The irony is shocking: Bibi was forced to enter the United States almost in secret, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian walked around unchallenged (apart from protests by the Iranian diaspora).
by Giulio Meotti
I watched Benjamin Netanyahu’s entire speech at the UN live.
Those who spoke before him-a European bureaucrat and a couple of African officials-were at ease in that absurd palace where the Israeli prime minister spoke next.
The Israeli opposition’s accusations that Netanyahu is using these moments for his own political ends are ridiculous: they themselves would sell their own mothers in the marketplace for power. That’s politics, period.
No one in the world is as capable as Netanyahu of owning that stage and lining up so many truths.
A phrase of Saul Bellow’s came back to me: “In their concern for the decay of civilization and in their pride, the Israelis have something to teach the world.”
While numerous UN delegates walked out of the hall at the start of Netanyahu’s speech, the Israeli prime minister said: “If there are any other cowards who haven’t left the chamber, do it now.”
Bibi spoke about Iran: “If we had not destroyed the Iranian nuclear facilities, we would be dead, and we also defended many countries whose delegates left this hall. Many later thanked us in private. Hypocrites”.
He evoked his brother Yonatan and the Entebbe raid. He spoke of October 7 (“for a country of ten million it is like 40,000 Americans killed in less than 24 hours”) to justify Israel’s wars: “What other country the size of New Jersey would have fought on seven fronts against these barbarians?”.
Netanyahu was alone and defiant.
I’m sure he would not agree with my definition of solitude, but that is the reality: Israel has been left isolated, even though many of its apparent allies condemn it in the morning and thank it behind the scenes in the evening.
Netanyahu has always used the General Assembly to shake public opinion.
In 2009, just after returning to power, the day after Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech, Netanyahu shouted “shame” while displaying maps of Auschwitz.
In 2012 he drew the “red line” on Iran’s nuclear program with a drawing of a bomb and a lit fuse.
In 2015, Netanyahu observed forty seconds of silence against the UN’s inertia in the face of Tehran’s intentions.
In 2017, Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people in Persian: “You are not our enemies”.
In 2023, on the eve of a peace with Saudi Arabia that would never materialize, Netanyahu uttered the word “peace” forty times. Then came October 7. Last year, Netanyahu spoke in a hall of empty seats and said: “Giving the Palestinians a state one kilometer from Jerusalem after October 7 is like giving al-Qaeda a state one kilometer from New York after 9/11.”
In the long shadow of October 7, Netanyahu has just made the shortest visit since he first spoke at the UN in 1998.
He spent six hours in New York-just enough time to speak and leave-without meeting Donald Trump. The brevity of the visit was due, besides the imminent holiday of Sukkot which begins on this Shabbat, to security concerns and to the protests called by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Even Netanyahu’s flight path reflected the unusual visit.
First his fleet avoided Ireland, one of the most anti-Israeli countries in Europe, to avoid being arrested (Greece and Italy allowed him to pass). Then Netanyahu’s plane landed not at JFK but at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, a hundred kilometers from New York.
No welcome for the prime minister of the only country that fought alongside the United States against Iran.
Bibi was forced to enter the United States almost in secret, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian walked around unchallenged (apart from protests by the Iranian diaspora).
The day before Netanyahu, anyone who spoke at the UN felt obliged to point the finger at Israel. Emmanuel Macron even denied, ludicrously, that Hamas is in Judea and Samaria.
António Guterres, said he had “never seen killings and destruction like those in Gaza in all my years as secretary-general,” even though during his tenure more than 600,000 people were massacred or died of starvation in Ethiopia, 377,000 in Yemen, 150,000 in Sudan and tens of thousands more in Ukraine. (Perhaps he should have an eye checkup.)
No Jews no news.
At the UN, Netanyahu did not have Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter beside him; Leiter had flown back to Israel after an Arab terrorist nearly killed his son, who was on military duty at a strategic checkpoint.
“Dear UN, do you know what a ballistic missile would do to this building?” Netanyahu told the General Assembly. “They have launched more than a thousand of them against us. The days when Jews march toward death are over.”
No country-not even the son of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, in power since 1979, who spoke before Netanyahu-has ever felt more isolated at the UN, although his speech was viewed around the world.
And this is truly the greatest shame of a West that has lost itself and its moral bearings.