Netanyahu set to address the UN amid global criticism of war in Gaza, Lebanon
PM, known for his showmanship, will deliver speech under shadow of possible arrest warrant from ICC, one year after UN speech presenting vision of regional peace
From the dais of the UN General Assembly just a year ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu triumphantly hailed a new peace he said would sweep through the Middle East. A year later, as he travels back to that same world stage, that vision is in tatters.
The devastating war in Gaza is about to hit the one-year mark. Israel is on the cusp of a wider regional war with the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
And the country finds itself increasingly isolated internationally and led by a polarizing leader whose handling of the conflict has sparked protests both in global capitals and on the streets of his own country.
And it’s not just the mushrooming regional conflicts weighing Israel down. Netanyahu will head to New York burdened also by what could be an imminent warrant for his arrest by the International Criminal Court over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, what would put him in a fellowship of sorts with Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir.
“He arrives almost at a point of being persona non grata,” said Alon Liel, a former director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and outspoken critic of Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is set to address the General Assembly on Friday. A gifted orator, he has long viewed speeches from such venerated perches as the optimal way to deliver a message and score political points with Israelis enthralled by his flawless English and fiery delivery.
In July, he championed Israel’s case for the war in Gaza in front of a joint session of the US Congress, where he received multiple ovations and plaudits even from some critics back home.
“In his view, any such trips to New York, to the grand stage of world affairs, he considers an advantage,” said Yossi Shain, a professor of international relations at Georgetown and Tel Aviv University. He said Netanyahu’s speeches abroad were often meant to impress audiences at home, and this one was no different.
Netanyahu is known for his showmanship at the United Nations and has repeatedly used the pulpit to try make a case for his ideology and policies.
At a speech in 2012, Netanyahu famously brandished a placard with a cartoon bomb to illustrate what he said was Iran’s race toward a nuclear weapon. In 2009, he showed up with a copy of the plans for the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, using it to highlight what he said was the former Iranian leader’s “antisemitic rants.”
Last year, his focus was on what appeared to be a burgeoning normalization with Saudi Arabia that he said showed how a broader Middle East peace was not contingent on resolving the conflict with the Palestinians.
He held up his prop, a map of the region, and used the word “peace” 42 times. The map appeared to show Gaza and the West Bank — territories claimed by the Palestinians for a future state — as being encompassed by Israel.
But Netanyahu arrives at the United Nations this week at a time when his own diplomatic capital and legitimacy, as well as that of the country he represents, are at a low. Critics say that aside from a moment in the spotlight, it’s not clear what Netanyahu will achieve with the visit.
“He is a great believer in speechmaking,” said Tal Schneider, a Times of Israel political commentator. “He thinks that if he delivers a speech in English, he can convince people in the justness of his ways,” she said, adding that that demonstrated he was “disconnected from reality.”
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar, who is close to Netanyahu, said the UN was a “very important stage” to lay out Israel’s position and he hoped the speech would bolster international support.
At the UN, Netanyahu will seek to persuade a world growing increasingly exasperated by Israel’s war in Gaza that its aims are righteous. He may try to galvanize the world behind an Israeli war against Hezbollah.
And he is likely to lay blame for the region’s chaos on Iran, a repeated focus of his speeches at home and abroad. That he is making the trip at all, at a time of escalating violence with Hezbollah, points to how much significance he places on the speech.
But Netanyahu’s words may fall on deaf ears.
The Israeli leader “actually believes that his UN speeches have transformative effects on history. They do not,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. Netanyahu’s visit, Pinkas added, comes as Israel is now globally perceived as being “on the precipice of a condemned pariah state” with its leader seen as a “rogue warmonger.”
Protests are expected during his visit. New York is home to Columbia University, site of some of the most intense campus demonstrations of recent years this spring, many of which included explicit support for Hamas.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, has been a divisive figure internationally for years, with his hardline approach to the Palestinians in particular frustrating world leaders. But his handling of the war in Gaza has further stained his global perception.
The war was set off by Hamas’s October 7 attack, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
