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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday. (Richard Drew/AP) |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly could almost have been mistaken for business as usual. He stood at the dais Friday displaying a prop much as he often has: This time, he brought placards that itemized the perfidy of his nation’s enemies and illustrated the scale of Israel’s victories over an array of militant groups in the Middle East. On his lapel, he sported a large QR code, by which anyone watching could access Israel’s account of the horrors unleashed during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the brutal war that followed in the Gaza Strip. But even in the annals of Netanyahu’s decades of contentious U.N. appearances, the reaction to his speech stood out. Hundreds of diplomats from dozens of delegations stood up and left the chamber as he took the stage, a walkout that could not be obscured by the noisy cheers of a handful of supporters watching from the gallery. The Israeli prime minister went on to explain why he was not finished with a punishing war that has destroyed much of Gaza, killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and convinced many international onlookers, including an independent U.N. commission of experts, that Israel is carrying out genocide. Netanyahu scolded “weak-kneed” Western governments for joining the overwhelming majority of U.N. member states last week in recognizing a Palestinian state. “Over time, many world leaders buckled,” he said “They buckled under the pressure of a biased media, radical Islamist constituencies and antisemitic mobs.” By all appearances, his message has rarely fallen on less receptive ears. “The empty hall that greeted Netanyahu was a powerful symbol of the isolation and disgrace he has brought on himself and Israel,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the U.S.-based, liberal Zionist group J Street. “His refusal to show even basic empathy for Gaza’s suffering and his reliance on the rhetoric of endless war between good and evil were both shameful and dangerous.”
Netanyahu is slated to go to the White House on Monday as an increasingly isolated figure. President Donald Trump has maintained little daylight between his administration and that of Netanyahu’s right-wing government, and has shielded Israel from censure at the U.N., vetoing six attempts by the Security Council to force through Gaza ceasefire resolutions. But even Trump has started to show his impatience with Netanyahu, and appears to be hoping that he can persuade his Israeli counterpart to sign on to a Trump-brokered proposal for ending the war and pave the way for some form of reconstruction and reconciliation. Though details remain vague, such an agreement has few takers among Netanyahu’s far-right allies, who call for the full conquest of Gaza and expulsion of its Palestinian population — rhetoric that is part of the case material for the ongoing genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Parallel to the war in Gaza, Israel has accelerated the far-right settlement agenda in the West Bank, pressing ahead with measures that could guarantee permanent control of the occupied territory, as The Washington Post outlined in a detailed piece over the weekend.
When pressed by reporters, Trump said he was not going to “allow” Israel to annex the West Bank — a move that Washington’s allies in the Persian Gulf have also made clear would sound a death knell for U.S. hopes for Israel normalizing ties with many Arab states. Rights advocates, though, see an unchecked, active campaign of Israeli expansion and Palestinian dispossession. “They want to make it a point of no return. That’s their goal,” Allegra Pacheco, a U.S. human rights lawyer who runs the West Bank Protection Consortium, a coalition of NGOs and donor states supporting Palestinians, told my colleague Claire Parker. “And it’s not only building anymore. Now they’ve seized upon emptying out these areas and population transfers.” |
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An anti-Netanyahu protest at the U.N. headquarters Friday. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) |
In New York last week and across the world, there were additional signs of Israel’s growing isolation. Daily demonstrations against Israel in greeted dignitaries attending the U.N. meetings in New York. Inside the U.N.'s halls, European states that long backed Israel now routinely vote against it at both the General Assembly and Security Council. Last week, the European Union unveiled plans to put punitive tariffs on some Israeli goods and further sanctions on a handful of Netanyahu’s far-right allies. In the Mediterranean, Spanish and Italian military vessels are helping escort a flotilla of activists and humanitarians carrying aid to war-stricken Gaza. The revulsion at the war and the seeming lack of consequences for the killing of Palestinian civilians amid Israel’s military operations has bled into the cultural sphere. Some European broadcasters want to exclude Israel from participation in the annual Eurovision song contest next year. UEFA, the body that administers European soccer, is moving ahead with a vote to suspend the participation of Israeli teams in international competition. “There is a change in the position of the international community,” Brazilian foreign Minister Mauro Vieira told me, speaking Friday on the sidelines of meetings of the Hague Group, a bloc of more than 30 countries that are coordinating tougher action to stop Israel’s war and end the occupation of Palestinian territories. Brazil has called for the launching of an international mission akin to the one that emerged under U.N. auspices in 1962 that was focused on countering South Africa’s apartheid regime. “You can be culpable for genocide not only for fighting against a people with the wish of erasing them, but also by complicity,” Mauro said. “If you don’t take actions, you are also helping the genocide go on.” In his speech, Netanyahu rejected charges of genocide as “blood libel” and cast the numerous governments calling for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians — an outcome Netanyahu has spent most of his career undermining — as siding with the terrorists of Hamas. The Israeli leader’s critics are accustomed to this rhetoric. “In the corridors of power, we have been labeled anti-Israel, pro-Hamas. But these labels are distractions,” South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told me in a text message. “They obscure the real issue: the equal application of international law. South Africa still believes in a two-state solution. We still believe in peace. But peace cannot be built on the rubble of impunity.” |