The video clip above was Bibi's statement to the press, telling them what inspired him in making his courageous "Have you no shame?" speech at then UN. "Light a candle to dispell the darkness," the Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, z"l) told Bibi in 1984, when Bibi went to the UN to serve as Israel's ambassador.

This time, Bibi went to the UN as Israel's Prime Minister, speaking against the evil of the infamous Goldstone Report, the document that blamed Israel for defending itself against eight long years of bombing attacks in which 16 men, women and children were killed, where children were born and grew up, without ever knowing what it would be like to be able to run freely outside their homes.

Yet the more I think about it, the more profound and courageous Bibi's speech seems.

In terms of darkness, you don't get much darker than the UN these days -- especially for Bibi and for Israel. Much of Europe seems to either have forgotten the Shoah, or worse yet, has concluded that maybe Hitler had the right idea. Israel's nearest neighbors flatly refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. We all know what that madman in Iran is planning to do -- and now is very close to being able to do. On Yom Kippur, for crying out loud, he was testing his missiles and found that they did indeed have the power to reach Israel.

So for Bibi to go into that pit of darkenss and make that speech -- reminding everyone of the Shoah, proving -- as though it needed more proving, after all these years -- that it had really happened, and then to boldly assert Israel's right to defend itself, was remarkable.

It sounds silly, doesn't it, to be so impressed by that? that a UN-regognized nation that's been in existance 60 years, that it still found it necessary to assert its simple right to exist?

But that's where we are, these days. And much of the trouble comes from the UN, who gives equal opportunity to great nations and evil dictatorships to spew whatever evil or idiocy they want. If there ever was darkness that needed a candle, it's the UN -- now, more than in 1984, when the Rebbe spoke to Bibi.

But Bibi's speech aside, what took even more courage was his interview following the speech in which he credited the Rebbe with his decision to say what he did.

That sounds funny, too, doesn't it? That it's deemed courageous, for a country to assert its right to follow the same traditions its people have been following for 3500 years, in the same land. But there you have it. Today, Israel is called "racist" and damned as an "apartheid" state.

So that was the anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist cesspit into which Bibi stepped last week and not only dared to give his "Have you no shame?" speech, but then topped it off by crediting the Rebbe as his inspiration -- the Rebbe, contemporary Jewry's most famous leader, the man who's responsible for bringing hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world back to their own traditions.

That's amazing. Israel hasn't had a leader like this since Menachem Begin, who also did some dastardly things -- entered into the treaty with Egypt, and giving away the Sinai -- but who was always proud to assert that Israel is a Jewish state.

"Light a candle" was the Rebbe's frequent advice, especially to his own hassadim, followers.

"In the olden days, there was a person in every town who would light the street lamps with a light he carried at the end of a long pole," the Rebbe said in a speech he delivered on the 13th day of Tammuz, 5722 (1961).



"On the street corners the lamps were there in readiness, waiting to be lit. Sometimes, however, the lamps are not as easily accessible. There are lamps in forsaken places, in deserts or at sea. There must be someone to light even those lamps, so that they may fulfill their purpose and light up the path of others. ...

"I will add that this function is not limited to hassidim, but is the function of every Jew. Divine Providence brings Jews to the most unexpected, remote places so that they may carry out this purpose of lighting up the world."

Even to such a "forsaken" place like the United Nations.