Did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once say, "America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry," and then "destroy" it? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that Netanyahu said this years before the Hamas-Israel war, or ever. The quotes are attributed to a transcript purportedly seen by an admitted misinformation peddler in 2015. But no proof of the wording has ever been published. A news search yielded no results matching the quotes attributed to Netanyahu. Had Netanyahu made such remarks in a way that could be independently verified, national and international news outlets would have reported on it.
The claim appeared in a January 17, 2024 Instagram video (archived here), under the title "Truth Revealed." The video opened with a woman saying:
America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world's biggest welfare state that we will create and control. That is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly." That was recorded in 1990 by Benjamin Netanyahu at the Finks Bar in Jerusalem. I ask all you lovers of America who believe in this alliance with Israel to just listen one more time and let that sink in.
This is how the post appeared on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Thurs Jan 18 16:26:11 2024 UTC)
The caption on the post read:
Truth Revealed. Pay attention. This is not going to get any better. #freeamerica #freepalestine #savepalestine #fromtherivertothesea . #unitedstates #traitor #america #bibi #americafirst
There is no proof that the quote attributed to Netanyahu was ever said by him.
A search (archived here) of Google News' index of thousands of websites, using "Benjamin Netanyahu" with the phrase "So it doesn't matter what you do, America is a Golden Calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up," did not find any credible results of his ever having made such comments. Netanyahu saying this amid the 2023-24 Hamas-Israel war or even before the October 7, 2023, attack would be well documented by news outlets if it had happened.
The quote dates back to a March 2015 article on the website Veterans Today (archived here). The Southern Poverty Law Center (archived here) identified Veterans Today as a site that peddles in misinformation:
... myriad claims that there was a conspiracy behind 9/11 (Israel orchestrated it, in cahoots with the American government), that the American government is a puppet (of Israel), that the Holocaust never happened or was greatly exaggerated (Jews made it up to manipulate non-Jews), and, most recently, that Julian Assange, the man behind Wikileaks, is a pawn (of Israel).
The Veterans Today article claims that Gordon Duff, its founder, "delivered the keynote address at the Damascus Conference on Combating Terrorism and Religious Extremism," and at that conference claimed he had seen a "written transcript of what was said at a meeting between Bibi Netanyahu and an American traitor and some other spies in 1990." The article claimed Duff "disclosed that Netanyahu was a KGB spy like Jonathan Pollard. And we know now that Israel was started as a satellite of Bolshevik Russia and was quite unhappy when the Soviet Union fell."
The article said the quote came from a meeting Netanyahu had at Finks bar in Jerusalem, a real place that closed in 2005 but was described in the article as a "well-known Mossad watering hole."
The article claims Netanyahu's quotes were "taken directly from the transcript of the recording which was witnessed and has been 100% fully authenticated." It alleges the quote was:
If we get caught they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it doesn't matter what you do, America is a Golden Calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the World's biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it's god's will and America is big enough to take the hit so we can do it again, again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves.
Politico (archived here) reported that Duff is a purveyor of Russian disinformation and that Duff has admitted in the past that much of what he writes, and what appears on Veterans Today, is "patently false." Here is video/audio (archived here) of Duff being interviewed by talk show hosts Mike Harris ("Short End of the Stick"), Kevin Barrett ("Truth Jihad") and Jeff Rense ("Jeff Rense Program") in 2012 :
About 30 percent of what's written on Veterans Today, is patently false. About 40% of what I write, is at least purposely, partially false, because if I didn't write false information I wouldn't be alive. I simply have to do that. I write ... anything I write I write between the lines.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Benjamin Netanyahu can be found here and claims related to the Hamas-Israel war that began on October 7, 2023, can be found here.
