A defiant Netanyahu turns the UN speech into a warmongering rally: "We have no other option"

JerusalemBenjamin Netanyahu took to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly this Thursday with a forty-minute speech marked by confrontation. The Israeli prime minister, as expected, defended the military operations against Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, praised Donald Trump, and attacked various countries and the role of international media.

All this, 33 days before the Israeli legislative elections on October 27. The electoral context does not explain the entire speech, but it is difficult to separate it from the tone and the political moment in which Netanyahu took the UN podium. The scene reinforced this reading. Before he began to speak, several delegations left the room, while his supporters received him with the cry of "Am Yisrael Chai" (the people of Israel live). Before starting the speech, Netanyahu confronted them: "If there are other cowards who haven't left the room yet, do it now".

Despite previous expectations, and what the prime minister himself and the Israeli envoy to the UN had pointed out regarding the content of the intervention, Netanyahu did not present any major new evidence about the Iranian nuclear program. But he did return to the terrain that has dominated much of his political career: war, security, and the existential threat that Iran represents for Israel. He defended the attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities and defined the decision to destroy them as one of the easiest he has made.

In this context, he recovered the figure of his brother Yoni, who died during the hostage rescue operation in Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976. Netanyahu recalled some words he said to him during the Six-Day War: "We will win. We have no other choice". And he returned to the same idea throughout the speech: Israel must stand firm against its enemies and against international pressure.

As on other occasions, the longest-serving Israeli prime minister in history spoke of the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, which he defined as "the darkest day in Israel's history". He also returned to presenting the return of the hostages as a victory shared with the United States. And here another of the great protagonists of the speech appeared: Donald Trump. Netanyahu dedicated several minutes to thanking the American president for what he described as "bold leadership" and his alliance with Israel to "save civilization".

Facing the world, convincing at home

The rest of the speech followed a similar logic of defense: he defended the actions of the Israeli army as the "most moral in the world," amidst strong international criticism and the documentary GAZA; he lashed out at the United Kingdom and France for accusations of colonialism and reminded them of their imperial past; he accused Qatar of spending billions of dollars to "spread lies" about Israel through universities and media outlets like Al-Jazeera, and dedicated a few words to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom he called a "tyrant." He also attacked the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, whom he labeled an antisemite and a "friend of Hamas."

The prime minister rejected the accusations of genocide made against Israel, which he described as "the biggest lie of the century," and assured that Israel has made efforts to facilitate the entry of food and vaccines into Gaza. "Israel has not committed a genocide. Israel has prevented a genocide," he stated. On the ground, however, the data provide a devastating dimension of the offensive on Gaza: more than 73,000 Palestinians dead since the Hamas attacks, according to figures from the Strip's Ministry of Health.

Abbas accuses him of waging a "genocidal war"

Netanyahu's speech came a few hours after the intervention of the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who for the second consecutive year was unable to intervene in person in New York because the United States denied him a visa. In his speech of about 23 minutes, recorded in advance, he accused Israel of killing civilians, destroying infrastructure, and carrying out a "genocidal war." In addition, the Palestinian president denounced the expansion of settlements, territorial fragmentation, and settler violence in the West Bank.

Abbas also defended the two-state solution and stated that the Palestinian goal remains an independent and sovereign state with East Jerusalem as its capital, living in peace and security alongside Israel. He also demanded that Palestine obtain full membership in the United Nations and that President Donald Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza be fulfilled.

The two interventions have once again highlighted the distance between Israel and much of the international community, and while Netanyahu presented Israel as a country fighting for its survival against enemies determined to destroy it, Abbas described the Palestinians as a people subjected to occupation, displacement, and war.