ADC President Responds to Israel’s Netanyahu UNGA 2026 Speech

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 24, 2026

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Washington, D.C. | Jenin Younes, President and Legal Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), issued the following statement in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly.

“Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United Nations makes you question how someone who presents such an alternate reality of facts continues to be given one of the world’s most important platforms.

To catalogue every distortion in this speech would be exhausting. But its central message was unmistakable: foment fear of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims by portraying them as ‘barbarians who threaten civilization’ and ‘fanatic jihadists,’ while invoking generations of Jewish trauma to cultivate a sense of permanent existential threat that demands ever more violence in the name of ‘defense.’

Netanyahu is attempting to export the same logic used to justify the genocide in Palestine and normalize its use far beyond it.

That rhetoric is extraordinarily dangerous.

Jewish people around the world are not facing some global movement seeking their destruction, and Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims are not a collective threat to civilization. On the other hand, Israel is seeking to destroy the Palestinian people, evidenced by its words and actions over the past three years. Israel’s government is dangerously weaponizing fear and historical trauma to justify violence, dehumanize entire peoples, and sow instability far beyond the region.

The world cannot allow fearmongering and dehumanization to become a license for endless violence. No government should be welcomed into the United States and given a platform at the United Nations to manufacture an existential enemy out of millions of people in order to justify what would otherwise be indefensible.”

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About ADC

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is the largest Arab American civil rights organization in the United States, founded in 1980 by former Senator James Abourezk. ADC takes on powerful institutions and interests that threaten Americans’ constitutional rights and civil liberties. Our impact litigation and legal advocacy challenge government overreach, defend freedom of speech and dissent, and protect the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. ADC also works with national and international media to challenge discrimination, stereotypes, and misinformation, while ensuring Arab American perspectives are represented accurately and meaningfully in public debate.