{"id":303951,"date":"2025-09-29T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=303951"},"modified":"2025-09-29T07:30:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T06:30:04","slug":"israels-netanyahu-addresses-empty-un-general-assembly-with-genocidal-claims-after-mass-walkout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/09\/israels-netanyahu-addresses-empty-un-general-assembly-with-genocidal-claims-after-mass-walkout\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s Netanyahu Addresses Empty UN General Assembly with Genocidal Claims after Mass Walkout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>27 Sep 2025\u00a0<\/em>&#8211;\u00a0Even the tiniest detail is litigated in newspaper headlines when it comes to the Israeli government. Many news outlets reported that \u201csome\u201d or \u201cdozens\u201d of delegates walked out of the UN hall where the General Assembly had gathered as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to address them.<\/p>\n<p>The truth is, <i>almost everyone<\/i> left, so that Netanyahu addressed mostly empty chairs. I don\u2019t know why the editors who write these silly headlines think they can pull the wool over peoples\u2019 eyes. We have video:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>Delegates walk out of Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s United Nations speech:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"UN delegates walk out of Benjamin Netanyahu&#039;s United Nations general assembly speech\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZGczX15Xu8M?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He was heckled in the chamber, and then heckled by New Yorkers outside. If Zohran Mamdani wins the mayoral contest in New York, Netanyahu won\u2019t be able to come to the UN because he will be arrested as a war criminal by NYPD.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, although the press reports what Netanyahu says, no one on the diplomatic circuit seems to take it seriously. He full-throatedly rejected any attempt at a two-state solution, saying that establishing a Palestinian state would be \u201csuicide\u201d for Israel.<\/p>\n<p>The implication for Netanyahu, whose family is from Poland, is that a recognized Palestinian state would somehow destroy Israel.<\/p>\n<p>But how? Not by military action, surely. The Israelis have made short work of their military rivals in the region. With extensive American help they forced countries much larger than themselves, such as Egypt, to conclude a peace treaty. They are constantly bombing Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and have hit Iraq and Iran and Qatar in the past year. They bomb whomever they wish whenever they wish. Why would a Palestinian state be more formidable than Egypt or Iran?<\/p>\n<p>I cannot know for sure, but I think what Netanyahu means by the phrase is that a recognized Palestinian state would rob Israel of its legitimacy.<\/p>\n<p>Again, I can\u2019t see how that would work. International legitimacy is bestowed by the United Nations and the great powers. The establishment of a Palestinian state would not cause Israel to be kicked out of the UN. Actually, what might cause such an expulsion to happen is Netanyahu\u2019s course of genocide against the Palestinians. Legitimacy is at least somewhat a matter of public opinion, and the vast walk-out of delegates at the UN General Assembly demonstrates that it is Netanyahu\u2019s atrocities, not a Palestinian state, that has robbed Israel of legitimacy in the eyes of many.<\/p>\n<p>But if we granted Netanyahu\u2019s premise, then what? It implies that 14 million Palestinians must remain <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.juancole.com\/2013\/06\/stateless-palestinian-crisis.html\" > stateless<\/a>. US Supreme Court justice Earl Warren defined citizenship as the \u201cright to have rights.\u201d Without citizenship in a state, people have no real human rights, as we easily can see in Gaza for the past two years, and in the West Bank if we look. If you\u2019re stateless, you don\u2019t really own your house. Other people can kick you out of it and move in. Or it can be arbitrarily bombed.<\/p>\n<p>The Israeli Right might say that someone else should give the Palestinians citizenship. But who? Lebanon will not, since most Palestinians are Sunni Arabs while 10 percent or so are Christians, and giving them Lebanese citizenship would throw the demographic balance of religious denominations in the country \u2014 Sunni, Shiite, Maronite Christian, Eastern Orthodox, and Druze \u2014 out of kilter. Since voting, marriage, burial and various sorts of rights are apportioned by religious denomination, such a new and dramatic imbalance would destabilize the country.<\/p>\n<p>The same principle applies to Jordan. Syria never gave the Palestinians citizenship and won\u2019t now. Egypt? Surely you jest. There is an Israeli meme that they are all just \u201cArabs\u201d and Palestinians should melt away into their neighbors. But Palestinians have come to have a national identity, as have the others, and they aren\u2019t just \u201cArabs.\u201d Only 50% of Egyptians in polling even consider themselves \u201cArabs.\u201d Ironically, Israeli propaganda parrots the pan-Arabism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s, which is now pass\u00e9 and never showed an ability to roll back national identities. Abdel Nasser\u2019s attempt to establish a union of Egypt and Syria crashed and burned in only 3 years. Arabic is a language, not a nation, and many different nations and ethnicities speak it. Just because the British and Americans both speak English does not mean that the British would be happy about a hypothetical influx of millions of American refugees.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-227022 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/media.juancole.com\/images\/2025\/09\/Netanyahu.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/media.juancole.com\/images\/2025\/09\/Netanyahu.png 620w, https:\/\/media.juancole.com\/images\/2025\/09\/Netanyahu-184x230.png 184w\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"776\" \/><i><small>File photo of Benjamin Netanyahu from 2015. Public domain. Via <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/picryl.com\/media\/2015-image-of-prime-minister-netanyahu-abd842\" > Picryl. <\/a><\/small><\/i><\/p>\n<p>So Netanyahu\u2019s point of view is impractical, and his stance implies permanent statelessness for Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p>After tens of millions of people were made stateless in the interwar period of the twentieth century, the United Nations has worked to ensure that no one should be without citizenship in a state. I believe the UN estimates the number of stateless at 12 million worldwide, and that Palestinians make up the largest single group.<\/p>\n<p>The number of Palestinian children between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean equals the number of Israeli Jewish children. So why should the latter grow up to have the right to have rights but the former should not?<\/p>\n<p>If the only way Israel can exist is to make the Palestinians stateless forever, to wipe out a people, then it raises questions about whether Israel in this form, as a militant Jewish ethno-state, is worth it. Is Netanyahu saying the quiet part out loud and admitting that Israel\u2019s existence requires a genocide of the Palestinians?<\/p>\n<p><em>_____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/juan-cole-e1637992320127.png\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-110456\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/juan-cole-e1637992320127.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a> <\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.juancole.com\/author\/jcedit\" ><em>Juan Cole<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0is the founder and chief editor of <\/em>Informed Comment<em>. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of, among many other books<\/em>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hachettebookgroup.com\/titles\/juan-cole\/muhammad\/9781568587837\/\" >Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires<\/a> <em>and <\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomsbury.com\/us\/the-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam-9780755600519\/\" >The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.juancole.com\/2025\/09\/netanyahu-addresses-genocidal.html\" >Go to Original &#8211; juancole.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>27 Sep 2025 &#8211; Many news outlets reported that \u201csome\u201d or \u201cdozens\u201d of delegates walked out of the UNGA as Netanyahu prepared to address them. The truth is: Netanyahu addressed mostly empty chairs. I don\u2019t know why editors think they can pull the wool over peoples\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":303883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[87,865,88,475,427,2159,884,124],"class_list":["post-303951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-netanyahu","tag-palestine","tag-rogue-states","tag-unga","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303951"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303954,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303951\/revisions\/303954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}