Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to Israel Friday after a lightning diplomatic visit to New York, centered on his combative and widely-noticed speech at the UN General Assembly. The address, which made waves at home and abroad and landed on the front page of the New York Post under the headline “We will win because we have no other choice,” came during a tense period and amid protests outside UN headquarters.
2+To shouts of “Am Yisrael Chai” and support in the hall, Netanyahu took the podium as dozens of foreign delegates stood up and walked out in protest. The prime minister didn’t hold back, calling out to those representatives: “If there are any cowards left in the hall who haven’t left yet—do it now.” In private conversations, he later revealed, some of the delegates who chose to abandon the hall thanked him privately for the moves against Iran, calling it “hypocrisy beyond description.” At the heart of his speech: pushing back against international criticism of Israel, presenting achievements against Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and a sharp attack on Israel’s enemies. Netanyahu addressed the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities and called it the easiest decision he ever made, because if he hadn’t done it—”we would all be dead.”
2+He pulled out a pager from the podium to illustrate the blows Hezbollah has absorbed, and displayed a Starlink router meant to enable free internet access for Iranian citizens against the regime, offering to give it to the Iranian delegation “so they can tell their story when they defect.” The prime minister revisited the horrors of October 7, emphasizing that at the time of the massacre there was no Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip whatsoever. He compared the scale of the massacre to 40,000 murdered Americans—16 times the Twin Towers attack. He also sharply attacked Qatar and Turkey, pointed an accusing finger at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for harming regime opponents and occupying territories, and went head-to-head against New York City Councilman Zohran Mamdani over his attempts to prevent Netanyahu’s arrival and for distorting reality around the security of the city’s Jews.
2+During the whirlwind visit, Netanyahu managed to hold a series of working diplomatic meetings with prominent leaders, including Argentine President Javier Milei, Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, the president of Panama, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, aimed at strengthening Israel’s economic and security partnerships. The visit and speech ended with an uncompromising Israeli message on the international stage, alongside a clear illustration of the complex diplomatic and public relations battle Israel faces against global criticism.