by Alex Traiman
Addressing the world’s most sophisticated anti-Israel organization—the United Nations—the Israeli prime minister fought back against calls for Palestinian statehood, saying “Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats.”
In August, barely a month ago, U.S. President Donald Trump referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war hero” over the near-perfect 12-day war in June that thoroughly neutralized Iran’s illicit nuclear program.
Now in September, Netanyahu received less than a hero’s welcome at the United Nations. While the whole world obsesses over nearly each and every Israeli military and diplomatic action, nations of the world collectively walked out as Israel’s prime minister ascended the U.N. General Assembly podium in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan.
As he has done so many times before, Netanyahu addressed the world from the world’s most prominent stage, all alone.
Applause rained down from the rafters as protesting diplomats exited. But the clapping wasn’t for the shameless boycotters. The cheers were instead directed toward the embattled Israeli prime minister from the barely 40 guests that Netanyahu’s delegation was permitted to bring to the address.
The irony is that Netanyahu, unlike any other world leader, could have filled the entire General Assembly hall with supporters who would have provided wall-to-wall standing ovations. Yet such ovations for an Israeli leader are not forthcoming at the United Nations.
With much of the entire world focused these days on Israel, it might not have been a surprise for the Israeli prime minister to be asked to address the hall early on the session with the world’s most respected Western leaders. The address was intentionally scheduled for Friday morning, the last day of the General Assembly, after most world leaders had long left New York City.
Extended flight path
Even flying to New York has become a challenge for Netanyahu. The “Wing of Zion”—Israel’s version of Air Force One—flew directly over the Mediterranean Sea, avoiding the airspace of European countries (aside from Greece and Italy). As the target of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court, Israeli security opted not to fly over much of the European continent, where many nations would gladly facilitate the arrest of Netanyahu if they had the chance.
As such, journalists and even many members of the prime minister’s team were requested to fly into New York on commercial airlines, so that the limited fuel supplies on the smaller plane would permit longer flight times and allow for emergency contingencies.
The world’s largest anti-Israel organization
It’s a treatment that Israel’s prime minister is used to. Netanyahu knows the halls of the United Nations better than nearly any world leader. He has addressed the U.N. General Assembly more than a dozen times during his 18-plus years as premier. Prior to ascending to the top of the political system, he served four years as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, where he got to know the inner workings of the world’s largest and most sophisticated anti-Israel organization.
Shortly after arriving in New York City as ambassador in 1984, he met with the Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—in the borough of Brooklyn, headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. The Rebbe told him that he was entering a “house of lies.” According to accounts of that meeting, the Rebbe told the new ambassador that “in a hall of perfect darkness … if you light one small candle, its light will be seen from afar. Your mission is to light a candle for truth and for the Jewish people.”
In 2025, Netanyahu stood before a near-empty General Assembly Hall not as a “small candle” but as a bright light, one of the generation’s most consequential global leaders. As Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has transformed a weak and developing nation into a global economic and military power. And, over the last two years, he has successfully, methodically and decisively guided the Jewish state through a complex seven-front war against a regional network of Iranian-backed terror proxies.
Assassination of Hassan Nasrallah
Just a year before, in 2024, Netanyahu delivered an address to the General Assembly just moments after ordering the assassination of Hezbollah senior leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. In an act of brutal irony, Netanyahu’s 2024 U.N. address was among the last words heard by the terror chieftain before he met the long arm of Israeli justice.
That assassination took place 12 days after one of the most highly targeted anti-terror operations in military history, when Israel exploded 3,000 pagers it had sabotaged for that purpose—to debilitate Hezbollah operatives.
Referring to the pinpoint operation that led to Israel’s major victory over the largest terror faction directly threatening Israel, Netanyahu said on Friday: “We paged Hezbollah, and believe me, they got the message.”
This year, Netanyahu demonstrated his well-known diplomatic skillset by laying out the stunning successes of Israel’s ongoing military campaign. Following the horrific terror massacre that set Israel’s security back on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel set out to restore security and deterrence in Israel, as well as throughout the Middle East.
QR Code: ‘Zoom in … see why we must win’
Israel could have buckled after Oct. 7. On the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, more than 6,000 Hamas terrorists and Palestinian Arab residents of the Strip crossed into Israeli territory, murdering 1,200 people—most of them civilians—and injuring thousands more. It also took more than 250 others hostage, dragging them back to the Gaza Strip, including, as Netanyahu noted, “children and grandparents.”
“Much of the world no longer remembers Oct. 7. But we remember,” he stated somberly.
Netanyahu addressed the United Nations wearing a large pin on his lapel with a QR code that he referenced during the speech. “Zoom in, and you, too, will see why we fight and why we must win.”
The QR code led to a page filled with security footage and Hamas’s own GoPro footage of the Oct. 7 massacre. The page with horrific images and video is blocked for Israeli cellphones and IP addresses.
Netanyahu read aloud each of the names of the remaining 20 living hostages in Gaza, held captive now for nearly 24 months. Furthermore, in a move meant to generate headlines, Netanyahu ordered large speaker systems brought into Gaza to blast the U.N. speech within the war zone. Netanyahu asserted his hope that the hostages would hear his message, saying, “We will not rest until we bring all of you home.”
Netanyahu also claimed that Israel took over cellphones of terror leaders in Gaza, streaming the speech live to Israel’s enemies, with the message: “Lay down your arms. Let my people go. Free the hostages, all 48. Free the hostages now. … If you do, you will live. If you don’t, Israel will hunt you down.”
Israel’s ‘stunning military comeback’
Netanyahu called Israel’s campaign “one of the most stunning military comebacks in military history.”
He noted that “Nasrallah is gone … Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is gone … half of the Houthi leadership is gone, the Assad regime in Syria is gone.”
Addressing the stunning 12-day war (as Trump has referred to it) or “Operation Am Kelavi”—“a nation that rises like a lion” (as Israel refers to it)—Netanyahu stated that Israel “devastated Iran’s atomic and ballistic missiles programs,” and that the operation “will go down in the annals of military history.”
Netanyahu thanked the U.S. president for his “bold and decisive action” in ordering the bombing of the Fordow underground nuclear reactor in Iran.
“President Trump and I promised to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and we fulfilled that promise,” Netanyahu stated.
And he warned the international community to “remain vigilant” against the Islamic Republic, insisting that “stockpiles of enriched uranium must be eliminated.” He called for crippling sanctions on Tehran to be “snapped back” over its illicit pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
Yet for all the accomplishments to date, Netanyahu insisted that Israel must still “finish the job.” He noted that Israeli forces are operating in Gaza City, “one of two remaining Hamas strongholds.” He said Israel wants to complete the operation “as fast as possible,” while stating that the war could end if and when Hamas lays down its arms and returns the remaining hostages.
“If Hamas agrees to our demands, the war can end right now,” he said.
Netanyahu’s response to Palestinian statehood
While the world’s diplomats were not interested in listening to Netanyahu live from the hall, there is a strong likelihood that they and their delegations watched privately. The international community put tremendous pressure on Netanyahu and Israel this week with calls for the creation of a Palestinian state on Israeli-controlled territory.
Much of Netanyahu’s speech was a diplomatic attack against world leaders who used the same podium to call for such statehood in a vacuum. He chastised “weak-kneed” world leaders who have “caved” to the pressure of a biased anti-Israel mainstream media and growing radical Islamic populations within their own borders.
“Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats,” he said.
He lamented that “Israel has had to fight a seven-front war against the forces of barbarism, with many of your countries opposing us.”
“It will be a mark of shame upon you forever,” he said, sternly noting that international leaders are turning “good into evil and evil into good.” In one of his many classic one-liners, Netanyahu warned: “You can’t appease your way out of jihad.”
He explained that the Palestinians have long rejected Israel as a Jewish state, and that the Palestinian Authority—just as Hamas—is guilty of terror incitement and financing.
“Every time they were given territory, they used it to attack us,” he said, noting that creating a Palestinian state one mile outside of Jerusalem would be “like creating an Al-Qaeda state one mile outside of New York City.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations has already been performing the diplomatic dirty work of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in America’s largest city.
For the past two years, Netanyahu has led the military campaign against the world’s most vicious terror leaders on the kinetic battlefield. And as he has done since entering the halls of the world body in 1984, he continues to fight on the diplomatic battlefield. In many ways, it still feels like “1984.”
Alex Traiman is the CEO and Jerusalem bureau chief of the Jewish News Syndicate
(JNS) and host of “Jerusalem Minute.” A seasoned Israeli journalist,
documentary filmmaker and startup consultant, he is an expert on Israeli
politics and U.S.-Israel relations. He has interviewed top political
figures, including Israeli leaders, U.S. senators and national security
officials with insights featured on major networks like BBC, Bloomberg, CBS, NBC, Fox and Newsmax. A former NCAA champion fencer and Yeshiva University Sports Hall of Fame member, he made aliyah in 2004, and lives in Jerusalem with his wife and five children.
Source: https://www.jns.org/inside-story-netanyahu-the-world-leader-who-stands-alone/
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