U.N. diplomats walk out on Netanyahu’s speech

Izzat al-Rishq, of the Hamas political bureau, suggested that diplomats at the United Nations General Assembly walk out on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Sept. 26.  He said: “It’s the least that can be done. Would world leaders listen to Hitler giving a speech at the U.N. General Assembly? Netanyahu, the ‘little Hitler,’ is the direct perpetrator of the genocide war in Gaza, which has been ongoing for nearly a year.” 

The Hamas statement, posted on Resistance News Network on Sept. 27, added: “Netanyahu continues his Nazi crimes, disregarding and ignoring the U.N. Security Council’s decision to stop them immediately and blatantly dismissing the orders of the International Court of Justice. He is reassured that any potential arrest warrant will have no effect due to the U.S., British and Western support for his crimes against humanity.”

Indeed, most diplomats did walk out of the General Assembly when Netanyahu stepped to the podium. He spoke to mostly empty seats, except for a cheering squad seated in the gallery that Netanyahu himself had flown into New York for the event.

The diplomats’ walkout was the only visible protest inside the U.N. The New York Police Department did not allow any protesters closer than four blocks away. Thousands of protesters were kept away from the immediate area near where Netanyahu was speaking while thousands of police — all on paid overtime, funded by New Yorkers’ tax dollars — were deployed that day to control the demonstrators.

What the diplomats could have done, but did not do, was to surround Netanyahu and demand his arrest as a war criminal, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of innocent civilians, including infants and children in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

In fact, the U.N. is a toothless organization that is unable or unwilling to follow even its own directives. The U.N. ‘s accommodation of Israel — including giving war criminal Netanyahu a podium to spout his venom — recalls the behavior of England when the government practiced “appeasement” in the 1930s toward Hitler’s Germany.

U.S. imperialism perpetuates genocide, lies

It is important to point out the role of the United States and its Western allies. U.S officials claimed they had been working towards a 21-day ceasefire, which the U.S. as well as France insisted was worked out in consultation with Israel. And then Netanyahu rejected it.

In fact, the U.S. had just sent $8.7 billion worth of weapons to Israel. How is it possible for a government to be urging a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Resistance while simultaneously sending billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Israel?

Netanyahu had a press conference after his speech, during which he paused for a phone call with Israel, in which he very likely ordered the planned carpet bombing of the residential homes in Dahiyeh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, which started shortly after his speech ended. 

The Biden administration claims it had no knowledge of this planned slaughter of thousands — using 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs, made in U.S. factories — which also resulted in the death of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah. But the U.S. didn’t waste time in cheering on the killing once it started. Israel boasted about the targeted murder of Nasrallah, and Biden lauded it, piling lie upon lie about the role of Hezbollah in the struggle in West Asia.

There is a pattern here. The U.S. urges a ceasefire, the Palestinian Resistance agrees to it, and then Israel launches an even more heinous attack on innocent people, prolonging and widening the war. Neither the U.S. nor Israel gives a damn about how many people die in Western Asia, as long as the U.S. can keep its control of the oil in the region and the military can maintain its position of control.  As then-Sen. Joe Biden said in 1986, “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.” (The Conversation, July 23) 

For people in the United States and around the world who haven’t figured it out yet, it’s time to get an understanding of the U.S. role in Western Asia — and support the resistance to Zionism and imperialism.