Benjamin Netanyahu has rarely had so large a stage and so small an audience. Delegates from dozens of countries walked out of the United Nations General Assembly hall before and as he spoke on September 25th, and protesters rallied outside the UN building in New York; among those detained were the actors Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder. Undeterred, and at one point holding up a Starlink satellite-internet dish, Israel’s prime minister delivered a combative defence of his country’s conduct that alienated critics abroad and, as Al Jazeera noted, delighted his base at home, with an election due next month.
Mr Netanyahu called allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza “the biggest lie of the century” and defended attacking Iran alongside America in February as “one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make”, adding: “if we hadn’t done it, we’d all be dead.” He derided the protesters outside as “phony”, asking why they had not demonstrated when Iranian security forces killed thousands of protesters in January, and branded the departing delegates “moral cowards”.
His sharpest attack was reserved for Zohran Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor, who has called Mr Netanyahu a war criminal and urged federal authorities to act on the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for him. Mr Netanyahu called the mayor “antisemitic”: “Mr. Mamdani, you tried to stop me from coming here. You tried to silence me. Well, you can’t silence me, and you can’t silence the truth.” Mr Mamdani replied in a statement that the speech consisted of “baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide against Palestinians”.
Al Jazeera, which characterised the address as a defence of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and of its repeated attacks on its neighbours, said the prime minister’s criticism of the network from the UN podium threatened the safety of journalists. In a statement on Friday the network said it “categorically rejects” his remarks, describing them as part of a “sustained campaign against Al Jazeera and its journalists”. Mr Netanyahu had accused the media of failing to tell the truth about the war; Israel has not allowed outside journalists into Gaza to report independently for almost three years.
The speech followed a video address by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority’s president, who was denied an American visa for the second year running, on the ground that Palestinian leaders are undermining prospects for peace. Mr Abbas condemned Israeli actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, called the war a “genocidal war that has created an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe”, and renewed his call for two states. “We seek a democratic Palestinian state that respects the rule of law and human rights, a non-militarized state that lives in security and peace alongside the state of Israel,” he said.
Others were blunter still. António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, condemned the Hamas-led attack of October 7th 2023 but called what followed an “onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza”. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, described Gaza as “the most inhumane, most shameful concentration camp of our time” and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose country has been at peace with Israel since 1994, called it a “regional threat” operating with “terrifying levels” of impunity. Mr Netanyahu dismissed such critics as “tyrants”. He also downplayed settler violence in the West Bank as the work of 150 “juvenile delinquents”; NPR’s reporting has found it widespread and destructive, and Britain has said the settler attacks and land grabs amount to “ethnic cleansing”.
Behind the rhetoric the war grinds on. A truce mediated by America between Israel and Hamas has nominally held since last October, yet more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed since it was agreed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health authorities. In all, almost 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Hamas attacks that left about 1,200 dead in Israel, the ministry says. The war with Iran, launched by Israel and America in February, is in its seventh month; it has jolted global markets and threatened the waterways through which Gulf states export their oil, while repeated diplomatic efforts have failed.
A third crisis intruded on the same day. Abdullah Abdulkader al Alimi-Bawzer, vice-president of Yemen’s internationally recognised government, warned the assembly that recent advances by Iran-backed Houthi rebels towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—through which about 12% of world trade passes—pose an “international economic risk”. The Houthis, in control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north since 2014, seized the port city of Mokha from Saudi-backed government forces earlier this month, declared a blockade on Saudi shipping and attacked its oil tankers. Tens of thousands have been displaced as the fighting has surged.
For Mr Netanyahu the applause that matters comes not from the General Assembly but from the Israeli electorate, which votes next month on whether he keeps his job; his handling of the October 7th attacks and the wars that followed will dominate the campaign. Judging by the empty seats in New York, the rest of the world has already reached its verdict. He appears to have stopped listening for it.