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As diplomats and world leaders staged a mass walkout in protest at the appearance of indicted alleged war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations, it was clear they were not his target audience.
Standing at the podium in New York, charts in hand, he was only concerned about addressing one evangelical group in particular.
“You know what message the leaders who recognise a Palestinian state this week sent to the Palestinians? It’s a very clear message. Murdering Jews pays off. The most savage terrorists on Earth are effusively praising your decision,” the Israeli prime minister growled.
“You didn’t do something right. You did something wrong, horribly wrong. Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere. It will be a mark of shame on all of you.”
While the UK, France, Canada, Australia and others joined the majority of nations around the world in officially recognising the Palestinian state, which has no recognised borders, Netanyahu raged against what he said was a “blood libel” against Jews and Israel over allegations of genocide in Gaza.
“Those who peddled the blood libels of genocide and starvation against Israel are no better than those who peddled blood libels against the Jews in the Middle Ages when they falsely accused us of poisoning wells, spreading plague, and using the blood of children to bake Passover matzahs. Antisemitism dies hard. In fact, it doesn’t die at all. It just keeps coming back with its libellous lies refurbished and regurgitated over and over again,” he claimed.
Netanyahu’s address was aimed largely at the Christian Nationalist and evangelical core of Trump supporters who back Israel partly because they believe all Jews must be gathered there as a precondition for the “rapture” during the “end times”.
Many American Christians, often close to a majority, see conflicts with Islamic hardliners as the final confrontation between Good and Evil – or Gog and Magog – as part of eschatological prophesy.
Netanyahu appealed directly to them.
“Our enemies hate all of us with equal venom. They want to drag the modern world back to the past, to a dark age of violence, fanaticism, and terror. I think many of you are already feeling in your own societies the radical Islamist surge. You know, I’m sure you do, you know deep down that Israel is fighting your fight,” he insisted.
“So I want to tell you a secret. Behind closed doors, many of the leaders who publicly condemn us privately thank us”.
Not, however, those who walked out of the UN assembly room.
For Netanyahu has been indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza by the International Criminal Court. UN legal experts have also concluded that Israel’s actions in the Palestinian enclave amount to alleged genocide.
This drastic conclusion would, ordinarily, trigger an obligation of other states to intervene against perpetrators of alleged genocide. The UK continues to export weapons components to Israel. The US meanwhile remains an important source of bombs and other ordinance being used by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Netanyahu also had to fly to New York for the UN’s general assembly address, avoiding the airspace of many European nations where he risked arrest under the ICC warrant to detain him.
But he was determined to drive home what he sees as the legitimacy of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
He also repeated his policy of outright rejection of the concept of a two-state solution – the idea that Israel and Palestine can coexist side by side west of the Jordan river.
Led by France and Saudi Arabia, there is a growing international consensus behind a proposal, which is also backed by the UK, for a return to efforts to secure the release of 20 hostages still alive held by Islamic extremists in Gaza under the control of Hamas, as part of plans to re-animate the two-state idea.
“The Palestinians, they don’t believe in this solution. They never have. They don’t want a state next to Israel. They want a Palestinian state instead of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
In fact, the Palestine Liberation Organization recognised the State of Israel in the early 1990s as part of the now-dead Oslo Peace Process.
Since then, Netanyahu and many on Israel’s right have been outspoken opponents of allowing the Palestinians to form their own state – and have made sure it could no longer function through the illegal annexation of Palestinian land on the Israeli occupied West Bank.
But Netanyahu was certainly not interested in talking about that.
