell bald-faced lies? Naturally. But for the sake of Truth, let’s quantify the exact level of depravity that Bibi disgorged in DC last week.
Fact-checking Benjamin Netanyahu may seem like a pointless activity, like the old adage about trying to teach a pig to sing. Certainly Bibi, like all Zionist hasbarists, cannot be stopped or even slowed down by being confronted with the facts.
He will not shut up when proven to be lying — in fact, proving a Zionist is lying only causes them to increase the volume of their lies and the speed with which they are delivered.
That said, I believe — like all good anti-Zionists — that facts matter.
History matters.
Guilt and innocence matter.
And to correctly and righteously ascertain guilt and innocence, good and evil, right and wrong in the Israel-Palestine conflict, we need to not let the “Gish Gallop” of Israeli hasbara delivered by the likes of Netanyahu go unanswered.
Moreover, thanks to Netanyahu’s fulsome bloviating, dissecting his address allows us to debunk THE ENTIRE RANGE of Zionist lies that have been propagated over the past decades.
Setting the stage…
Let us be clear: not everyone in America was happy with the genocidal maniac Netanyahu coming to address Congress. Thousands of Americans — spearheaded by anti-Zionist Jewish groups — marched outside and protested both Netanyahu and Israel. Hundreds of members of Jewish Voice for Peace were arrested for occupying a government building and demanding a cease fire in Gaza and that Netanyahu be arrested for war crimes.
The march was part of a weeklong effort to mobilise thousands of American Jews — including students, rabbis and Holocaust survivors — against Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The protestors held signs, sung songs in support of peace in English and Hebrew, and chanted slogans including “ceasefire now” and “not in our name”, as Truthout reported.
“Fort Netanyahu”
The police presence was massive, aas was to be expected at any pro-Palestinian event. The Capitol and Park Police deployed pepper spray and used violent tactics to take down the protesters. In what some protesters called “Fort Netanyahu”, the police used barricades and other strong tactical measures to repel, break up, assault and arrest protesters.
Meanwhile, inside the Capitol …
The scene outside of the Capitol was the exact opposite of what was going on inside the Congressional halls, where a Netanyahu love-fest was in full swing. There, an almost fanatically pro-Israel crowd of US legislators had gathered to hear their Dear Leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, hold forth.
Correction: the Congressional attendees were not almost fanatics; they were full-blown fanatics. In fact, the Speaker of the House had threatened to arrest anyone who “disrupted” or “got out of hand” during the Israeli PM’s speech.
In short, the assembled crowd was as fanatical as any hand-picked group that had cheered the likes of Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot.
It is true that almost half the Democrat delegation had chosen to “boycott” the speech in order to show their displeasure with Netanyahu, but given the threat of arrest, only one person chose to attend in protest. That was, of course, Democrat Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress.
Before we dive in …
This is not just a simple “fact checking” article, such have already appearse in the mainstream, legacy and even alternative media. Rather, dear reader, I will seek to provide the full context surrounding the outrageous, inflammatory and outright false comments that Prime Minister Netanyahu regurgitated to our crippled Congress.
In order to understand just how insidious, nefarious and dangerous Bibi Netanyahu is t the US, the Middle east and the world, we need to look at the historical, cultural, linguistic, religious and political background of his statements, so we might better understand the truly evil nature of this Israeli leader and his cultist followers — as well as Zionists in general.
I will do that using my usual copious number of links and references, as well as citations of my earlier articles regarding Israel, tghe Middle East, and America.
Let’s get started!
First step: confirming the underlying false premises
Bibi started out by reaffirming the false narratives that Zionists have been plying since even before the founding of the Israeli state.
Get the “End Times” Christians on board
Netanyahu started his address with a dire warning:
“We meet today at a crossroads of history. Our world is in upheaval.
Rule number one: make everything cataclysmic and eschatological, framing the current situation in almost apocalyptic terms designed to get the Christians in Congress engaged.
There are 30 million Christian Zionists in the United States, and Congress is full of them. In fact, Congress is 88% Christian (much more than the general US population), and almost all of those are Christian Zionists.
These fundamentalists believe the “End Times” are upon us, and Christ is due to return soon — that is, as soon as Israel succeeds in conquering the entire Holy Land. That is why they are Zionists.
As I explained in my article, “Why 9 in 10 American Zionists Are Actually Christians”, I explain how Israel and AIPAC have cynically stoked the fires of Christian Zionism, lavishly funding organisations like Christians United for Israel (CUFI), to pressure US politicians to, in turn, lavishly fund and unquestionably support Israel.
It makes no difference that these Christian Zionists are praying for a Second Coming that will see the Jews virtually wiped out; Zionists like Netanyahu are secular atheists who are only too happy to mouth the words to get the devout to help them achieve their present-day geopolitical goals.
“We are protecting you”
Netanyahu then led off with a common theme: that we are ALL threatened by Islamic extremism, led by Iran, and that the valiant Israel is our common first line of defense:
“In the Middle East, Iran’s axis of terror confronts America, Israel and our Arab friends.”
This one sentence carries two powerful hasbarist Zionist memes:
First we have the misleading assertion that Iran leads an “axis of terror”. This is a cruel distortion, given that Iran actually leads an “Axis of Resistance”. The Iranians, Palestinians, Ansar Allah (Houthis), Hezbollah, and the anti-Zionist forces on Syria and Iraq, all describe themselves as an “Axis of Resistance”.
They are all resisting one thing — very specifically — and that one thing is Israel. They are fighting against illegal Israeli occupation, incursion, theft, torture, murder and genocide.
In my article, “Israel is Built on Myth Part III: The False Story of ‘Islamic Terrorism’”, I explain how Israelis have built up a racist depiction of Muslims and Arabs as bloodthirsty, deranged barbarians who oppose Western civilisation in general, and not just the Zionist entity that has reigned terror down on the Middle East for 80 years.
Netanyahu continues this decades old racist trope:
“This is not a clash of civilisations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilisation. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.”
This racist theme dovetails into the equally false narrative that Israel and America are one and the same, that they have “shared values” and so on. Bibi basically says that “we are in the same boat”, and that the US and Israel represent “civilisation” in the fight against barbarism:
“For the forces of civilisation to triumph, America and Israel must stand together.”
“Israel’s 9/11"
Netanyahu then proceeds to cement this conjoining of teh American and Israeli societies by bringing up “game-changing events”:
“Like December 7th, 1941, and September 11th, 2001, October 7th is a day that will forever live in infamy.”
I will not dwell too much on the patent absurdity and the ridiculous exaggeration in comparing the events of October 7 with the literally world-changing evens of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. We could even dismiss this bloviation as political hyperbole.
But then old Bibi launched into a rapid fire string of absolute LIES.
10/7: A mountain of lies and misrepresentations
From te very beginning, Netanyahu’s description of what happene on October 7 is FALSE.
“Three thousand Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel.”
Firstly, these were not “terrorists” but rather “resistance fighters”. Remember, “Hamas” is an acronym in Arabic meaning “Islamic Resistance Movement”.
Second, when he says “stormed into Israel”, Netanyahu deliberately frames the operation as an invasion of Israel by a foreign power — when this is clearly not the case.
Gaza is an “Occupied Territory” under international law and according to the United Nations. Moreover, the UN’s International Court of Justice has further ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands is an illegal occupation.
This was not, therefore, an attack “on Israel” perpetrated “by Gaza”. The events of October 7 were more akin to a violent prison break in which the prisoners took vengeance on their jailers and took hostages for negotiations.
To put it simply: no country can be “invaded” from a territory it occupies and controls — and Israel is no exception, no matter what Bibi Netanyahu says.
Hamas and their legitimate “Right to Resist”
As I wrote in my article, “Why I Refuse to Condemn Hamas”, the Islamic Resistance Movement itself is not a terrorist organisation. Rather, it is a nationalist organisation representing the interests of an “occupied people” and mounting legal and legitimate resistance to their occupation.
Such a “right to resist” is enshrined in the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, that international law clearly states that an occupied people have the right to resist “by any available means.”
In addition, I note that Hamas itself is a governing body, responsible for picking up the trash and making sure Gaza “works” on a public service level — at least to the extent possible while being under constant attack by the Israeli occupiers. They do not engage in military operations directly.
The military wing of Hamas is called the Al Qassam Brigades. They are the ones who, together with 4 or 5 other armed Palestinian factions, broke through the fence on October 7.
As I note in my article, Australia, the European Union, Egypt , New Zealand and the UK all recognise Hamas as a political group amd they have thus designated only the al-Qassam brigades as a terrorist organisation.
The United States and Israel, however, classify all of Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Why this is important
The relationship between Hamas and the Al Qassam Brigades has been described by political scientists as being “reminiscent of Sinn Féin’s relationship to the IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army)”.
This means that, just as Sinn Féin helped negotiate the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland, Hamas will eventually need to have a seat at the negotiating table if there is to ever be an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
The fact that Israel refuses to see the distinction that the other countries do indicates that they are not serious about ever wanting to have a negotiated settlement to the conflict, and they prefer to throw up their hands and complain that they “have no partner`" for negotiations.
In other words, Israel is determined to just keep bombing Palestine until there are no more Palestinians left.
What really happened on October 7?
October 7 was not a simple terrorist attack; rather it was a legitimate assault by a resistance force on the military bases, installations, fortifications, depots and other units stationed around Gaza and tasked with maintaining the security of the “Gaza concentration camp”.
THAT SAID, no one has the right to violate international law when it comes to the murder of innocent civilians.
But did the Palestinian fighters really kill innocent civilians?
For Netanyahu, of course, the answer is clear.
Bibi unleashes a Gish Gallop of lies
Benjamin Netanyahu launched into his tirade by spewing a series of lies in rapid-fire succession, typical of the “Gish Gallop” style of hasbarist propaganda delivery, in which so many lies are hurled in such rapis succession, that the listener has little time or opportunity to debate, debunk or even process what is being thrown at him.
I will quote below Bibi’s opening salvo and then break it down:
“They butchered 1,200 people from 41 countries, including 39 Americans. Proportionately, compared to our population size, that’s like 20 9/11s in one day. And these monsters, they raped women, they beheaded men, they burnt babies alive, they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents.”
So let’s start right off with that first assertion, which many people may not even question:
“They butchered 1,200 people from 41 countries, including 39 Americans.”
I will not address the use of the word “butchered”, as that can be dismissed as a rhetorical flourish. But I will take issue with three lies and misrepresentations that aere encapsulated in that one sentence:
Who are ”They”?
When Bibi says “They butchered…”, he wants you to think of Hamas, which, as I mentioned above, is not really Hamas but the Al Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing.
But there is much more to it than that: according to none other than the Mossad-approved Wikipedia, those Hamas Al Qassam fighters were not alone. On October 7, they were joined by:
The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad;
The Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committee;
The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine;
The National Resistance Brigades, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine;
The Al-Ansar Brigades, a military wing of the Palestinian Freedom Movement;
The Mujahideen Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement.
As you can see, Hamas is not alone in being a “resistance movement” that has an armed wing. They are, in fact, ONE OF MANY.
They just happen to be the most popular, with a firm majority of support among the Palestinian people — not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
That is why the Zionist Israeli regime targets them so vehemently. They do no want anyone to know the extent, the depth and the breadth of the Palestinian Resistance.
Palestinian “multi-faction UNITY” terrifies Netanyahu
In fact, what you will never hear about from Netanyahu, or the Western or Zionist media, is that China recently made history in bringing together fourteen (14) different Palestinian factions — from Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem (all the “Occupied Territories”) under one comprehensive alliance.
The agreement, known as the The Beijing Declaration on Ending Division and Strengthening Palestinian National Unity, means that Hamas and Fatah have put aside their differences and are united.
The agreement was officially executed on July 23, 2024 — one day before Netanyahu addressed Congress.
Israel, of course is terrified of this development. They have relied for decades on divisions within the Palestinian political community, and Netanyahu himself has spent years, and millions of dollars, to “prop up Hamas” in order to maintain those divisions in Palestinian society.
In Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, he was not just addressing America. His speech was meant to be heard in Israel — especially in Israel. And in the face of Palestinian political unity he needed to isolate, mischaracterise, and condemn Hamas in every way so as to keep his own domestic political grift rolling.
Who were the “1,200 people” who died?
“They butchered 1,200 people from 41 countries, including 39 Americans.”
Netanyahu quotes what has come to be a generally accepted number of people who died on October 7. But who were these people?
Various investigations, including a very detailed one by France24, which was based on actual Israeli Social Security data, have ascertained that only 695 Israeli civilians died on October 7, and that 373 dead were from Israeli security and defence forces.
As I mentioned above, significant casualties among the active duty IDF personnel in the military facilities around Gaza would be expected, given the military nature and the mission of the Al Qassem Brigades that day.
There were 71 foreigners killed, but the France 24 report claims they were “mostly Thai” — and workers either in the Kibbutzim or providing staff for the Nova Music Festival.
All in all, 1,139 persons died. Regarding the “39 Americans” Netanyahu cites, these were undoubtedly part of the 695 Israeli citizens but who also held US passports (over 200,000 such dual citizens currently citizens reside in Israel).
Who really “butchered” the 1,200?
It can now be decisively asserted that not all of the people who died on October 7 were killed by the Palestinians, and that a significant amount of those casualties were inflicted by the Israeli Defence Forces.
Articles in such prestigious Israeli media outlets as Haaretz and The Times of Israel have admitted in damning exposés that the IDF high command issued the infamous and barbaric “Hannibal Directive” around 12:00 noon on October 7.
As I explained in my article, “Israel Has a Nasty Habit of Killing Its Own”, the Hannibal Directive is an IDF doctrine that stems from the 1980’s and decrees that no Israeli soldier was to be taken alive; that all possible measures should be taken to kill the enemy captors, even if it meant killing the captured soldier.
On October 7, however, the Directive was issued to apply to Israeli civilians as well.
The directive remained secret for 17 years, until 2003, and the IDF has since insisted that it is defunct and no longer official policy. According to IDF sources such as Israeli Air Force (reserve) Col. Nof Erez, in an interview with Haaretz, the Directive was revived, and he described Israel’s actions on 7 October as a “mass Hannibal” event.
“It’s not clear” how many people the IDF killed on 10/7
Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth explained:
“It is not clear at this time how many of the abductees were killed due to the activation of this command. In the week after the attack, soldiers of elite units checked about 70 vehicles that were left in the area between the Otaf settlements and the Gaza Strip. These are vehicles that did not reach Gaza, because on the way they were shot by a combat helicopter, an anti-tank missile or a tank, and at least in some cases everyone in the vehicle was killed.”
“Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz [Hebrew version only] that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
But it gets worse. As The GrayZone reveals:
“A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time.”
This means that some of those 373 security personnel who died were almost certainly killed by “friendly fire.”
Nonetheless, Benjamin Netanyahu would have you believe that Hamas killed all 1,200 “innocent” people. He is wrong on both counts.
The atrocities that NEVER HAPPENED
Warming to his theme, Netanyahu then unpacked some of his most racist and unhinged invective:
And these monsters, they raped women, they beheaded men, they burnt babies alive, they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents.”
These accusations are ALL FALSE.
Not one woman was raped on October 7
In my article, “Can No One Tell Me the Name of an Israeli Woman Who Was Raped by Hamas on 10/7?” I challenge anyone and everyone to provide me with the name of an actual woman who was credibly raped on October 7.
Since May 10, no one has been able to do so.
It is now obvious that the rape stories (as well as all the other stories of atrocities) were never real. It was jyst more Israeli hasbara.
A Haaretz article (available only in the Hebrew version of the newspaper’s website) casts even more doubt on the stories:
“The police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault or witnesses to acts from the Hamas attack, and are unable to connect the existing evidence with the victims described in it. Now, three months after the massacre, the organisation decided to turn to the public to encourage those who have information on the matter to come and testify.”
In fact, the police sent out a special order to all hospitals, clinics, and other agencies, requesting the names of women who had been raped — even without getting the women’s consent.
Burnings and beheadings
Bibi goes on to cite some of the more common lies that werte told in the days following October 7:
[Hamas] beheaded men, they burnt babies alive, they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents.”
Firstly we now know that there were NO BEHEADINGS on October 7. This is wild, racist propaganda designed to equate Hamas with the very worst of ISIS.
The fact is, only ONE baby was killed on October 7: 10-month-old Mila Cohen, shot and killed by accident at Kibbutz Be’eri when a Hamas fighter shot through a door without knowing Mila and her Mom were on the other side.
As far as children being killed in front of their parents. and vice versa, this is just more hasbara from Netanyahu, designed to conjure up cruelties of the Holocaust. Children and parents who were taken hostage were killed by Israeli defense forces in their own homes, so that their Palestinian captor would die, and they could not be taken back to Gaza.
Why are the atrocities so important?
The atrocity stories are incredibly important to Israel — and to Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted at the true reason for this tsunami of hasbara when he publicly and officially thanked the members of Zaka, the private “rescue service” for their work around October 7 in spreading horrific falsehoods and stories of burnt and beheaded babies, gang rapes, and so on.
According to All Israel News:
The prime minister said the work of giving testimony helps fight the war being waged in public opinion, telling them they “have an important role in influencing public opinion, which also influences leaders.”
And there we have it. The campaign of horror stories retold by Zaka leaders, such as Yossi Landau, the Southern Commander of Zaka, are part of an orchestrated campaign of misinformation, hasbara, designed to influence public opinion worldwide and garner support for Israel’s wildly disproportionate response.
By making Hamas out to be barbarians, savages and killers, the Israelis sought to buy time and “room to manoeuvre” to get their genocide up and running before the world realised what they were really doing.
Using the lies to condemn the protesters
Nowhere is it easier to see the cruel logic behind the Israeli hasbara campaign than when it comes to condemning those people who are protesting Israel’s genocide.
In this, Bibi offers us a Masterclass.
“Defeating our brutal enemies requires both courage and clarity. Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good and evil. Yet incredibly many anti-Israel protesters, many choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers.”
You see how it works? Once you have defined your enemy as barbaric, as “evil” and as “rapists and murderers” you can condemn and dismiss anyone who criticises you by saying they “choose to stand with evil”.
And this is where that amazing, overblown and outlandish hasbara atrocity porn comes in handy.
Once more, Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t fail to deliver:
“They stand with people who came into the kibbutzim, into a home, the parents hid the children, the two babies, in the attic, in a secret attic. They murdered the family, the parents, they found the secret latch to the hidden attic and then they murdered the babies. These protesters stand with them. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Did you note the “Anne Frank in the Attic” analogy there?
I would not be surprised if Bibi made up this story on the spot, just free-styling it. Extemporaneous Holocaust imagery seems to be his thing.
He is amazingly deft, our Bibi. In this one small anecdote, he has managed to turn every anti-genocide protester — even the Jewish ones — into modern day Nazis without even using the N-word.
#End of Part 1.
Part 2 to follow!
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Excellent read. Thank you!
Excellent lucid article. So many treatises have been now written on the false narrative of Oct 7 and yet the lies still keep being repeated and listeners including..... especially including... the media... still applaud them and repeat them. It is clear even to a child, the purpose of the lies and propaganda of Oct 7 was to serve the same purpose as the Nazi party did in the 1930s against the jews...to rouse up their own population to support their insane slaughter that was to come