Last Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was standing in front of that iconic green marble backdrop, lecturing the United Nations General Assembly about the prospects for peace in the forever warring piece of the world where he lives.

He was delivering a stern warning to Iran: “If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place—there is no place in Iran—that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.” Then his unblinking eyes lasered as he added what seemed a odd diversion: “And that’s true of the entire Middle East.”

Just hours later we knew why. His troops were about to begin a bombing mission that would blow his seemingly newsworthy UN speech right off the world’s news screens.

Netanyahu’s forces were about to drop U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs on apartment buildings just south of Beirut – and assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, longtime leader of the Iran-financed Hezbollah terrorist group, who was with his top team in their underground headquarters beneath the Lebanese families they have forced into being their human shields.

Nasrallah’s Hezbollah had shown its support for Hamas’s horrific Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, by firing a rocket barrage into northern Israel the next day. Since then, Netanyahu says, Hezbollah has fired 8,000 rockets into Israel, forcing 60,000 civilians to flee from their homes.

So, as he was speaking at the UN Friday, Netanyahu was thinking about how he was just hours away from forever ending Nasrallah’s terror. And frankly, as Israel’s leader was speaking, I, too was thinking of something else. I was thinking about the words Netanyahu never spoke after Hamas attacked Israel – and how different our world might have been if only he had said them last year or anytime since.

In a Dec. 15 column, I had suggested a bold challenge Netanyahu could have made that could have driven a wedge between Gaza’s Hamas leaders and the Gaza Palestinian civilians they are willing to see killed for a grander geopolitical purpose. I envisioned Netanyahu standing in front of that green marbled rostrum and redefining a reality that world leaders refused to see:

“Citizens of the world, we face a unique challenge. …We must secure the freedom of not just one, but two different sets of hostages Hamas has simultaneously imprisoned in Gaza.

“One hostage set is the 248 people Hamas kidnapped in Israel – including women, children and the elderly.

“The other hostage set numbers perhaps 1 million civilian Gaza Palestinians who Hamas trapped into being their human shields. Hamas’ rulers and troops are hiding underground, beneath their apartments. Hamas knows those innocent Palestinians will die first when Israel bombs in retaliation. Hamas doesn’t care. But Israel cares. And the world cares.

“We live alongside our Palestinian fellow-citizens of Israel. They are as repulsed as we were by those videos of Hamas invaders killing babies, raping women … We are asking the United Nations to lead a world effort to free both sets of Hamas hostages. We want to work with … the world, even as we must pursue our attackers.”

Instead, Israel chose to go it alone. As I wrote then and ever since, Israel did exactly what Iran and its proxies wanted. They knew the world would be repulsed when Israel bombed Hamas – and killed the masses of civilians they were hiding beneath. Iran hoped the world would turn against Israel, perhaps forever. And that this would stop Saudi Arabia from normalizing relations with Israel.

World leaders know the Geneva Accords and international courts consider it a war crime to use innocent civilians as human shields. Yet the world allows Iran’s Hamas and Hezbollah proxies to do just that in Gaza and Lebanon.

Was there another way? We’ll never know. No leaders cared enough to even try to stop this war crime. Their grandchildren will never understand their failure.

But this week, one world leader finally rose to the challenge. Sort of. He spoke directly to a nation’s ordinary people who are being ruled by an iron-fisted religious regime. He warned the civilians not to “let a small group of fanatic theocrats crush your hopes and your dreams. You deserve better. Your children deserve better. The entire world deserves better.”

That speaker was Bibi Netanyahu. He talked via an internet video (with Persian subtitles) to Iran’s people on Tuesday, just hours before Iran bombarded Israel with missiles to retaliate for Nasrallah’s assassination.

“I know you don’t support the rapists and murderers of Hamas and Hezbollah, but your leaders do,” Netanyahu said. “You deserve more. The people of Iran should know — Israel stands with you. May we together know a future of prosperity and peace.”

Belatedly, Bibi is finally trying out new words. Maybe a new theme. Perhaps now, in a tall glass house half a world away, the UN's leaders will discover their spines, unite their nations, and begin a true truth-telling era that can finally give peace a chance in the Middle East.

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