Netanyahu Flies to NY, Skips Trump, Picks Fight With the Mayor Instead

The Most Awkward Guest List in Diplomatic History

According to CBS News, Netanyahu's office confirmed he would hold meetings Thursday with the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama and Ethiopia, the Vice President of Colombia, and the prime ministers of Greece, Slovenia, and Papua New Guinea. A perfectly respectable collection of world leaders. Donald Trump, the president of the country that has armed, funded, and diplomatically shielded Israel for decades, was not on the list.

The official explanation is that Netanyahu had to get home for Sukkot, which begins Friday evening. A Jewish holiday requiring a rushed transatlantic flight. Fine. Sure. And if you believe that the scheduling conflict with Trump was entirely religious in nature, there is a very affordable bridge in Brooklyn that Netanyahu probably flew over on his way in.

What's actually happening here is not hard to read. An Israeli election is coming in October, and Netanyahu needed footage of himself striding into the United Nations to defend his country while the whole world piled on. Analysts told CBS News as much directly. David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy put it plainly: 'He's going to use the U.N. as a prop for this election.'

Every Major Ally Said the Quiet Part Loud

Before Netanyahu even got to the podium, the General Assembly had already turned into something of a roast. CBS News reports that leaders from France, the U.K., Jordan, Syria, Qatar and Turkey all used their time at the podium Wednesday to condemn Israel's conduct in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham called Hamas' October 7 attack 'utterly horrific' and then said the Israeli response had been unjustified anyway. 'Far too many people have died — including so many children. Far too little aid is getting in, and it has gone on for far too long.' France's Emmanuel Macron went after Israel's conduct in the West Bank specifically, asking out loud what exactly Hamas had to do with that. 'Hamas has never struck in the West Bank,' Macron said. Netanyahu called that a 'grotesque absurdity' and pointed to a Hamas-praised attack that killed a French citizen Sunday. Hamas praised it but did not claim responsibility — a distinction that is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

King Abdullah of Jordan, whose country has a formal peace treaty with Israel, called for sanctions, asset freezes, embargoes and diplomatic isolation. When your treaty partners are calling for embargoes at the U.N., something has gone considerably sideways.

The Beef With the Mayor of New York City

Here is where this story gets genuinely strange. Among all the foreign heads of state and international bodies piling onto Israel this week, Netanyahu chose to single out Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, as a worthy opponent deserving a dedicated response in his UN address.

The backstory: Mamdani called Netanyahu a 'war criminal' earlier this week. During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani had floated the idea of having New York authorities act on the International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against Netanyahu. He later acknowledged he couldn't actually detain the prime minister himself, but he encouraged federal authorities to do so and called protest 'one of the bedrocks of our city.' Netanyahu, watching protests planned for Thursday in New York, fired back in a video: 'Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews. I'm coming to the U.N. I'm going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers, and I'm going to tell the truth about you.'

Let's sit with that for a second. The Prime Minister of Israel, arriving in a city where he faces an active ICC arrest warrant, decided his most important adversary to call out by name was not the ICC, not Emmanuel Macron, not King Abdullah of Jordan — but the mayor of the city he was visiting. The man runs New York. He does not command an army. Netanyahu flew across an ocean to start this.

What Netanyahu Was Actually Going to Say

A person familiar with the matter told CBS News that Netanyahu's speech would focus primarily on Iran. He would also defend Israel's ongoing military campaigns in Gaza and in neighboring countries including Syria. That is roughly what he does every year — make claims about Iran's nuclear and military ambitions, promise surprises, rattle some props. He has a whole aesthetic at this point.

The broader backdrop is that Israeli forces have occupied more than half of Gaza since the war with Hamas began following the October 7 attack. The death toll has drawn sustained international condemnation, including from governments that have historically supported Israel without much public criticism. The fact that Netanyahu's primary strategic calculation heading into this speech appeared to be 'this will play well at home' tells you something about where things stand.