As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began walking to the podium, loud booing outweighed clapping, as hundreds of delegates poured out of the General Assembly Hall. He was forced to stand, watching as the vast majority of the delegates filed out, some chanting as they went. Only as the line of those leaving was coming to an end did the official presiding over the morning speeches begin calling for order in the room. This demonstration of the international isolation which Israel now faces because of the genocide it is carrying out against Palestine was broadcast worldwide.

Ever arrogant, Netanyahu began his address aggressively with “a quick announcement: if there are any other moral cowards who have not left the hall yet, please do so now,” before proceeding to deliver a crude, swaggering beast-man rant for nearly 40 minutes. He bragged that Israel has been waging a seven-front war for three years against its neighbors; asserted that “with our great American friends, we crushed Iran’s army, navy, air force, and nuclear facilities; held up a pager, and chortled, “You remember the beepers? Hezbollah certainly remembers them.” Singling out Türkiye’s Erdogan and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for personal attacks, he then baldly asserted that “accusing Israel of genocide is the greatest lie of the century.”

Not long after delivering his speech, Netanyahu flew back to Israel. Even the American Zionist “news” agency, Jewish Insider, suggested that by staying only for a few hours, “the absence of a meeting with President Donald Trump becomes far less conspicuous. This is not how the prime minister envisioned his annual U.N. trip, especially a month before an election. He hoped to schedule a meeting with Trump, which would have been their ninth since January 2025… He wanted to visit Texas, meet Elon Musk, and talk about AI, but that too fell through. And Netanyahu, who recently predicted that the Iranian regime would soon be toppled, certainly did not expect that a day before his arrival, U.S.-Iran negotiations would resume, with White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi.”