Protests erupt as Netanyahu gives inflammatory UN speech - The Latest
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This is the Guardian.
Із дженосид. Of course not. It's the opposite of genocide.
Bunjamin Nesanyahu has made a very controversial appearance at the UN General Assembly in New York with a very inflammatory speech. Devikabatura, global editor in the UK. Outside of the UN headquarters, there were mass protests on the streets with a number of famous faces, but also a number of arrests. What was the sort of scale of those protests?
Hi Lucy. Yes, uh that's right. There were these protests ahead of both ahead of Netanyahu's visit and indeed yesterday when he spoke last night. The latest is that a hundred people or thereabouts were arrested, including, as you say, some quite famous names like Susan Sarandon. a Democratic congressional candidate, um, a New York City Council member, and there were sort of multiple different groups that held protests which sort of coalesced at some points, beyond the the fact that there were these demos, and we've seen those in recent years when Netanyahu has appeared ever since the war in Gaza started. I think it sort of speaks increasingly to Israel's sort of international isolation.
Yeah, so so much like the protests, every time Netanyahu has visited New York since the events of October twenty-three and the subsequent Israeli response, he has faced mass walkouts as he's begun his address, which is what happened yesterday. There was a specific call from Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, because the Palestinian delegates uh for the second year in a row had their visas rejected, so that call was honoured in in very, very big numbers. What was the atmosphere in the assembly hall like?
Yes, that's right. So um there was this, you know, big walk hour stream upon stream of delegates walking out. And as you say, we have seen that in recent years. And, you know, indeed Israel and Netanyahu expected this, they anticipated it. And indeed, you know, one of Netanyahu's first um kind of points before he even started his speech was to um call on the in his words, moral cowards, uh any other moral cowards as he put it, to leave the room. That's how he described the people walking. walking out. He sort of tried to frame them as sort of hypocrites, and indeed he sort of suggested that some of those who'd walked out of the room had behind the scenes, you know, their governments had behind the scenes, supported him, um, particularly in the endeavours with Iran in the in the war with Iran.
So publicly they were putting on this show, but behind the scenes they were um doing something else is what he claimed.
So he wasn't speaking to a totally empty room, but it was substantially emptier, and it felt like a speech that was inflammatory by design. Uh Netanyahu spoke about Israel's activities in Gaza as the opposite of a genocide. W what else did he have to say to those that remained in that assembly hall?
Yeah, that's right. He um addressed f sort of, you know, directly the genocide accusations and allegations and claimed that Israel was a benign country in this and you know what other country provides sort of food trucks for the enemy? That was one of his points, and and sort of tried to counter the genocide claims by saying it it is looking after um people inside the Gaza Strip. Which, you know, has been very, very heavily contested uh and and the whole issue of Israel's blocking of aid has been a long held issue for months, years indeed. Um Macron addressed it himself earlier um this week at the UN. Um the fact that humanitarian corridors still haven't opened up. Um, so you know, those claims that Israel is allowing wholesale access to to aid are are heavily contested.
But that was Netanyahu's argument about the genocide claims. Indeed, he described it as the greatest lie of the century. Goodness. Uh, that Israel was committing a genocide. He also talked about the West Bank. And on that, he sort of tried to dismiss the notion that there was a kind of wholesale mask. campaign against Palestinians in the West Bank. He described it more as a few sort of rabble rousers who
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