Netanyahu delivered fire and brimstone at the U.N. — but who was he trying to impress?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 27. Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Columnist Dan Perry September 27, 2024
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a good speaker with a very good case: Israel is under attack by Iranian-backed terrorists whom the world community is rather guilty of appeasing.
If he had stuck to that message in his Friday address to the United Nations General Assembly and gone on to project some humanity and vision, it might have been a more effective speech. But Netanyahu is Netanyahu: Articulate though he was on Friday morning, he projected no introspection, no genuine thanks for Israel’s forgiving friends — most importantly the U.S. — and no concession that he might have ever made a mistake.
Netanyahu is, of course, absolutely correct that Israel is in principle justified in its effort to stamp out Hamas after the horrific attack of Oct. 7, 2023. And he is correct, as well, that Israel’s effort to end the madness on its northern border is reasonable — in fact, it is overdue. Hezbollah has been attacking northern Israel with rockets, shells and drones since Oct. 8; after a year of constant barrages, any country would be expected to retaliate.
But it is equally true that Israel under Netanyahu has blocked every effort to engineer a better future in Gaza after Hamas. If Israel leaves Gaza today, Hamas will remain in charge, largely because Netanyahu has refused to discuss letting the Palestinian Authority, which is the only alternative, back in.
Such bullheadedness is an inherent part of Netanyahu’s public persona, and his strategic blindness is a central reason why it can be so difficult to support Israel under his leadership. He is skilled at making a persuasive case that something is true — while blatantly ignoring other obvious truths that strike him as inconvenient to acknowledge. If that trick was ever effective on the world stage, the brutal toll of the last year has made it less so.
For instance: Netanyahu noted that Israel takes steps to warn civilians of impending military strikes, but did not engage with the clear fact that Israel has caused stupendous loss of life in Gaza over the past year. Israeli officials don’t even bother to deny claims by the Hamas-run Gaza Health ministry that more than 40,000 people have been killed in the strip — or that these numbers are the reason why Israel has largely lost the support of the global community. (Perhaps a third of those killed have been combatants, per estimates by the IDF.)
Netanyahu spoke warmly of the potential for a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia. But he conveniently forgot to note that he has recklessly batted aside President Joe Biden’s efforts to engineer an end-game that includes a regional alliance against Iran featuring the same Saudi Arabia — whose representatives absented themselves from his speech. Riyadh has made clear that normalization would require the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, or at the very least a credible process to move in this direction. But Netanyahu’s speech made no effort to project any intention of reaching the slightest accommodation with the Palestinians. In the vision he presented, it is as if they did not even exist, and all the unpleasantness is simply about Iran.
Netanyahu has historically thrived by presenting a black-and-white psychology. He has built his remarkably durable political career on advancing the idea that there is a clear us and a clear them. In his Friday address, he repeated a favored tactic of his at the U.N.,producing infantile prop maps illustrating the “blessing” Israel represents for the Middle East and the “curse” of its enemies. He urged world leaders to make the right choice between no less than “good” and “evil.”
But he spoke to a mostly empty plenum, and that was no coincidence.
Putting an exclamation mark on his combative approach, Netanyahu accused the United Nations of an obsessive focus on Israel, noting Israel has in recent years been condemned there far more than the rest of the world combined. He accused the world body of beinga “swamp of antisemitic bile” that resembles an “anti-Israel flat earth society” and is not only a “joke” but also a “farce.”
That’s all basically true. But it is very obviously also not the way to win hearts and minds.
Which raises the question: Who, exactly, was Netanyahu trying to impress?
It is unlikely that the speech was much appreciated at the White House. Without continued arms shipments from the Biden Administration, Israel would not be able to continue the war. Without the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council, Israel would probably be facing economic sanctions and serious arms embargoes. But if anyone in Washington was waiting for a word of thanks in the speech, or for any engagement with Biden’s joint proposal with French President Emmanuel Macron for a three-week cease-fire in Lebanon, they waited in vain.
Netanyahu offered no vision for how Israel plans to end its military presence in Gaza — much less the strategic vision that it desperately needs to justify the continued war, or a credible roadmap toward a stable and peaceful future. So striking is Netanyahu’s ingratitude toward Biden, and his insistence on flouting the opportunity for diplomatic bridge-building, that it became obvious that he is gambling on a return to office by former President Donald Trump.
After all, the way Netanyahu speaks about Israel bears some resemblance to the way Trump speaks about himself. Netanyahu dwelled, Friday, on Israel’s victimhood; broadly indicted of its enemies; and sneered at the world. What was missing was any sense of humility or responsibility. He spoke to the world with a scowl, presenting a self-righteous vision of blood, sweat, and tears. Sound familiar?
Plus, there’s the utter lack of responsibility. Netanyahu gave no indication he feels any personal culpability for the debacle of Oct. 7. It was his government that ignored warnings from the security establishment, and left the Gaza border unguarded with much of the military diverted to the West Bank, where extremist settlers were planning to cause mayhem with the Palestinians. In any other democratic country, any other leader would have resigned over such a catastrophic failure of national security.
Well, maybe not any other leader. I can think of one more who shares Netanyahu’s most rankling quality — and who was clearly his target audience on Friday. I’ll give you a hint: The man is utterly without shame.
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