By COLlive reporter
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stuck to the “truthful message” he has been spreading over the last week in a historic and much anticipated speech in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday.
“In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers,” he told a very welcoming Joint Meeting of Congress in Washington, DC, about what some consider the area of Israel’s settlements.
“We’re not the British in India. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace,” he said.
Netanyahu added, “No distortion of history could deny the 4,000-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land.”
This message has been Netanyahu’s mantra all week following President Barack Obama‘s Mideast speech last week calling for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to begin from the pre-1967 borders.
The Israeli premier has been calling those lines “indefensible” in speeches to the Knesset and the AIPAC policy conference and at a press conference with Obama at the White House.
Although he was sharply criticized by opposing Israeli politicians and even some Jewish organizational leaders and media for his “undiplomatic approach”, Netanyahu repeated his argument to Congress.
“Israel will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967,” he said to one of multiple many standing ovations by the American policymakers which he called “friends of Israel.”
There were several disruptions during the speech, including a left-leaning activist from California who called for equal rights for Palestinians, to which Netanyahu replied: “In Tripoli and Iran this wouldn’t have happened, this is a true democracy.”
Explaining why peace has never been reached, Netanyahu said: “Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It’s always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about.”
Netanyahu congratulated the U.S. on the assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. “Congratulations America. You got Bin Laden – good riddance!”
He urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to tear up the pact with Hamas terrorist and make peace with the Jewish state.
Seated in the guest gallery as the Prime Minister’s guests were Mrs. Sara Netanyahu, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of American Jewish Organizations and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.
Guests of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) were Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Director of American Friends of Lubavitch in Washington, DC, and a member of its National Council, Mr. Yossi Davidsohn, a Lubavitcher businessman from New York.
Later, at a VIP reception hosted by the Speaker in the Rayburn Room of the U.S. Capitol, Shemtov praised Netanyahu for his unwavering principles amid criticism.
“It’s a zchus (merit) to come here and tell the world that Eretz Yisroel is our land and were are not occupiers,” said the Chabad Shliach in Washington, DC.
While speaking with Mr. and Mrs. Netanyahu, Vice President Joe Biden joined the conversation and asked Shemtov, “How’s the family?”
Biden is a close and long-time friend of the senior Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, the Rebbe’s Shliach to the White House, since his days as Delaware’s Senator.
VIDEO: Netanyahu’s speech to Congress
LINK: Full transcript
He will come without politics. bibi does not need to make speeches about garbage and get honor for them. mashiach is the only solution
the rebbe new it all joe gutnick your doing a good job its all about keeping israel hall its our land and it will always be that way
Very perceptive, and painful.
Why couldn’t he have spoken about the entire Eretz Yisroel the same way he spoke about Yerushalayim?
is that shmuli boteach sitting on the top row at 11:10 mins in
the Moshiach world is becoming a reality slowly but surely,
yidden, just have to do a little more tshuva, and hikitzu veranenu shochfei ofor………..
Great work Rabbi Shemtov.
You make all of us Shluchim proud!
Representing Chabad at the highest levels of Goverment is a Kiddush Hashem and a Kiddush Shem Lubavitch
I watched the speech in horror that Netanyahu has delivered before congress. It was a total disaster. A) How does he stand in front of these congressmen, 95% gentile, and lecture them as the representative of Israel, that it’s our ancestral homeland of Abraham, King David etc. Wouldn’t these gentiles exercise their IQs and think, hey, if this is the same Israelite homeland of Abraham’s times, shouldn’t its leader feature a yarmulkah upon his head when he addresses the most powerful body of gentiles in the world?! Isn’t he coming to represent the Jewish nation? B) Where was his humility?… Read more »
Its our land cause god gave it to use. not cause of the un
Just by talking about peace is dangerous to the yidden.
are they matching on purpose? 🙂
Not sure how you could possibly say that. Isn’t this supposed to be a Chabad website?
He killed the whole speech by offering to giveaway land and by recongizim that there is such a thin as palistinian.
At this same speech he offered to give away parts of what he called ” the ancestral Jewish homeland” for peace. So ask yourself does that deserve praise?
Not to dole the power of Netanyahus speech, but its important to see the contax that he said his statement about our connection to Yehuda vesomron “The peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan are vital. But they’re not enough. We must also find a way to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples: A Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state. I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people… Read more »
Netanyahu was in top form today. He gave an amazing speech to congress! May he have the continued strength to only seek the best for Eretz Yisroel and the Jewish nation.
Kol hakavod Rabbi Shemtov, one night busy with a vort in CH , 2 days later busy rubbing elbows with the countries top politicians as well as the Israeli PM. A real kiddush Hashem, not to mention making Lubavich look so good. Keep it up.