Benjamin Netanyahu Quotes

Peace is purchased from strength. It's not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats.

I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day.

If the Palestinians do their part, we shall do our part and we shall have an agreement.

The idea of imposing peace from the outside doesn't work.

We will respond with a heavy hand to the brutal murder of Jews who came to pray and were killed by lowly murderers.

Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world's security. You couldn't make this thing up.

We're willing to make difficult and hard decisions and compromises to live in peace with our neighbours, but we're entitled to our own country where Jews from around the world can come here, just as Palestinians from around the world can come to the Palestinian state.

They're in the red zone. They're in the last 20 yards, and you can't let them cross that goal line. You can't let them score a touchdown, because that would have unbelievable consequences, grievous consequences for the peace and security of us all, of the world really.

History has shown us time and again that what is right is not what is popular.

The entire world is focusing on the compromises that are necessary from Israel's side. But people [in the world] are not focusing on the fact that the Palestinians refuse to make the necessary compromises that are required on their side for peace.

My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin - Binyamin - the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Sumeria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.

To subdivide this land into two unstable, insecure nations, to try to defend what is indefensible, is to invite disaster. Carving Judea and Samaria out of Israel means carving up Israel.

The Palestinians want a state, but they have to give peace in return. What they're trying to do in the United Nations is to get a state without giving Israel peace or giving Israel peace and security. And I think that's, that's wrong. That should not succeed. That should, that should fail.

Both peoples, both nations, deserve a nation-state of their own. Palestinians, if they wish so, will go to the Palestinian state; Jews, if they so wish, can go to the Jewish state. And we'll have to have security and demilitarization agreements between us.

I don't want to govern the Palestinians. I don't want them as subjects of Israel or as citizens of Israel. I want them to have their own independent state but a demilitarized state.

First of all, Arafat is wrong. Jerusalem is Israel's capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, the capital of the Jewish people, for ever and ever.

There is a great danger to the world, not only to my country [Israel] but to the United States, to the Middle East, to peace, to all of humanity, from the prospect that such regimes that brutalize its own people, that sponsors terrorism more than any other regime in the world - that this regime acquires atomic bombs is very, very dangerous.

There's no one in Israel who appreciates more than me the importance of American support for Israel.

The right combination is between a free economy and social policy that addresses the needs of society and creates equal opportunity.

If we accept the notion that terrorists will have immunity because as they fire on civilians they hide behind civilians, then this tactic will be legitimized and the terrorists will have their greatest victory.

I would say we want to stop the firing of rockets, for sure. But we also want to dismantle the terror - the tunnel - the terror tunnel networks that we have uncovered.

The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.

The Israelis wanted to sabotage the Palestinian - Palestinian reconciliation.

I will go to the UN General Assembly and, in a clear voice, tell the nations of the world the truth about Iran's terrorist regime, which constitutes the greatest threat to world peace.

It doesn't matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as just.

You know, I think, I think the Palestinians are trying to get away without negotiating. They're trying to get a state to continue the conflict with Israel rather than to end it. They're trying to basically detour around peace negotiations by going to the U.N. and have the automatic majority in the U.N. General Assembly give them, give them a state.

The US-Israel partnership transcends politics and it always will

I think placing preconditions before negotiations is the quickest way to undermine peace.

Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems, like refugees and Jerusalem, which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down.

Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.

I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel.

The instability in the region is not a result of Israel and the Palestinians. That was never the cause of this instability. Instead, the disfunctionality of many of these societies that have failed to modernize.

I unequivocally condemn the striking of the soldier from the Ethiopian community and those responsible will be brought to justice but nobody has the right to take the law into their own hands, immigrants from Ethiopia and their families are dear to us and Israel is making great efforts to ease their integration in society.

The Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would be infinitely more costly than any scenario you can imagine to stop it.

Our friendship will weather the current disagreement as well, to grow even stronger in the future.

Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away.

I will say that I think Israel enjoys strong bipartisan support in the United States. It's really above and beyond American politics.

Israel has, enjoys bipartisan support - both Democrats and Republicans - and we extend bipartisan hospitality to both Democrats and Republicans.

I don't think that anyone should doubt Israel's determination to defend itself against terror and destruction.

[S]aving lives is more important than preserving the quality of life. Quality of life is always amenable to improvement. Death is permanent.

If I have to reduce all of the laws of war into a single sentence, it is this. You divide the world into two, combatants and noncombatants. You can attack deliberately combatants, but not deliberately noncombatants. Israel acts that way. It attacks combatants and accidentally kills noncombatants. But in the case of the terrorists, it's the exact opposite. They deliberately attack combatants - noncombatants, civilians, deliberately.

I can tell you one thing, Iran is closer to developing nuclear weapons today than it was a week ago, or a month ago or a year ago. It's just moving on with its efforts.

You don't have people chanting 'Death to America' in Israel.

We wanted peace and we wanted to come to terms with the Israelis.

There is a structural difference between the way that Europe views Israel, and America views Israel. The European view is informed by the importance of colonialism in Europe's past. So for Europeans we are like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. Strange interlopers in somebody else's land. But in fact, we [Israeli] have been here for 4,000 years. This is our ancestral homeland.

There's an abiding interest by the United States, by the American people, and by anybody with his eyes set in his head, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines.

I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That's like accusing America of Americanizing Washington, or the British of Anglicizing London. You know why we're called 'Jews'? Because we come from Judea.

If diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat.

If there is willingness on the Palestinian side to reach an agreement, it is possible. We are conducting the negotiations with goodwill.

I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: September 11th we are all Americans - in grief, as in defiance.

You know, I said in the U.N., I said to President Abbas, 'Look, we're in the same city, we're in the same building, for God's sake, the U.N. Let's just sit down and begin to talk peace.'

President Abbas, you've dedicated your life to advancing the Palestinian cause. Must this conflict continue for generations, or will we enable our children and our grandchildren to speak in years ahead of how we found a way to end it? That's what we should aim for, and that's what I believe we can achieve.

A legitimate democracy cannot act against a terror organization because it is using civilians as a human shield, and therefore it should absorb attacks on its own civilians.

My level of intervention in the press, trying to control stories, is zero. Subzero.

We are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles.

We don't point a pistol at our own forehead. That is not the way to conduct negotiations.

I'm not naturally manipulative.

We [Israel people] always blame Moses, that he was our greatest leader and one of the most gifted people in the world. He brought us the moral code and so on, belief in one God, but then he was a bad navigator. He brought us to the only part of the Middle East without any gas, without any oil.

This is why, as a prime minister of Israel, I can promise you one more thing. Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But I know that Israel does not stand alone. I know that America stands with Israel.

I don't want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution. But for that, circumstances have to change.

Israel has no better friend that America. And America has not better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism.

If there is a birthrate demographic problem, and there is, it is with the non-White races Israeli Arabs who are American will remain Israeli citizens.

To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle and lose the war,

There is a fundamental situation in which the country has reached rock bottom, that a mother can't send her children out of the house in the morning. The country has reached rock bottom and this needs to be changed.

The U.S. has a stronger military than Israel, but, but don't short-change Israel, either. Don't short-change them.

Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving a base for attacks to radical Islam.

The State of Israel can be proud of what we're doing.

Iran is a country that talks about, denies the Holocaust, promises to wipe out Israel, is engaged in terror throughout the world. This is a regime that is giving vent to the worst impulses that you see right now in the Middle East. They deny the rights of women, deny democracy, brutalize their own people, don't give freedom of religion.

Those in the international community that refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.

Leaders must see reality as it is, not as it ought to be.

Everything should be done to prevent Iran, the world's most dangerous regime, from developing the world's most dangerous weapons.

Israel is very much endangering.

We want Israel as a democratic and Jewish state. So you have to maintain a Jewish majority, and you want to do that by legal means, by democratic means.

If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country.

The relationship between Israel and the United States is a bond of - it's just a very powerful bond. It was, it is, and will be and will continue to be.

When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims
national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.

No one yet knows what awaits the Jews in the twenty-first century, but we must make every effort to ensure that it is better than what befell them in the twentieth, the century of the Holocaust.

I don't think Israel can accept an Iranian terror base next to its major cities any more than the United States could accept an al Qaeda base next to New York City.

Hamas is firing at our cities, at our people, firing from these areas, from these homes, from these schools, from mosques, from hospitals. They are actually using them as weapon storage, as command posts and as firing positions, or right next to them.

The prime minister of Israel is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously. But we don't want to see this turned into some great political football

Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.

History of warfare has not yet enabled any army, any civilized army, the army of a democracy like Israel, to be able to deal with a ruthless terrorist enemy that uses civilians as a human shield without having some incidental civilian casualties.

You can't end negotiations unless you begin them. And you can't begin them if you continually negotiate about the terms to begin negotiations.

But ... the days that the Jewish people remain passive in the face of genocidal enemies - those days are over.

Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.

The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith.

Populism is dangerous.

Don't be fooled. The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn't turn Iran into a friend of America.

If the world powers are not prepared to insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal is signed, they should at the very least be prepared to insist that Iran changes its behavior before the deal expires.

In my office in Jerusalem, there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu.

The greatest threat facing humanity is a radical Islamist regime meeting up with nuclear weapons.

Israel is so tiny. It's, you know, a little less than the length of Manhattan, without the West Bank, without Judea and Samaria.

In order to restore security for Israeli citizens, every home, mother and child in Israel, and to establish a stable and strong government that will unite the nation ... I hereby declare my candidacy for the Likud party leadership and premiership of Israel.

Why are we talking about talking? Why negotiating about negotiating? It's very simple. If you want to get to peace, put all your preconditions on the side, sit down opposite a table, not in a studio, by the way.

I don't know of any army that does more than an Israeli army does to avoid civilian casualties. But incidental and unintended casualties accompany every war.

The world should be very clear about making sure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons, period.

If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.

I think that a strong Israel is the only Israel that will bring the Arabs to the peace table.

We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq. These events swung American public opinion in our favor