Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly, signalling he saw no end in sight for the war on Gaza, despite international condemnation.
Netanyahu also dismissed a UN commission’s findings that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, saying the forced displacement of civilians undermined the assessment.
Here’s a rundown of some of his key claims, fact checked.
Netanyahu’s claims on Gaza
Claim: If Hamas agrees to Israel’s demands, the war could end “right now”.
Fact check: Israel, with full political and military support from the United States, has blocked numerous efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.
Netanyahu and his government have been repeatedly blasted by the families of captives held in Gaza, along with thousands of Israelis, who protested to call for an end to the war and the return of all captives.
On March 18, Israel torpedoed a ceasefire deal it had made with Hamas by killing more than 400 Palestinians and starting a months-long total blockade that led to famine in the enclave.
Earlier this month, Israel claimed it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal again, only to immediately bomb Qatar in a failed effort to wipe out the entire political leadership of Hamas outside Gaza, and kill any hope of negotiations.
Claim: Israel is taking great pains to minimise civilian casualties in Gaza.
Fact check: Contrary to Netanyahu’s statement that the ratio of non-combatant to combatant casualties in Gaza is “less than two to one”, an investigation in August revealed a classified Israeli database that clearly showed 83 percent of the people Israel was killing in Gaza were civilians.
The investigation by +972 magazine, Local Call and The Guardian showed that of the list of 8,900 names of Hamas fighters killed in the database, several were listed as “probably” killed, meaning the percentage of civilians killed may be even higher.
Claim: Hamas is endangering civilians in Gaza by forcing people to act as its human shields.
Fact check: Netanyahu’s claim that “Hamas implants itself in mosques, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings and tries to force these civilians not to leave, to stay in harm’s way”, repeated a justification Israel has often used to bomb places where civilians shelter.
This includes hospitals, schools, ambulances, mosques, water facilities, power stations and other infrastructure required to sustain life.
Meanwhile, it has offered no evidence of an effort by Hamas and other fighters to use civilian facilities as so-called “military command and control centres”.
Claim: A country committing genocide would not plead with civilians to get out of the way of its bombs.
Netanyahu claims that issuing forced evacuation orders, which give families very little time to pack up their entire lives and flee or risk being killed, negates multilateral evidence-based findings that genocide is being committed in Gaza.
The International Court of Justice, an independent international UN commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a large number of international human rights groups, including Israeli group B’Tselem and Amnesty International, and several countries have found that Israel has been committing genocidal acts in Gaza.
The UN and a slew of international organisations and doctors working on the ground in Gaza have testified that Israel has also been systematically blocking aid while creating a highly unsafe and desperate environment in which aid is regularly looted.
Claim: Israel is not blocking aid from entering Gaza; it is Hamas that is stealing the aid from Palestinians.
Fact check: Several reports have found that Hamas is not stealing the meagre aid that is allowed into Gaza. One report was by Israel’s own army, another by the US’s foreign aid agency, USAID.
Israel has imposed full blockades of all aid entering the Strip at various times, most recently between March and May this year.
In May, it announced its support for the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as an aid distributor, with only four locations for the two million people in the entire Gaza Strip.
The GHF relies on armed guards and Israeli soldiers to “secure” its premises, and more than 1,000 people have been killed there as they tried to secure food aid for their starving families.
On the other hand, Netanyahu has admitted openly that his government is supporting a Palestinian militia in Gaza that is widely reported to be looting aid trucks.
Netanyahu’s claims on the region
Claim: Iran is rapidly developing a massive nuclear weapons programme and a massive ballistic missile programme that were meant to destroy Israel, threaten the US and blackmail nations.
Fact check: Iran has always said its nuclear programme, which it has had for more than two decades, is for civilian purposes and that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon.
Iran does not currently possess a nuclear weapon and is not close to building one, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency and US intelligence services.
This is unlike the 90 or more nuclear warheads that Israel is believed to possess, according to multiple sources, including the United Kingdom parliament. The House of Commons Library says Israel is also thought to still be producing plutonium for weapons purposes and could even have a triad for delivery of its weapons (by land, sea and air).
Western belief in the 2000s that Tehran wanted to build a bomb culminated in UN sanctions, which were lifted through the 2015 nuclear deal, which heavily restricted Iran’s enrichment capacity.
Trump unilaterally left the deal in 2018, prompting Iran to gradually ramp up its nuclear enrichment, which is now at up to 60 percent, a closer technical step from the more than 90 percent required for a bomb, but it maintains it will never build a weapon of mass destruction.
Claim: Israel has killed Iran’s top military commanders and its top nuclear scientists
Fact check: Israel has succeeded in assassinating dozens of top military commanders and nuclear scientists across Iran, but Iranian authorities have said that eliminating individuals will not stop it from achieving its goals.
They also said some of the country’s air defences remain intact, while others have been repaired or replaced. Iran has also threatened to launch more retaliatory strikes if Israel attacks it.
Claim: Israel has killed half of the leadership of the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah, destroyed former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s armaments in Syria and deterred Shia militias in Iraq.
Fact check: The Israeli military has attacked Yemen repeatedly, including its single-largest strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on Thursday, allegedly targeting the headquarters of the Houthi General Staff, and killing the Houthi prime minister last month, along with other cabinet ministers and leaders.
But it does not appear to have wiped out Houthi military command, which continues to launch drone and missile strikes on Israel in opposition to the war on Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Israel has assassinated much of the top political and military leadership of Hezbollah, including longtime secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, but the Lebanese group remains defiant, vowing to continue fighting against Israel.
Israel has killed senior political leaders of Hamas inside and outside Gaza, including Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh. Hamas, although weakened, continues to launch attacks against invading Israeli ground forces in Gaza and is recruiting more fighters.
In Syria, after the fall of the 50-year Assad dynasty, Israel continued to attack Syria’s military assets and infrastructure, destroying much of it. Israel also continues to militarily occupy the Golan Heights and large parts of Syria south of the capital, Damascus, arguing it is necessary for its security.
