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Netanyahu's "Very Much": The August 2025 Greater Israel Interview

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED. On 12 August 2025, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was handed an amulet showing a map of the Promised Land, was asked whether he connects to the vision of Greater Israel, and answered "Very much." Israel's own English-language press reported it the same day.

If you have only heard that Iran is being bombed, this is the place to start. "Greater Israel" is the English name for the Hebrew Eretz Yisrael HaShlema, "the Whole Land of Israel": the idea that Israel's rightful borders are larger than the ones the world recognizes. For decades, Israel's defenders told the world that the idea belonged to Israel's enemies and to a fringe of religious settlers. Two months after Israel and the United States bombed Iran in June 2025, the man who has led Israel for most of the last thirty years sat in a television studio and said he connects to it "very much." This page lays out what he said, how Israel's press and its neighbors understood it, what his office said afterward, and what he has done and said since.

What he said​

The interview ran on i24, an Israeli news channel. The interviewer, Sharon Gal, is a former right-wing member of the Knesset, Israel's parliament. The Times of Israel reported the exchange in its liveblog under the headline "Netanyahu says he's on a 'historic and spiritual mission,' endorses vision of Greater Israel" (Times of Israel, 12 August 2025):

  • Gal handed Netanyahu an amulet he called "a map of the Promised Land" and said, "This is my vision."
  • Gal asked: "Do you connect to the vision?"
  • Netanyahu: "Very much." He said it twice.
  • Gal: "It is Greater Israel."
  • Netanyahu spoke of a mission: his parents' generation had to establish the state, his generation has to guarantee its continued existence, and "if you're asking if I have a sense of mission, historically and spiritually, the answer is yes."

The Times of Israel added one detail that matters a great deal: the exchange was cut from the English YouTube version of the interview. It appears in the Hebrew broadcast. An English-speaking viewer watching the channel's own upload would never have seen the prime minister's two words.

According to Grok, X's AI system, the pendant was a map of the biblical Promised Land of the Genesis 15:18 type, "from the Nile to the Euphrates," of the kind the interviewer's company sells as jewelry (Grok on X, 10 September 2026). NPR, looking back in May 2026, described the amulet the same way: jewelry "shaped with the borders of what's called greater Israel, land stretching from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq" (NPR, 31 May 2026).

Go deeper: The i24 Amulet Exchange, Line by Line

How Israel's own press read it​

The Times of Israel's own headline says he "endorses vision of Greater Israel." The New York Times, reporting two weeks later on Israel's approval of the E1 settlement east of Jerusalem, described the interview as Netanyahu identifying with the interviewer's vision of the "whole land of Israel." In the same story, Isabel Kershner wrote that since 7 October 2023 Netanyahu "seems to have dropped any semblance of accepting a form of Palestinian statehood, however limited, in favor of a greater Israel — one that extends beyond the boundaries of the original Jewish state founded in 1948." She quoted him at the Ofra settlement: "I stood here half a century ago and said that we would do everything to ensure our continued hold on the land of Israel, that we would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and that we would thwart all attempts to uproot us from here." And: "Thank God we kept our promise." (New York Times, 25 August 2025)

Months earlier, on 11 December 2024, the editor-in-chief of Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily, had already named the turn. Aluf Benn's analysis was titled "From Mount Hermon's Peaks, Netanyahu Plots His Vision of a Greater Israel." He argued that Netanyahu, long seen as cautious, now wanted to be remembered as the leader who extended Israel's reach from Gaza in the south to Syria and the Golan Heights in the north (Haaretz, 11 December 2024). That is not an outside critic. It is the editor of Israel's newspaper of record.

Outside Israel, the clip spread within hours. Drop Site News wrote that Netanyahu "openly embraced the vision of a 'Greater Israel'" and was "beaming when former MK Sharon Gal presented him with an amulet depicting the 'Promised Land'" (Drop Site News on X, 13 August 2025). Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza-born writer who is a sharp critic of Hamas, wrote that Netanyahu was "peddling what was historically touted as a mere antisemitic conspiracy" (Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib on X, 14 August 2025). On Piers Morgan's show that October, Mehdi Hasan summed it up: Netanyahu "supports the idea of a 'Greater Israel'... which some people used to say was a conspiracy theory on the far right" (Mehdi Hasan on X, 7 October 2025).

How the neighbors read it​

The governments whose land lies on the biblical map answered within two days. Jordan called the remarks "a dangerous and provocative escalation, a threat to the sovereignty of states." Egypt said the rhetoric "rejects the path of peace." Iraq said the statements "clearly reveal the expansionist ambitions" behind them. Saudi Arabia "categorically rejected" Israeli officials' "settlement and expansionist ideas and projects." By 25 August, Pakistan's foreign minister told the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that his country had joined statements by "31 states and the secretaries-general of OIC, the League of Arab States & the GCC" condemning the remarks.

Go deeper: How 31 Governments Answered "Very Much"

What his office said, and what the record shows​

On 31 August 2025 the Prime Minister's Office posted in English: "Contrary to the false accusation, Israel has no territorial claims against any neighboring countries. Our goal is peace and security." (Prime Minister of Israel on X, 31 August 2025)

The office did not withdraw the "Very much." And the record since then contradicts the denial. Within a year, his finance minister was naming the Litani River in Lebanon and the Hermon in Syria as Israel's new borders, his defense minister said land taken in Syria "will remain ours forever," and Netanyahu himself boasted of "three security zones deep within enemy territory" in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. The full comparison is on The August 2025 denial page.

The same summer: "change the face of the Middle East"​

The amulet did not come out of nowhere. During the June 2025 war on Iran, Netanyahu said at Tel Nof Airbase: "Two days after the war began, I said: we will change the face of the Middle East. That is exactly what we are doing." (JNS, June 2025) Two months later he said "Very much" to Greater Israel. In the 2026 war he returned to it: "I promised you that we would change the face of the Middle East." He has since spoken of Israel as a "regional superpower," of a six-sided alliance with India, and of oil and gas pipelines running from the Gulf across Arabia to Israel's Mediterranean ports.

Go deeper: "Change the Face of the Middle East"

What he has said and done since​

The "Very much" sits inside thirty years of consistent words. As a young leader he stood at Ofra and vowed to "prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state." In January 2024 he said "Israel must have security control over all the territory west of the Jordan." In December 2024, after Assad fell, his cabinet unanimously approved his plan to settle the Golan: "We will continue to hold onto it, develop it, & settle it." In August 2025: "We are taking over the Gaza Strip." In May 2026: "We have created three security zones deep within enemy territory." In June 2026, of southern Lebanon: "Israel stays in the yellow security zone that keeps us safe." At the UN in September 2026 he told Syria's president that "the Jews have been on the Golan Heights since the days of Moses. You can read it in the Bible."

Go deeper: Netanyahu on the Land, 1996 to 2026

Why it matters to an American family​

The United States arms Israel and fought beside it against Iran. If the war with Iran is about a nuclear program, it has an end. If it is part of a prime minister's "historic and spiritual mission" to build a larger Israel, then Iran is a step, not a finish line, and American soldiers, taxpayers, and families are part of the bill. Israeli voices have openly called for American troops on Iranian soil; see American soldiers in Iran: the articles.

Evidence rating for "Israel's prime minister said he connects 'very much' to a Greater Israel vision": CONFIRMED. Evidence rating for "his government's actions since then match that vision on the ground": STRONG.

Status: Benjamin Netanyahu is alive. Sharon Gal, Aluf Benn, Isabel Kershner, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, and Mehdi Hasan are alive. Nothing on this page states that any of them committed a crime.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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