BB called Bullshit! Cowards!

Benjamin Netanyahu is not perfect.

Tonight, a tiny pager said more than a thousand diplomatic speeches ever could.

There stood the Prime Minister of Israel at the United Nations, holding up one of the most ordinary-looking pieces of technology imaginable.

A pager.

And everybody watching knew exactly what it represented.

Not a slogan.

Not another resolution.

Not another carefully massaged paragraph drafted by diplomats who have spent decades finding seventeen different ways to say absolutely nothing.

A message.

Israel is not helpless anymore.

That is the part of Zionism that much of the world still seems incapable of processing.

For two thousand years Jews were expected to plead.

To petition.

To flee.

To hide.

To hope that the king was friendly, that the government was decent, that the mob went down another street, that somebody somewhere might decide Jewish blood was worth protecting.

Then history changed.

The Jews came home.

And now there is a Jewish army.

A Jewish Air Force.

Jewish intelligence services.

Jewish scientists.

Jewish engineers.

Jewish soldiers.

And a sovereign Jewish state capable of looking at an organization like Hezbollah, which spent years building an enormous military machine on Israel’s northern border, and saying:

We see you.

We know what you are building.

And we are not waiting patiently for you to decide when to use it.

That pager was not merely a prop.

It was a symbol of the transformation of the Jewish people from an object of history into an actor in history.

And then came the other truth bombs.

Iran.

Netanyahu told the UN that destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities was extraordinarily difficult militarily but one of the easiest decisions he had faced politically because, the alternative threatened Israel’s survival.

Then he said something that should make every diplomat in that room squirm.

Some leaders who publicly condemn Israel, he claimed, privately thanked Israel for dealing with Iran.

Read that again.

Condemn Israel in front of the cameras.

Thank Israel behind closed doors.

There should be a new Olympic event called International Diplomatic Bullshit, because half the United Nations would medal.

And then Judea.

Not “some disputed patch of anonymous dirt.”

JUDEA.

He reminded the room where the word JEW comes from.

Judea.

That historical connection is not a marketing slogan invented by an Israeli public-relations office last Tuesday.

Jews were called Jews because of Judea long before the United Nations existed, long before modern nationalism, long before half the countries lecturing Israel today had their current borders.

You can argue about borders.

You can argue about governments.

You can argue about settlements, security arrangements, diplomacy and practically anything else. But you cannot rewrite history because the history has become politically inconvenient.

And THAT was the power of tonight’s speech.

It refused the premise that Israel must enter the courtroom of world opinion already apologizing for existing.

No.

Israel does not need permission to exist.

Israel does not need permission to remember October 7.

Israel does not need permission to tell the world what Hezbollah built on its border.

Israel does not need permission to explain what Iran threatened.

And Israel does not need permission to tell the Jewish story in Jewish language.

Judea.

Jerusalem.

Israel.

These words existed before today’s diplomatic fashion and they will exist after it.

The United Nations can empty the hall.

Delegates can walk out.

Presidents can issue statements.

Activists can scream outside.

Fine.

The Jewish people have heard louder crowds.

What matters is something considerably more permanent:

We are still here.

In our language.

In our land.

Defending our families.

Writing our own history.

And tonight, absurdly, beautifully, defiantly, one tiny pager sitting in a Jewish hand at the United Nations managed to communicate something the world has spent generations struggling to understand:

The age of the defenseless Jew is over.