Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went back to his usual theatrics when addressing UNGA members gathered in New York where the main agenda has been how to end the massive Israeli genocide going on in Gaza for the last two years and is reaching apocalyptic levels at the moment.
Israeli government does not allow any media into Gaza because the images of dead and dying children will horrify the world and so Netanyahu has decided to do all of humanity a big favour by stopping those pictures and videos appearing in peoples’ TVs at home everywhere in the world.
What a merciful leader Benjamin Netanyahu is to offer humanity such a gift so that only the Israeli leaders and IDF soldiers in Gaza can feast on those pictures as they dance about their great victories. Good for them.
If other leaders speaking at the UNGA meeting in New York were trying to be like Netanyahu they would have carried those pictures of genocide victims and others to show the human consequences of Israeli terrorism in Gaza going on even during the UNGA meetings.
How many Gazan children and their mothers has Israel soldiers killed just in the last four days that the UNGA meeting has been going on in New York?
Delegates leave the General Assembly hall as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu steps up to the podium, 26 September, 2025.
“Israel is fighting your fight,” Netanyahu said, citing what he called the rise of radical Islamism in countries across the world.
On the other side of the great war of genocide in the world today, Hamas leader, Ghazi Hamad took a very rare public interview speaking to Al Jazeera and CNN from Doha in Qatar.
Senior Hamas official defends ‘high price’ of Oct 7 for Palestinians, saying attack created ‘golden moment’
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Ghazi Hamad on Al Jazeera.
Ghazi Hamad is considered to be one of the six remaining key Hamas leaders who were at the meeting in Doha, Qatar, during the Israeli airstrike. It is unclear whether any of the leaders were killed or wounded.
“We were sitting to discuss the American proposal to end the war,” he said in the interview. “Less than an hour later, we heard explosions and immediately understood it was an assassination attempt. As residents of Gaza, we recognize those sounds. We tried to flee as quickly as possible, and we succeeded.”
Why did Ghazi Hamad appear first?
Now, the question is: “Why is Hamad the one who has appeared first. It is likely because he has been seen as a key negotiator in the past and possibly a more “moderate” member of Hamas.
Nevertheless, Hamad is known to have played a role in the negotiations in the past, including more than a decade ago, when Gilad Schalit was held in Gaza between 2006 and 2011.
However, Doha and Hamas likely believe the strike was intended to derail a deal. Many questions remain now about the push for a deal.
In Israel, supporters of the hostages have continued to call for a deal and an end to the war.
In the wide-ranging interview, Ghazi Hamad highlighted growing international condemnation of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and the spate of countries who have recognized Palestinian statehood. He was unapologetic about the consequences for Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who have borne the brunt of Israel’s unrelenting attacks on Gaza.
“You know what is the benefit of October 7th now? …If you look to the (United Nations) General Assembly yesterday, when about 194 people opened their eyes and looked to the atrocity, to brutality of Israel and all of them, they condemned Israel. We waited for this moment for 77 years,” he said.
“I think this is a golden moment for the world to change the history,” he added.
His comments came on the same day as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the October 7 attack in a speech to the UN – saying that Hamas would have no role to play in a Palestinian state – and one day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to address the assembly.
Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023, and took more than 250 hostages in a savage attack. It triggered a brutal retaliation from Israel which Gaza’s health ministry says has killed more than 65,000 people, most of them women and children.
Benjamin Netanyahu going on with his drama at the UNGA boasted of having ordered IDF to mount speakers on their attack vehicles in Gaza so that the hostages can listen to his speech. It is quite cynical and pretty sick that anybody thinks the hostages are interested in listening to their speeches while they are all dying to get back home before they die in Hamas captivity.
Netanyahu is basically telling them that things are too bad and in case they die they will at least remember listening to their PM speak at the UNGA. Big relief for them from the Israeli boss.
Speaking about the fate of the hostages, Hamas leader put the blame on the Israeli PM.
“We will not be concerned for their lives as long as (Israeli Prime Minister) Netanyahu has decided to kill them,” the Al-Qassam Brigades statement read.
Israel’s conditions to end the war are clear: return the hostages, living and dead, and destroy Hamas in exchange for a ceasefire that would start negotiations.
Most of the international community, while upping the pressure on Israel to stop fighting, are also equally clear that Hamas must disarm immediately. Hamad’s comments underlined how far that demand is from the group’s intentions.
“The (armed wing) of Hamas is a legitimate and legal weapon which is used all the time against an occupation,” he said.
If a Palestinian state was established, he said, Hamas’ weapons would be directed to the Palestinian army.
“But you could not exclude Hamas from the Palestinian … questions and Palestinian situation, because Hamas is playing a positive role,” he said.
“We will never surrender. We will never surrender.”
Netanyahu’s speech had important points, but didn’t address the elephant in the room – analysis
Even Netanyahu’s political buddies back home are saying the Israeli Prime Minister has no plans to end the catastrophe he has created in Gaza. The view from his supporters is that the prime minister delivered a hasbara speech, sharp and often effective, yet without a road map.
They heard what he opposes: a Palestinian state now, the Palestinian Authority as it is, the international hypocrisy. They did not hear what replaces those problems.
Gaps in Netanyahu’s plan
Right-wing commentator Shimon Riklin praised the tone, calling it “a strong, smart and moving speech,” yet added a “but”: Where is the substance?
“The shortcoming of the speech was the lack of an explanation of where we go from here with Gaza, and the ignoring of the big shoal on which Israel is stuck: the absence of a solution for the hostages.” Riklin added, “Precisely because of all the hopes for peace he detailed, Hamas will keep refusing any deal.
‘Every day that passes entangles Israel further in the international and economic arenas. Our transformation into Sparta will continue. The stock market will keep falling. More countries will cancel contracts with us. Hamas sees this and takes delight in it, wanting the situation to continue. In the end, perhaps from their perspective, all the destruction in Gaza will have been worth it,” he wrote.
Israel is becoming isolated. Walkouts in the hall are the symptom. Trade decisions, campus campaigns, legal warfare, and boardroom moves are the disease. The speech did not grapple with that reality, and it did not tell Israelis how to rebuild the coalition of partners who once spent political capital for us when it was costly.
“Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats. We will not commit national suicide because you don’t have the guts to face down a hostile media and antisemitic mobs demanding Israel’s blood,” he said, referring to an Israeli parliament declarative vote last year in which 99 out of 120 lawmakers voted in favor of a motion rejecting unilateral moves that would impose a Palestinian state.
The real fear and animosity from Netanyahu and all Israeli leadership together with their king, Donald Trump, is that the genocide case against Israel is now before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague and that hearing could be starting early 2026 which was the agreement between the ICJ and South Africa.
In a 15-2 ruling, the ICJ judges ordered that Israel must prevent the following actions against the protected “group,” which the court defined as the Palestinians of Gaza: “(a) killing members of the group; ( b ) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and ( d ) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” While the specific word “ceasefire” was not mentioned in the order, the ruling could not be clearer about the court’s intent. It literally ordered Israel to stop killing Palestinians in Gaza “with immediate effect.”
In issuing its provisional measures, the court upheld “the right of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts” under the Genocide Convention. It found that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.”
“Israel must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the court said Opens in a new tab.
It also ordered Israel to halt and punish incitement to genocide, to preserve any evidence of violations of the Genocide Convention by its forces or personnel, and to submit a report on its compliance with the court’s orders within one month.
“What South Africa was showing, without spelling it out, is ‘we’ve done something that you – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, every other country that has power over Israel – should have been doing,” he said.
There are some Israeli political honchos who were excited that the ICJ did not order immediate ceasefire of Gaza at that time but only demanded that no genocide be committed. That is empty comfort because the ICJ does not go in the fields to stops genocide from being committed. The court’s job is to hear any cases of alleged genocide and make rulings.
From everything the world is seeing today, two years into the Israeli operations in Gaza, a genocide ruling is guaranteed and in fact many times it looks like Netanyahu is desperate to convince the ICJ that yes, his mission in Gaza is to commit the kind of genocide that has not been seen in the world before.
Sadly enough for Netanyahu and Israelis, this genocide is being committed on live recording every single minute it is happening. Israel has blocked the media from entering Gaza but in the modern world, every cell phone is a full broadcasting station with live videos and pictures.
There are endless numbers of video clips and pictures of all the victims and survivors of Israeli genocide in the whole war as it has happened.
Those horrific killings of children including those born prematurely and left to die lying down with medical staff and hospital workers being beaten up are available and by now the prosecution team at the ICJ has hundreds of thousands of all those disturbing images of reality.
When the ICJ hearings begin at the Hague the entire world is going to be treated to a live show of all those images of horror and at times even the ICJ judges are going to ask to be given some break from all that so they can go and shed their tears privately before coming back to the hearing.
Once the ICJ convicts the State of Israel for committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza, the entire state of Israel will face something no other nation has faced because no country has actually been convicted of such crimes.
Adolf Hitler decided to commit suicide and shot himself dead in his banker after he realized he had been defeated in WW2. By his suicide, Hitler knew that his crimes were buried with him and his Nazi murderers so that Germany had a chance to start fresh.
Netanyahu may decide not to be too generous to go straight to hell by himself after a genocide conviction and be ready and willing to drag the entire Israeli state and its people down with him.
After the genocide conviction the UN will have no choice but to impose blanket sanctions on Israel and groups like the EU, NATO as well as individual countries imposing every possible sanction on Israel and that is a road to complete economic collapse and bankruptcy of the entire government and economy of Israel.
How Israel pulls itself out of the consequences of complete sanctions and economic embargos from across the universe is the real issue in front of the country right now. Netanyahu knows that very well and part of his plan as soon as the Gaza genocide is done and the economic consequences are coming at full force will be for Israel to start a very big war against Iran.
The plan there will be to force President Donald Trump to join Israel in that war and they can tell the whole world that fighting Iran is more important than dealing with Israeli genocide in Gaza. Whether that can work even Netanyahu does not know but they all know it is coming down to that level of despair.
Netanyahu and his supporters keep yelling at other world leaders today recognizing the Palestinian State claiming that they are rewarding Hamas terrorism and must be stopped. The irony of all these is that the biggest possible reward to Hamas is coming from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
Through this ugly genocide in Gaza, Netanyahu is handing over the Palestinian State to those fighting for it and who would have imagined that it is Hamas who will push Israel and its leadership to plant the Palestinian State right into their hands.
Even Hamas never imagined they could do anything close to what Netanyahu is handing over to them. Hamas may turn out to be one of the most affective guerilla fighters in all of human history when you consider that this tiny group of militants with some few weapons is bringing down one of the largest armies in the world with all the heavy duty weapon they need arriving every day from USA, the world’s military superpower.
Conclusion.
The whole world for the next 2-3 years are going to witness first hand what Palestinians in Gaza have been dealing with. South African will bring tens of thousands of survivors, victims, family members, witnesses and videos and pictures of all those maimed children and civilians to the court at The Hague.
For the first time in history the whole world will know the Palestinians in their occupied homeland have known for 76 years.
When the evidence is out there everybody in the world will ask one question: who the heck does that kind of thing. Israel will say Hamas does the same thing. That is exactly why Hamas is a terrorist organization and not a state.
Israel behaving like Hamas and actually 100 worse is going to be a real and serious problem for Israel as a state. Israel said Hamas is the new ISIS how about if the ICJ rules that Israel and the IDF is the new ISIS? That is coming next.
