Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met today, Monday (28 August 2017) with UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem.

"You have said that the calling for the destruction of Israel is a modern form of anti-Semitism. You have clearly demonstrated the desire since you have taken office to turn a new page in the relations between Israel and the UN. This is something I want too, and I look forward to working with you towards that joint mission. There is no question that we’ve had a troubled relationship with the UN. I think it has an absurd obsession with Israel, flagrantly discriminatory tactics. You don’t have to be the Israeli prime minister to understand that, and I think people of good faith and common sense understand that. I hope you have an opportunity on this visit to see Israel. It’s a robust democracy. It’s a very advanced country. It’s a country that engages in the pursuit of knowledge and the betterment of our own people, the betterment of humanity.

In fact, last year at the UN, I had the opportunity to visit in an exposition, an exhibition that showed Israel’s contributions to advancement of African countries with amazing technology. There were many African leaders there. This afternoon, we’ll go to another exhibition in which I hope you’ll see, we’ll be there together, you’ll see how Israel, the innovation nation, is helping many nations in addition to Africa. And I think this is exactly the mandate of the UN. 

The mandate of the UN was to advance peace and security and international cooperation, and this is something that we seek to do, but I think objectively we can say that the UN has failed when it comes to Israel to live up to this mandate.

The UN is mandated to preserve world heritage, but UNESCO, a world body, time and again makes a mockery of that heritage most absurdly when it denies the connection 3,000 years old of the Jewish people to our eternal capital, Jerusalem. 

 The UN is mandated to pursue peace, but it allows Palestinian hate speech to flourish in its institutions.

 The UN is mandated to stand up for human rights, but it allows in its various forms the worst human rights violators to take up the cudgel and to accuse Israel of violating human rights. These are well-known to you, and I think are well-known to many people around the world. But I think the most important and the most pressing problem that we face regards Hezbollah in Syria. The UN was mandated to prevent Hezbollah weapon shipments, but effectively it has not reported, to my knowledge, even one of the tens of thousands of weapon smugglings into Lebanon for Hezbollah, contrary to Resolution 1701.

There is a larger problem, and that problem, Mr. Secretary, is that Iran is busy turning Syria into a base of military entrenchment and it wants to use Syria and Lebanon as warfronts against its declared goal to eradicate Israel. It is also building sites to produce precision-guided missiles towards that end in both Syria and in Lebanon. This is something Israel cannot accept. This is something the UN should not accept. And I intend to speak to you at great length about this, and other tasks that I believe are important for the makings of peace and security in the world.

I think the time has come to restore moral clarity at the UN. I know that this is a tremendous task. I know that the Secretary General does not have power over the members. I know also that the members don’t always reflect their good relations with Israel that are expanding rapidly in the way that they vote in international bodies. Yet I believe that your leadership can make a difference. I believe that merely focusing on these changes that are so obvious, so sensible, and so necessary for the advancement of stability, security and peace, and ultimately prosperity. I believe that you can make an important difference.  

And it’s in that spirit that I look forward to working together with you on this visit and beyond to advance the noble ideals on which the UN was founded and that the people of the world so justly deserve. So welcome to Jerusalem, Mr. Secretary."