The United Nations week in New York concluded just as it began. Friday brought blazing sunshine and a fiery, wrathful and contemptuous speech by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It was in stark contrast to the growing international opposition against the horrors being carried out by his regime in Gaza. Taoiseach Micheál Martin expressed how those very horrors have become the unconscionable atrocity of our time.
Netanyahu spoke first at the General Assembly on Friday morning. Martin was sixth up and as he was preparing for his speech, he was not in the room to participate in the staged walk-out which awaited the Israeli leader when he took to the podium. The big auditorium was full for neither man, but the Taoiseach’s speech drew a round of applause early on as he spoke about Gaza.
He said: “We will act to prevent those members of the government of Israel who have been instrumental in fomenting the unfolding disaster in Gaza from entering our country. We will continue to work with like-minded partners across the world to bring this human catastrophe to an end.”
The address was measured and strongly delivered. But an hour earlier, Netanyahu, complete with placards and a QR code for props, delivered a blistering critique rejecting the massing world opinion that his treatment of Palestinians was genocidal in nature. He told the hall that Israel had already persuaded 750,000 Palestinians to leave Gaza.
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The Israeli leader said: “Would a country committing genocide plead with a population it is supposedly targeting to get out of harm’s way? Would we tell them get out if we were committing genocide? We’re trying to get them out. Hamas is trying to keep them in.
“This charge is so baseless; the comparison to genocide – wholesale slaughter of populations. Did the Nazis ask the Jews to leave? ‘Kindly leave, go out?’ [Did] others? You want me to name all the genocidal leaders of history?”
He scolded the growing number of countries who have recognised the statehood rights of Palestine, calling them stooges who have “caved” to the voices of a “biased media, radical Islamist constituencies and antisemitic mobs”.
He told those present that he had instructed loud speakers be pointed towards the Hamas strongholds in Gaza in the hope that his UN message would be heard by the remaining living Israeli prisoners. “Much of the world no longer remembers October 7th. But we remember. Israel remembers.”
The Taoiseach described the tone and content of Netanyahu’s address as “what we expected”. He reiterated once again his condemnation of the events of October 7th.
“But it seems to me that he is completely blind to the horrors of children who have been burned, bombed, mutilated in Gaza. I don’t understand how a person could go to sleep at night being responsible for such traumas and carnage in Gaza.”
Israel’s leader may not have slept soundly on Wednesday night. A large crowd of protesters gathered outside his Upper East side hotel after midnight in the express hope of disrupting his sleep.
Israel’s contingent had a long flight on the official aircraft, Wing of Zion, detouring outside the flight zones of France and Spain to avoid the arrest warrant as issued by the International Criminal Court.
On Friday morning, he was at once triumphant about Israel’s recent military successes over Iran and stonily belligerent about his intention to prosecute Hamas into submission. Nor was there an exception made for the Palestinians suffering as he made an audacious comparison to the scar left on New York 24 years ago.
“Nearly 90 per cent of Palestinians supported the attack on October 7th,” he said. “They danced on the rooftops, they threw candy. Murdering Jews pays off. Well, I have a message for these leaders: they don’t want a state next to Israel. They want a Palestinian state instead of Israel.
“Giving the Palestinians a state one mile from Jerusalem after October 7th is like giving Al Qaeda a state one mile from New York City after September 11th. This is sheer madness. It’s insane. And we won’t do it.”
There was a bleak truth in Donald Trump’s harsh assessment of the UN’s effectiveness. The endless procession of speeches count for little. Maybe Trump’s renewed vow, in private meetings, to restore some semblance of peace will lead to something. On Monday, he hosts Netanyahu in the White House to reaffirm the friendship of the US.
In the hot noon sun, a young Israeli journalist asked the Taoiseach if Ireland should not be sympathetic to his country after the carnage of October 7th.
Martin made it clear that he had visited a kibbutz there and expressed his solidarity. He said that Irish officials had, time and again, offered the example of the Northern Irish peace process as evidence of another path, but Israel never saw the comparison as apt.
Then he told the young man it was time political representatives and international media be allowed in to witness the day-to-day realities for Palestinians.
The Taoiseach offered a final thought which landed queasily against the glittering Manhattan noises and the city din of taxi horns and voices.
“Because I have a feeling that, please God when this is over, and hopefully it will end, we haven’t seen the full extent of the horrors that have unfolded in Gaza.”
