United Nations General Assembly

Speeches – September 22-23, 2011

In the name of God, the compassionate and the merciful. All praise be to Allah, the lord of the universe and peace and blessing be upon our master and prophet Muhammad and his

pure household, his noble companions and on all divine messengers. Oh God, hasten the

arrival of Imam al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory and make us his followers and all those who attest to his rightfulness.

Mahmoud AhmadinejadPresident of IranUN General Assembly AddressSeptember 22, 2011

A future that will be built when humanity initiates to tread the path of the divine prophets and the

righteous under the leadership of Imam al-Mahdi, the Ultimate Savior of mankind and the inheritor to all divine messengers and leaders and to the pure

generation of our great Prophet.

He will come alongside with Jesus Christ to lead the freedom and justice lovers to eradicate tyranny and

discrimination, and promote knowledge, peace, justice freedom and love across the world. He will

present to every single individual all the beauties of the world and all good things which bring happiness

for humankind.

…the plight of Palestine refugees, who are the victims of Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) that

occurred in 1948.

I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet

Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon

him),

Mahmoud AbbasChairman of the Palestine Liberation OrganizationUN General Assembly AddressSeptember 23, 2011

I would like to inform you that, before delivering this statement, I submitted, in my capacity as

the President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United

Nations, an application for the admission of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967

borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif [East Jerusalem] as its capital, as a full member of

the United Nations.

Well, this is an unfortunate part of the U.N. 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 U.N. Commission on Human Rights; Saddam’s Iraq headed the U.N.

Committee on Disarmament.

Benjamin NetanyahuPrime Minister of IsraelUN General Assembly AddressSeptember 23, 2011

You might say: That’s the past. Well, here’s what’s happening now — right now, today. Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the U.N. 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.

So in the face of the labels and the libels, Israel must heed better advice. Better a bad press than a good eulogy, and better still would be a fair press whose

sense of history extends beyond breakfast, and which recognizes Israel’s legitimate security concerns.

Last night I laid a wreath on the 9/11 memorial. It was deeply moving. But as I was going there, one thing echoed in my mind: the outrageous words of the president of Iran on this podium

yesterday. He implied that 9/11 was an American conspiracy. Some of you left this

hall. All of you should have.

President Abbas just stood here, and he said that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the

settlements. Well, that’s odd. Our conflict has been raging for — was raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the

West Bank. So if what President Abbas is saying was true, then the — I guess that the settlements he’s

talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be’er Sheva. Maybe that’s what he meant the other day when he said that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for 63 years. He didn’t say from 1967; he said from 1948. I hope somebody will bother to ask him this question because it illustrates a simple truth: The

core of the conflict is not the settlements. The settlements are a result of the conflict.