“Thank you, Senators Bernie Moreno and Ashley Moody. I’m sure this is not your first attendance of a Jewish event, and I say that also to our friends the representatives of Congress who are here. You will note that they are long on introductions and short on speeches, which is what I intend to do, but I want to thank all those who preceded me for their heartwarming words or heartfelt support, the way that you receive Sarah and me, my son Yair, our delegation that includes Minister Regev of the Israeli government, our ambassador to the UN, our ambassador to Washington, and, of course, our consul generals in both New York and in Miami. I want to thank all of you, rabbis, Tila, what a force of nature. This woman is amazing. Her parents, Hannah, that’s where she gets it from. And Simon, that too, our wonderful friends.
We stand here on the last day of 2025 here in Miami, in the great state of Florida. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t go to Florida these days, and most of them stay. It’s a pleasure to be among proud Jews and proud non-Jewish friends of the jewish people and the State of Israel, who understand that unity, strength and resolve, are the guardians and guarantors of our future. Unity, strength and resolve, that’s what makes the difference.
Now we were—the tragedy of the history of our people is that having been exiled from our land, we lost strength, unity and resolve, and the consequences were horrific, more than afflicted any other People in history. We were expelled from land to land. We suffered pogroms. We suffered massacres, culminating in the greatest massacre of them all, the Holocaust, in which a third of our people were lost.
Outside here, we had a gathering, a reception, and a man came up to me. He’s 101 years old. His name is Jake Wachsal [spelling?] Jake, stand up, stand up. Stand up, Jake.
Jake is a Holocaust survivor. He escaped the death camps, and I shook his hand, and I said to him, and I said to you, I say to the entire world, never again. Never again. Never. Never again was last year in which we demonstrated to the would-be destroyers of Israel, we shall destroy you. You shall not destroy us. Never again is next year, and never again is forever, because we have changed Jewish history with the establishment of the sovereign Jewish state and the sovereign Jewish army. In our defense arms, we are able to do something the Jews, for centuries in the diaspora could not do. We were vilified by horrible lies, horrible lies. We’re poisoning the wells. We’re massacring Christian children to use their blood to bake matzos for Pesach. We were carrying vermin. And these vilifications always preceded a physical attack. We could defend ourselves, neither against the first nor the second.
But with the rise of the State of Israel, one thing changed. We have the capacity to fend off our would-be killers. We do that and we demonstrated that. We restored the capacity of the Jewish people to defend themselves by themselves. We could do so with our own independent force. It doesn’t mean that we’ve stopped the vilifications, they still continue, but we have the capacity to make sure that they don’t succeed.
We can do so because we have incredibly brave soldiers like Rani Gvili, a hero of Israel, a hero of Israel. Rani came to the front on October 7, came to the front with a broken arm, and then he was shot twice and he killed 14 terrorists before he ran out of bullets, and they killed him, and they took his body to Gaza, and I say to you, Talik and Itzik, his beloved parents, and his sisters who are here and brother, we shall return him, we’re working on it right now. He shall be back. The first one in, last one out, but he’ll be back. Back to you and back to us.
We achieved, after the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, when everybody thought that Israel was doomed, it was on the way down. That’s what they said. It was on the way down. And could it survive? On the second day of the war, I said, we shall change the face of the Middle East. And with our incredibly brave soldiers, with our incredibly stalwart people, the citizens of Israel. President Trump asked me, how do you how do those people, how do they stand it? How do they—how do they do it? And I said, well, see, I couldn’t quote directly a great singer in Israel. I’ll say it in Hebrew. [in Hebrew: רק בגלל הרוח]. You know that. It’s the spirit, it’s the spirit of our forefathers. It’s the spirit of the heroes of Israel. It’s the spirit of the Maccabees that has been reincarnated in the modern State of Israel. The bravery of our soldiers, the resolute stance of our people and the correct decisions that we took in the government that changed the face of battle and changed the face of the Middle East.
And there was one other thing, two things. One, the ability to do the right thing, to decide to do the right thing and then do it in the face of enormous pressure, including one that came from our greatest ally. We had to show that—our enemies saw that we would do what is necessary to protect the life of our state and the life of our citizens, and the fact that we did it under enormous attack in the world press and under very difficult conditions with our American ally, demonstrated the depth of our resolve.
That was one thing that was demonstrated and it registered. But the second thing that happened was that we also had the friendship of the United States and the support of a president like no other president, Donald J. Trump, and the support that he gave the State of Israel. Now, mind you, mind you. I appreciated the fact that the beginning stages of the war President Biden came to Israel. I appreciated the fact that he helped us in the beginning But President Trump has been unflinching, consistent. He never wavered, including in the meetings that we just had in Mar-a-Lago. That’s some place, I can tell you. I mean, it’s got better weather than Washington and a few other things, but the president is the same. His gut, his heart. We don’t say gut, we say his kishkus. You know, his instinctive support for the State of Israel, his understanding of what is right, what is just, that’s been there from day one, and we have shown what happens when the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel have no daylight between them. Wonderful things. Wondrous things can happen. They did and they will.
So for many, they see the wonder of Israel. They see how this small nation, gigantic in talent and in spirit, can take on enemies 10, 20 times their size and win. You can see the fact that our economy, after two years of war, has been rated among the three top economies on the planet. That’s because—and I’m very proud to have led a free market revolution that unleashed the incredible talents and genius embedded in our people, in our citizens, and that came to the fore. And I have to tell you that Israel has come out of this war stronger than ever before militarily, stronger than ever before economically. Strong. What does strong mean? Well, we just signed a $37 billion gas deal. That’s strong. We just have Nvidia. Nvidia, you know Nvidia, small company, $4 trillion dollars, you know, they decided to have a massive investment in Israel, and we welcome it. And all the economic indicators are amazing. Israel is a very strong country, and that bodes well for the future, because you make alliances with the strong, you make peace with the strong, and we have opened up opportunities for peace that have never existed before. In the first term of President Trump’s office, we did the Abraham Accords that brought four historic peace accords with four Arab states, and we’re committed to do more, but the one thing that decides all that is our strength. It’s peace through strength, it’s prosperity through strength, it’s hope through strength. And we are a very strong people.
But it’s true that we have an eight front, and the eighth front is the rising tide of antisemitism around the world and the tremendous battle that we have for the truth. And if I can leave you with something today, it is this: just as we fight the physical battle on the battlefield and we win, we must also fight the battle for truth. We must also stand up to the scourge of antisemitism that endangers not only us, but every society it has infected. It starts with the Jews, it never ends with the Jews. You nip it at the bud, and that requires the courage of statesmen, public representatives and citizens. I say to you, the members of the Jewish community of the United States, the last thing you should do before antisemitic attacks, as they attack you, the last thing you should do is lower your head and seek cover. That’s not what you should do. You should stand up and be counted. You should fight back. You should speak up. You should attack your attackers. You should delegitimize the delegitimizers. That’s what you need to do.
And I have a secret for you. Nobody will fight for you more than you fight for yourself. That’s what happens when Israel fights for itself. All the governments, not all, but so many of the governments in the world come to us. When Israel is strong, others want to partner with us. You stand up and be counted, and you will see the difference. Don’t be afraid. Don’t cower. Don’t lower your head. And to the young college student who asked me before, 17 years old, he said, what to do? Speak up, stand up, fight back. That’s the important thing. It’s called fight, fight, fight, and then we shall win, win, win with God’s help. Shana Tova to all of you. Next year in Jerusalem, that’s tomorrow. Thank you”.