Netanyahu’s UN broadside blasts into Gaza — and out of the General Assembly

Benjamin Netanyahu took the UN stage with props, punchlines and a promise: Israel will “finish the job” against Hamas. Outside the hall, the reaction was just as loud. Scores of delegates stood up and walked out as he began. Along the Gaza border, Israeli loudspeakers carried his words into the strip, part of what his office framed as a public-diplomacy push aimed at both Palestinians and the Israeli hostages still held there.

The speech itself was pure Netanyahu theater. He wore a lapel-size QR code directing viewers to October 7 footage, flashed maps of what he called Iran’s “terror axis,” and even staged a pop quiz about who chants “Death to America,” before landing on “all of the above.” The message was blunt: Israel sees the fight in Gaza as a front in a regional struggle with Tehran and its proxies, and it won’t be shamed or sanctioned into stopping.

He also used the global spotlight to swat at a wave of Western recognitions of Palestinian statehood, calling them “shameful,” “madness,” and a “mark of shame” for countries like France, Britain, Canada and Australia. The line he drew on a future two-state deal could not have been harder: Israelis, he said, “will not commit national suicide.” Inside Israel, that stance landed well with his base; outside, the optics were brutal. The chamber was conspicuously empty as he spoke, with applause coming mainly from guests in the balcony and the Israeli delegation.

What set this UN appearance apart was what happened far from the lectern. As Netanyahu read the names of hostages believed to be alive, trucks with loudspeakers on the Israeli side of the border blasted his voice toward Gaza. “We have not forgotten you,” he said in Hebrew and then English, urging Hamas to “lay down your arms” and release all captives. His office also claimed the speech was streamed directly to Gazans’ phones. Residents in different parts of the strip told reporters they hadn’t received such messages, and news outlets said they’d seen no evidence of a mass phone broadcast. For hostage families back in Israel, the loudspeaker gambit felt like salt in a wound. Several pleaded publicly for deals, not speeches, warning that anything short of “I came to sign an agreement that brings you all home” would be psychological torment for their loved ones.

None of that softened Netanyahu’s argument on civilian casualties. He dismissed genocide allegations as “antisemitic lies,” insisted Israel urges civilians to flee before operations, and said hunger in Gaza persists because Hamas steals aid. Humanitarian agencies and rights investigators paint a darker picture, describing catastrophic displacement and an aid effort throttled by access and security constraints. The gulf between those narratives was the subtext of the day: two irreconcilable versions of the same war, colliding on the UN’s biggest stage.

Israeli politics followed him to New York. Opposition leader Yair Lapid derided the address as tired and gimmicky, saying it failed to outline any path to end the war or bring the hostages home. That chorus has grown louder as the conflict nears its second year and the government’s stated endgame — Hamas’s total defeat and Gaza’s demilitarization — remains elusive even as Israeli forces push through Gaza City again.

The US angle hung over everything. Netanyahu meets President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, and the two have been signaling in different keys. Trump told reporters he thinks negotiators are “very close” to a deal to end the war and secure hostage releases. He’s been shopping a 21-point plan on the sidelines in New York that sketches a post-Hamas governance framework for Gaza, ties a permanent ceasefire to the hostages’ return, and envisions a phased Israeli pullout. Arab leaders welcomed parts of the concept but flagged red lines, especially over the West Bank. Trump, for his part, has said he won’t allow Israel to annex the territory, a message that drew quick notice across the region and could complicate the easy optics of Monday’s photo-op.

Netanyahu’s audience wasn’t only foreign. He leaned into a favorite argument for American ears — that Israel is absorbing the punches of the same enemies who target the United States. He invoked 9/11 alongside October 7, praised Trump’s hard line on Iran, and presented Israel’s battlefield as the frontline of a shared fight. The applause inside the US section when he mentioned Trump said the quiet part out loud: his speech was calibrated for American politics as much as for UN diplomacy.

The counter-narrative outside the hall was equally forceful. Pro-Palestinian protesters took over blocks of midtown Manhattan, chanting for an arms embargo and waving signs that read “Arrest Netanyahu.” Inside Gaza, residents spoke of prices spiking and aid still too scarce, and families in Israel demanded the government do whatever it takes — now — to cut a hostage deal. Even within Israel’s security establishment, the question no longer is whether the country can keep fighting; it’s whether the fight as currently defined can deliver anything that looks like victory.

Then there’s the broadcast itself. Blasting a UN speech into a besieged enclave is an unmistakable flex and a risky bet. For Netanyahu, it allowed a direct line to two audiences at once: the captors he wants to pressure and the captives he wants to console. For Gazans packed into tent cities or trudging south again under new evacuation orders, it landed as something else entirely — a voice from across the fence, demanding disarmament and surrender while bombs continue to fall. Whether it changes minds inside Gaza is unclear. What it did do is underline the raw politics of this moment: symbolism is the battlefield too.

The split screen won’t close quickly. Netanyahu promised to “finish the job” and argued that recognizing a Palestinian state now rewards terror. Trump is casting himself as the dealmaker who can stop the war and bring people home. Hamas, speaking to international media, doubled down on its own narrative of October 7 as a grim “golden moment” for its cause. Europe is peeling away from Israel on recognition and sanctions talk. And at the United Nations, the emptiest part of the General Assembly might have been the most eloquent: the seats left behind when Netanyahu started to talk.

In the end, the loudspeakers told the real story. One leader, speaking past the world’s diplomats and over the border fence, betting that his resolve and his rhetoric still carry. A crowded strip on the other side, not listening — or not able to — and a region waiting to see whether Monday’s handshake in Washington means anything more than the last one.

The Guardian, CNN, BBC, the New York Times, Al Jazeera, AP, and Reuters contributed to this report.