Netanyahu’s UN belligerence wins cheers at home as world walks out

In his speech at the United Nations on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended his country’s genocide in Gaza and its repeated attacks on its neighbours.

Delegates from dozens of countries walked out of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) hall before he spoke, highlighting Israel’s isolation from the rest of the world.

But Netanyahu was appealing to a domestic audience with his speech, a month ahead of critical parliamentary elections that may force him out of office. It was what many Israelis – angry at criticism of their country – want to hear.

In Gaza, Netanyahu said Israel had conducted the “opposite of genocide” – despite the killing of more than 73,000 Palestinians, the destruction of much of Gaza, and the statements from Israeli politicians calling for mass killing in the Palestinian enclave and the removal of its inhabitants.

On the West Bank, the prime minister rejected accusations from Western states that Israel’s occupation was illegitimate, pointing instead to the colonial territories historically held by the United Kingdom and France.

Moreover, despite the public show of criticism, Netanyahu claimed that many of the leaders whose delegates walked out of his speech had privately thanked Israel for “taking out Iran’s nukes”.

And instead of acknowledging that Israel’s actions had organically turned global public opinion against it, he rushed to pin the blame on others.

Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been an outspoken critic of Israel, was a “tyrant”, Netanyahu claimed, while Qatar, which has attempted to mediate throughout Israel’s war in Gaza, was accused of funding “toxic media outlets like Al Jazeera”. Israel attacked the Qatari capital Doha in September 2025, before being forced to apologise by US President Donald Trump.

Even the mayor of his host city was not immune from attack, with Netanyahu branding New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani an antiSemite and claiming that, despite the large number of Jewish groups protesting his presence outside the UN building, Jews were being “demonised” in New York.

Hamad AlMuftah, deputy chief of mission at the Qatari Embassy in Washington, responded to Netanyahu’s claims, referencing the walkout in the hall and highlighting his country’s role as a regional mediator.

“At a moment of profound regional and domestic political turmoil, attacking one of the countries doing the difficult work of mediation does nothing to solve the problem,” he said.

Turkiye and Mamdani were also emphatic in rejecting Netanyahu’s accusations. Turkiye’s presidential Communications Director Burhanettin Duran described Netanyahu’s remarks as baseless. He argued they were unlikely to distract from either Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza, where it continues to kill Palestinians in defiance of a so-called “ceasefire”, or the International Criminal Court proceedings against Netanyahu.

Mamdani likewise referenced the ICC warrant issued for Netanyahu for the war crimes he is alleged to have overseen in Gaza and the “baseless lies” intended to “sanitise his genocide of Palestinians”.

“Netanyahu’s speech was meant to boost his election campaign back at home,” Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior teaching fellow at King’s College London, said. “His supporters loved it. Those who don’t support him could see in his speech the classic Netanyahu – brilliant orator but a serial liar.”

“His speech was littered with lies,” Bregman continued. “He played down the settlers’s violence in the West Bank, saying that just a few Palestinians were killed by it, while in reality more than 80 were killed [by Israeli forces and settlers] there this year.”

“The world has turned its back on him and on Israel,” Bregman added. “He’s toxic, and Israel has turned itself into a pariah state.”

However, while Netanyahu may have faced growing international isolation, his allies in the Israeli government and some media outlets rallied around what they portrayed as the defiant tone of his speech.

Zvika Klein, editor of the influential right-wing newspaper the Jerusalem Post, praised Netanyahu’s delivery and defence of Israel. Columnists in other Israeli media also rushed to compare Netanyahu’s warnings to the West to that of a stern father addressing a wayward son.

“He gave a great performance,” said Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and former aide to Netanyahu during the 1990s.

Barak argued that the speech was designed to leave the delegates who stayed with the impression that Israel’s wars since 2023 had been fought not only in its own interests, but also on behalf of its allies and the wider international community.

“No one watching in Israel could imagine any of Netanyahu’s [electoral] rivals in October doing that. It’s impossible to picture it. None of them could have commanded that much respect,” he claimed.

While much of Netanyahu’s electoral base may have been reassured by his address, nowhere in his speech was any hint of where Israel’s multiple wars and genocide might end.

For three years, he boasted, Israel had fought on seven fronts.

As it led a genocide in Gaza, Israel has also battled Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Iran, militias in Iraq and Syria as well as Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. All, he claimed, had “ganged up” to wipe Israel “off the face of the Earth”.

Closing his speech, Netanyahu addressed the remaining delegates as one, maintaining: “Over the centuries, the tyrannies that tried to destroy us failed time and again. God willing, they’ll continue to fail. If we muster our courage, if we steel our resolve, we will continue to win.”

“This was just a repeat of his Sparta speech,“ Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow with Chatham House said, referring to Netanyahu’s likening of Israel in September 2025 to the ancient and perennially embattled city-state.

“All he could offer was repeated references to his past heroism, military success and the need to keep fighting. That’s something that should be of concern to every Israeli watching,” Mekelberg said.

“Where does this end? There’s no answer; there isn’t even the vocabulary for that. When Israel’s leaders have no solution to the country’s multiple wars, that’s when every Israeli should be worried.”