Two images clearly show the growing isolation and international criticism that Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel is suffering. Inside the UN headquarters, the conservative prime minister was received this Thursday with boos and with the departure of many delegations before he began to speak. The half-empty General Assembly was a very powerful metaphor. “If there is another coward who wants to leave, please let him leave now,” he said, defiantly, while members of his delegation shouted: “Am Israel Jai” (The people of Israel live, in Hebrew). Outside the building, the police detained a hundred protesters, including actress Susan Sarandon and Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Ávila Chevalier, who were protesting against the presence of a president whom they accuse of committing genocide in Gaza.
Precisely that accusation has starred in one of the hottest moments of a harsh, threatening intervention, in which Netanyahu has made it clear that he does not intend to back down even one millimeter. The idea that his country, which was born with the unparalleled trauma of the Nazi extermination of more than six million Jews in Europe during World War II, is now committing genocide is, according to its ruler, “the biggest lie of the century.”
Netanyahu went further. He not only denies having committed that crime. In addition, he assures that they have only defended themselves to avoid being the victims of a genocide. “This is what [New York Mayor Zohran] Mamdani's Hamas friends would have done to us if we hadn't stopped him.” These accusations, he said, result in increasing persecution of Jews around the world. “They stab us in the streets,” he said.
Regardless of Netanyahu's opinion, a growing number of experts and the largest professional organization of scholars on the subject - the International Association of Genocide Scholars - consider that the country has committed genocide, by acting with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, the Palestinians. The conservative politician is not investigated for this crime by the International Criminal Court, but for war crimes and crimes against humanity. On the other hand, there is an open case for genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice (UN) due to a complaint from South Africa to which other States have joined.
The prime minister has spoken before the General Assembly aware that his political future is at stake next month. Polls for the Israeli elections on October 27 show the two blocs, pro and anti-Netanyahu, very evenly matched. In a month, the greatest survivor of Israeli politics could continue to lead the country or have to retire, and perhaps face various judicial processes.
In this context, he has launched a tough, combative message that revolved around one idea: Israel has no choice but to respond with full force if it wants to survive. “We are going to win, we have no other alternative,” he repeated. That impression, he believes, became clearer than ever after October 7, 2023, which was “the darkest day in Israel's history,” when Hamas “committed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”
Dead enemies and broken spirit
He has pushed for a country the size of the State of New Jersey to be capable of waging a war on seven fronts (Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, the Houthis of Yemen, and the Shia militias of Iraq and Syria). And he is proud of the results achieved so far, with many of his enemies and his spirit broken: "The terrorists who killed Israelis and Americans are no longer there. And those who remain are trying to reorganize."
For this reason, Netanyahu sees the accusations that come to him from the outside world as attacks on Israel or the Jewish people in general. The settler violence in the West Bank, which a growing number of Western countries, led by the United Kingdom, are beginning to take seriously with the imposition of sanctions on Israel, are for him a minor thing. He has defined them as “a handful of minor criminals”, around 150, who sometimes “light fires” and who have caused “maybe two or three deaths” so far this year. Netanyahu has compared it to the “thousands of attacks” by Palestinians against “peaceful” and “honorable” settlers.
“The anti-Semites of the world want to terrorize our people,” he stated. In this worldview in which a large part of the planet is against them, Netanyahu has had words of gratitude to a country, the United States, and to a man, Donald Trump, his greatest ally, with whom last February he launched a war in Iran with an uncertain future: "He understood that he could not let the fanatic ayatollahs who shout 'death to the United States' advance. It was not an act just to protect himself, but to save civilization." Trump's counterexample is the mayor of New York, whom he has accused of rampant anti-Semitism: "To all those who spread lies about my country and our brave soldiers, whether you are in this room or in the office of the anti-Semitic mayor of New York, I say this: You should be ashamed!"
Abbas: “An evil colonial plan”
Netanyahu spoke a few hours after the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, did so. But this one did not do it from New York, but had to settle for sending a video. The United States Government did not grant him a visa to enter the country, arguing that he had not complied with his agreements to seek peace, a decision that goes against UN regulations.
In his speech, Abbas accused Israel of carrying out a policy of “racial discrimination, ethnic cleansing and terrorism” against the Palestinians, with the aim of making them leave and keeping the land. "What is happening in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem are not isolated incidents, but an evil colonial plan whose objective is to make life impossible for Palestinians in their land, to force them to leave it. [...] Do not allow a new Nakba [the expulsion or flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians between 1947 and 1949], do not allow more massacres," he has demanded to the international community.
The Palestinian leader's criticism is not limited to Israel, he has also asked for an examination of conscience from the countries that in his opinion wash their hands of the tragedy that their people are experiencing: "How much longer will some States remain silent about Israel or continue to supply it with weapons that it can use against our people?"
"The world has witnessed a tremendous cost for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. What does the international community expect to protect the Palestinian people, guarantee their presence in their land (...) and implement the two-state solution on a basis of international legitimacy?" Abbas asked.
