Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose re‑election bid faces headwinds domestically, is scheduled to address the United Nations on Thursday. In his speech he is expected to criticize both adversaries and allies who have opposed his policies in recent months.
He is also expected to discuss the situation of Israeli Ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, after his son, a soldier, suffered serious injuries in an alleged Palestinian vehicular attack in the occupied West Bank.
Among his most vocal critics in New York is Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a leftist politician who recently announced plans to pursue an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Netanyahu during the UN gathering.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) based in The Hague said in 2024 it had reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu bore responsibility for alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s Gaza campaign, which followed Hamas’s deadly attacks on October 7, 2023. Netanyahu has denied the ICC’s allegations.
Mamdani subsequently acknowledged he lacked the authority to execute such a warrant, prompting strong condemnation from Netanyahu and his supporters.
In the run‑up to the UN’s annual diplomatic week, Netanyahu pledged he would “tell the truth about you,” targeting Mamdani and accusing him of “supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters.”
He also baselessly accused Mamdani of “inciting riots against New York Jews.”
Mamdani, a long‑time advocate for Palestinian rights who has accused Israel of war crimes, responded on Tuesday, stating, “We all know that what the prime minister has said in that video is not true.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, one of Netanyahu’s fiercest critics, will be absent from the UN gathering after the United States denied him a visa.
Former allies Britain and France are expected to face Netanyahu’s criticism during his address on Thursday.
Britain has imposed limited sanctions on Israeli exports from the occupied West Bank, a step France recently mirrored.
French President Emmanuel Macron drew Israel’s ire by asserting that Hamas was not active in the West Bank, a claim that contrasts with Hamas’s historical stronghold in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office dismissed the claim as “the gross absurdity of the assertion,” adding that Hamas attacks “target Jews almost every day.”
“They have murdered countless Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria,” it added, using the biblical name for the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.
Netanyahu’s strained relationship with Macron continues, as the French president spearheaded a Western push at last year’s UN General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state.
Iran, with which Israel and the United States have been engaged in conflict since Iran launched attacks in February, will almost certainly be a focal point of Netanyahu’s address.
Israel is urging Washington to adopt more comprehensive military measures against Iran to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
– Ferocious criticism of UN –
The ongoing conflict remains unpopular with the American public, and gasoline prices have risen as a result.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Dannon, said after Iran’s president addressed the assembly on Wednesday that Tehran “arms Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, and militias in Iraq.”
He described the regime as one that “murders its own citizens when they dare to protest against it.”
Netanyahu is expected to launch a sharp critique of the United Nations and its outgoing Secretary‑General António Guterres, whom he has long opposed, especially in the aftermath of Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023.
Guterres this week fully cited the legally binding International Criminal Court measures that accuse Israel of “genocide” in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly accused a UN agency of shielding Hamas militants, alleging that some of its staff participated in the group’s attack on Israel that ignited the Gaza war.
Even after a US‑brokered ceasefire in October 2025, Israel has persisted in its airstrikes and restricted the entry of equipment that international groups deem essential for Gaza’s reconstruction.
Christian Saunders, the acting Commissioner‑General of the UN’s Palestinian refugees agency, told Agence France‑Presse this week that Israel has been “extremely difficult” in allowing vital supplies such as engine oil into Gaza for relief operations, while permitting luxury commercial goods.
“I think the Israeli government is trying to demonstrate to its public why they should be re‑elected,” Saunders added.
As has been the case in previous years, Netanyahu’s UN General Assembly address is expected to draw protests, both from delegations walking out in opposition to his policies and from demonstrators gathering nearby.
Israelis will vote in a general election on October 27.