Yair Netanyahu, son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke at a pro-Israel convention organized by the Centre for Fundamental Rights in Budapest, addressing Israel’s security situation, the war against Hamas and Hezbollah, and Europe’s challenges with illegal immigration.
He said Israel had experienced “a huge shift in its geostrategic and geopolitical position in the Middle East.” According to Netanyahu, “On the eve of October 7, 2023, Israel was surrounded by a ring of fire that was built by Iran for 40 years in order to annihilate Israel Iran was building their nuclear weapon in order to use it against Israel and wipe it off the face of the earth.”
He described Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon as Iran’s key proxies in this effort. “The plan was to carry out what they did on October 7 simultaneously from the south but also from the north, and wipe out Israel at once,” he said.
Netanyahu said that following the “biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” Israel undertook sweeping military operations that “changed everything on the map.” He asserted that Israel had neutralized Hamas’s capabilities. “We took out their rockets. We took out their invasion force. We took the border between Gaza and Egypt, which is the border that Hamas smuggled all their weapons until October 7. So we neutralized that threat.”
He continued that Israel then turned its focus northward toward Hezbollah, which he described as “a terror organization that took a hostage a whole country, Lebanon.” Netanyahu claimed that Israel’s subsequent operations led to the collapse of Hezbollah’s leadership and weakened Iran’s regional influence. “Because Lebanon is different than Gaza, once they were so weakened by Israel, the Christians and the Sunni and the Druze started to crack down on them,” he said.
Netanyahu went on to link these developments to wider regional consequences. “Once Hezbollah was out of the equation, Assad fell right away,” he said, referring to the Syrian regime. He added that Iran’s nuclear project had been destroyed during “the famous 12-day war” carried out “together with President Trump in Operation Midnight Hammer.”
As a result, Netanyahu declared, “Israel for the first time in 30 years or 40 years even doesn’t have this question mark on its existence anymore. We got rid of all the existential threats that was looming in the background for 30 years.”
Turning to Europe, Netanyahu warned of the effects of mass illegal immigration, which he said had brought instability and antisemitism to Western capitals. “Western Europe is in a free fall because of the illegal Islamic immigration there,” he said. “You have areas in London, in Paris, in Brussels, in Malmö which is like a no-go zone. Jews of course have to flee. It’s impossible for Jews to live in London anymore. It’s impossible for Jews to live in Paris anymore.”
By contrast, he praised Hungary as “the safest in Europe” for Jews, saying, “Hungarian Jewry are I think the safest in Europe. They can walk around in Budapest with all the Jewish symbols. Nothing will happen to them.”
He cautioned, however, that Hungary’s safety could change if European Union migration policies were imposed on it. “The European Union will try to do everything in its power to bring illegal Muslim immigration to this country as well. They call this ‘sharing the load,’” he said.
Netanyahu also spoke of the close relationship between his father and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. “It’s really a unique relationship between two heads of state. It’s a real friendship,” he said. “They understand the danger of our common Judeo-Christian Western civilization, and the alliance between the radical left and Islamists that want to tear down our culture and our civilization.”
Addressing Christian support for Israel, Netanyahu said, “Israel is the only safe haven for Christianity and Christians in the Middle East. Everywhere else in the Middle East, Christians are being ethnically cleansed.” He added, “Israel is the front line of Western civilization’s battle against barbarism and radical Islam.”
He argued that Israel’s struggles are part of a broader global defense of Western values. “It’s in the interest of the West to stand with Israel because we’re doing the dirty job for you,” he said, quoting a German chancellor during the conflict with Iran.
On growing antisemitism in Western academia, Netanyahu blamed what he called “the red-green alliance – this Marxist-Islamist alliance” and foreign funding. “When college kids in America are being brainwashed to hate Israel, they’re also being brainwashed to hate America,” he said. “This is a much broader problem of brainwashing Western youth to hate their own culture, to hate their own religion, to hate their own history.”
He accused Qatar, China, and “progressive woke billionaires like George Soros” of financing American universities that spread such ideologies. “This is a matter of big money coming into universities and forcing them to take this route,” he said.
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