‘You can’t silence me’: Netanyahu fires back at Mamdani as UN delegates walk out of speech

Dozens of diplomats walked out of the United Nations General Assembly as Benjamin Netanyahu approached the podium, according to Reuters. Jeers and boos echoed against the applause of his supporters, and the presiding official was forced to repeatedly call for order. Netanyahu was unfazed by the departures and labeled the exiting delegates “moral cowards.”

The confrontation inside the UN was only half the story, as protesters blocked traffic a few blocks away and police took 103 people into custody, including actor Susan Sarandon. It all unfolded roughly five weeks before Israel’s October 27 election, with Netanyahu’s governing bloc trailing in the polls.

Netanyahu’s roughly 40-minute address felt more like a campaign rally than a diplomatic speech. It aired live on all four major Israeli television channels, while his government paid for 500 pro-Israel and anti-Iran billboards across Manhattan. Ariel Cohen of the Atlantic Council said the speech belonged at an election rally in Israel, as Israeli voters were its real audience.

Netanyahu brought props and picked fights with some of Israel’s oldest allies

Netanyahu held up a pager linked to Israel’s 2024 attack on Hezbollah, then displayed a Starlink satellite terminal he said he would leave for Iran’s absent delegation. He joked that it would let its members tell their story freely once they inevitably defect. He also framed Israel as fighting a “seven-front war” stretching from Gaza to Yemen and Iraq.

The speech also took aim at Britain and France, as both recently joined Canada in announcing sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu accused Western European leaders of succumbing to “antisemitic mobs” and mocked British and French accusations of Israeli colonialism, arguing that those countries invented the term.

Netanyahu played down settler violence in the West Bank, describing the perpetrators as roughly 150 “juvenile delinquents” who throw stones, chop down olive trees and occasionally light fires. He also accused Turkey and Qatar of spreading lies about Israel. However, both nations quickly rejected the claims, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s communications director calling them baseless.

Netanyahu praised Donald Trump as Israel’s greatest partner and thanked him for joint missions over Iran. However, the two did not meet during a New York visit that lasted less than eight hours.

Netanyahu also revived his feud with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who previously floated arresting the Israeli leader before acknowledging the city lacked the legal authority. Netanyahu called him “the anti-Semitic mayor of New York” and said Mamdani could not silence him. Mamdani responded that the speech repeated “baseless lies” meant to sanitize what he called a genocide of Palestinians.

Netanyahu remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued in 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, which he denies. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, addressed the assembly through a prerecorded video from Ramallah, as the Trump administration had denied him a U.S. visa.

Israelis head to the polls on October 27, and recent surveys show neither Netanyahu’s coalition nor the opposition on track to reach the 61 seats needed to form a government.