Mass walkouts at UN as Netanyahu takes stage

Israeli forces kill 20 people Friday ahead of Netanyahu’s UN speech in New York

Netanyahu says many world leaders ‘buckled under pressure of biased media’

UNITED NATIONS:  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the stage Friday at the United Nations to a mass walkout of delegations as well as cheers from supporters invited to the audience.

Delegates were called to order as Netanyahu began his speech, the first of the day at the annual General Assembly.

Netanyahu said his country has “crushed the bulk” of armed Palestinian group Hamas’s “terror machine” and sought to finish the job “as fast as possible.”

Netanyahu celebrated what he said was a series of Israeli strategic victories in the past year that also included targeting Iran’s nuclear program and assassinating the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon.

In Gaza, the civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed more than 20 people across the Palestinian territory on Friday, ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations in New York.

It comes as the Israeli military presses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City, from which hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee.

The civil defence agency — a rescue force operating under Hamas authority — reported at least 22 people killed since dawn across the territory, including 11 in Gaza City.

Israel’s military said in a statement Friday that the air force had over the past day “struck over 140 targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including terrorists, tunnel shafts (and) military infrastructure”.

Meanwhile,  speaking at the U.N. General Assembly, on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sharply denounced Western countries for embracing Palestinian statehood, claiming that many world leaders have “buckled under the pressure of a biased media, radical Islamist constituencies and anti-Semitic mobs”.

“There’s a saying: when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, for many countries here, when the going got tough, you caved.”

He accused them of sending the message that “murdering Jews pays off.”

The Israeli leader pushed back in his harshest terms yet against a flurry of diplomatic moves by leading U.S. allies that deepened Israel’s international isolation over its conduct of a nearly two-year-old war against Hamas militants in Gaza.

“This week, the leaders of France, Britain, Australia, Canada and other countries unconditionally recognized a Palestinian state,” he said. “They did so after the horrors committed by Hamas on October 7 — horrors praised on that day by nearly 90% of the Palestinian population.”

“Over time, many world leaders buckled. They buckled under the pressure of a biased media, radical Islamist constituencies and antisemitic mobs. There’s a familiar saying, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, for many countries here, when the going got tough, you caved,” Netanyahu said.

“Behind closed doors, many of the leaders who publicly condemn us privately thank us. They tell me how much they value Israel’s superb intelligence services that have prevented, time and again, terrorist attacks in their capitals.”

The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in the Gaza war.

Netanyahu rebutted on Friday what he called “the false charge of genocide.” Monitoring Desk