For Gaza’s victims, empty seats spoke louder than Netanyahu’s words

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, on Friday morning New York time, delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly Hall while a growing number of protesters and critics surrounded him; an action that highlighted Netanyahu’s growing international isolation due to his insistence on continuing the genocidal war in Gaza.

According to the Associated Press, as Netanyahu’s speech began, representatives of dozens of countries collectively left the hall of the General Assembly. The seats of the U.S. and U.K. delegations were filled with junior and low-level diplomats, while next to Iran’s empty seat, a collection of photos of children who were killed due to the Zionist regime’s attack on Iran was placed.

Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in this regard: “Today, in the General Assembly hall, while Netanyahu, this war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court, was repeating his fascistic rhetoric in front of nearly empty seats, it was the images of innocent Iranian children that represented the ‘Iranian nation’; they were the witnesses who exposed to the world the true face of a criminal who shamelessly takes pride in his crimes.”

He raised an important question: “Indeed, how is it possible that a wanted war criminal stands at the most prestigious global podium, stares into the eyes of the international community, and pushes forward his campaign of lies and deceit to justify genocide, aggression, and warmongering?”

According to The Guardian, Netanyahu’s controversial speech was delivered in a mostly empty room in the large General Assembly Hall with a capacity of 1,800 people. Meanwhile, according to The New York Times, Netanyahu’s speech, as the first address of Friday’s General Assembly session, was boycotted, and he was speaking in a hall where his own delegation filled some of the seats and went to great lengths to applaud him—an action showing the Zionists’ fear of increasing international isolation.

Netanyahu’s speech, as expected, was full of baseless claims and rhetoric fueling genocide. He, while strongly criticizing the decisions of countries to recognize the State of Palestine, claimed that this decision encourages terrorism.

Netanyahu’s effort to play with the term antisemitism and justify crimes—from genocide in Gaza to the explosion of pagers in Lebanon and the attack on infrastructure and civilians in Yemen—formed a major part of his claims. At the same time, his praise of Donald Trump, President of the United States, as a political and military ally in advancing the genocidal campaign in Gaza, served as confirmation of U.S. complicity in the past and ongoing crimes in Gaza.

The audacity of the Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, who under the protection of Western allies including the U.S. has carried out a two-year genocidal campaign in Gaza with impunity, went so far that he claimed that unlike Western leaders who have surrendered, the Zionist regime will not surrender and will finish the job.

Netanyahu’s alleged remarks at the General Assembly were simultaneously challenged by fact-checking from various media outlets, including Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, so that his false justifications for continuing genocide in Gaza were exposed at the very outset. For example, while UN investigations and a growing number of experts have confirmed the commission of genocide by the Zionist regime in Gaza, he denied this accusation and claimed that the Zionist regime is not deliberately starving the people of Gaza (where famine has been officially declared).

The Guardian, in its report, described Netanyahu’s speech as very brazen; his alleged remarks and brazen rhetoric can be seen as the result of his confrontation with the reality of international isolation—a reality that has emerged following the commission of criminal acts and confirmation of this by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the weaponization of hunger confirmed by various reports including the UN report on famine in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s annual speech at the UN General Assembly has always faced serious protests and has been described as theatrical claims, but this year the Prime Minister of the Zionist regime has faced more serious pressure.

In addition to the issuance of an arrest warrant for Netanyahu by the ICC on charges of committing genocide and the review of South Africa’s complaint against the Zionist regime for committing genocide in Gaza by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the new wave of recognition of the State of Palestine has posed another challenge for him. Earlier this month, the UN General Assembly adopted a non-binding resolution calling on the Zionist regime to commit to an independent Palestinian state.

On the other hand, according to flight-tracking data, Netanyahu, for his trip from the occupied territories to New York, took an unusual and longer route and avoided the airspace of two European countries that have strongly criticized the Zionist regime’s actions in the Gaza war.

Netanyahu’s office did not explain the indirect route, which added about one hour to his flight, but the Prime Minister of the Zionist regime is subject to an arrest warrant by the ICC over war crimes in Gaza, and the two countries he avoided—France and Spain—are both signatories to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, meaning that if he landed on their soil, he could be at risk of arrest.

According to a French diplomat, Zionist officials requested permission to fly through French airspace and were granted it, but Netanyahu apparently did not want to take any risks.

While Netanyahu was making his claims and rhetoric for the empty hall of the UN General Assembly, thousands of people in support of Palestine filled the streets of New York to protest the presence of the Prime Minister of the Zionist regime in the city.

At the same time, hundreds of pro-Palestinian supporters staged a protest around the UN building. One organizer of the Palestinian Youth Movement said: “Israel has chosen a war against every conscientious human being in this world.”

A group of protesters carried banners such as “Globalize the Intifada” and Palestinian flags; several protesters were arrested before Netanyahu’s UN speech after gathering outside his hotel.

Netanyahu’s claims and rhetoric at the UN General Assembly faced a wide range of reactions and condemnations. Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition of the Zionist regime, criticized Netanyahu’s speech at the General Assembly, calling it a “boring, whining speech full of tired tricks.” Lapid also noted that Netanyahu failed to present a peace plan to secure the freedom of Zionist prisoners held in Gaza.

The Gaza government also criticized this speech, declaring that Netanyahu, in his address to the UN General Assembly, presented “eight big lies” in an attempt to justify his war crimes and genocide in Gaza.

The reality is that a large part of Gaza has been turned into ruins, and UN-backed experts have declared famine in some areas. Hundreds of thousands of civilians remain in Gaza City from the estimated pre-attack population of about one million.

Human rights groups and experts say that, in fact, widespread displacement is often one of the hallmarks of genocide.