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Benjamin Netanyahu called out his and Israel’s enemies as he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, including labelling New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani an antisemite.
Netanyahu spoke at a time when his country has been increasingly isolated and vilified on the international stage following three years of war against Iran and its proxies.
Many diplomats staged a walkout as Netanyahu rose to speak, while some of his supporters chanted, “The people of Israel live!”
Watching them from the podium, Netanyahu asked, “If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall, please do so now, thank you very much.” He almost seemed to be smiling as he surveyed the men and women streaming out the door.
Netanyahu flew to New York on Thursday for a brief visit that also included a number of meetings with heads of state, but absent from his itinerary was President Donald Trump. The U.S. leader spoke on Tuesday and was in Washington when Netanyahu arrived, though he made time to meet with Mamdani while in New York.
Outside U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets to rally against Netanyahu and his policies.
The tone for the Israeli premier’s visit was set prior to his arrival, with Mamdani calling Netanyahu a war criminal. During his mayoral campaign, he had threatened to arrest the prime minister but conceded over the summer that, as a city mayor, he had no authority to carry out such action.
Mamdani made no such threats against other leaders attending the General Assembly, including the Iranian president, whose country has been at war with the United States for most of the year.
Tensions have also been high between Mamdani and Israel’s Consul General to New York Ofir Akunis, who has likened the mayor’s policies to those of Nazi Germany and warned that his anti-Israel rhetoric was endangering Jews in the city.
During Netanyahu’s address, he also called out a number of countries and leaders who have spoken out against the Jewish state or acted against it, such as Qatar and Turkey.
The Israeli leader, however, devoted the bulk of his personal attacks to Mamdani, calling him an “antisemitic mayor.” Chastising him, he said, “Shame on you. Shame on you for distorting the facts. Shame on you for inverting the victim and aggressor. Shame on you for spitting in the face of truth.”
Netanyahu followed Akunis’ lead in saying that, since Mamdani was elected, “many Jews no longer feel safe in New York.”
Netanyahu said that Mamdani counts as friends people like the streamer Hasan Piker, who believes America deserved 9/11, and that he hosted a Palestinian journalist who filmed a Hamas terrorist beating and torturing Israeli hostages.
The New York mayor has falsely accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and “tried to stop me from coming here,” Netanyahu stated. “You tried to silence me. Well, you can’t silence me. You can’t silence the truth. And here’s the simple truth. Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide.”
Netanyahu said the real genocidal group was Mamdani’s “Hamas buddies,” who would have killed every last Jew during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel. Palestinians killed 1,200 people in the invasion and seized 251 as hostages, bringing them into Gaza.
Netanyahu said Israel took extensive measures to protect civilian lives in Gaza during the war that followed the attack, including providing food and vaccines, and asked why Israel would do that if it had genocidal intentions.
Accusing Israel of genocide, Netanyahu said, is “the greatest lie of the 21st century.”
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