In Israel they regard Netanyahu as the foremost orator, especially when he speaks in English before international forums. In politics and government, he is the king whose skill his opponents acknowledge before his supporters do- not only in reaching the summit, but in settling on it.
Before and during his lengthy speech to the eighty-first session of the United Nations General Assembly, many events combined to spoil the occasion. The most important were his delivering the speech to empty seats; the cancellation of every item on his visit's program, including his meeting with the billionaire Elon Musk; and New York's renewed stance toward him, after he had treated the city as a settlement of pure loyalty to him and to his state. In the age of Mamdani, merely walking its streets has become impossible for him.
Netanyahu's acknowledgment in his lengthy speech of the reality of an Israel fighting on several fronts, and his acknowledgment too that continuing the war is an option with no alternative, embodied- without any explicit admission that a decisive outcome is impossible on even one of them- the fact that the state whose invincible army he boasts of has indeed carried out acts of war, but ones closer to massacres and extermination than to victorious military battles. What is the worth of wars, killing, extermination, and total destruction if they do not lead to political results, measured by the adversary's surrender and the achievement of their stated objectives? And if those objectives are placed on the scales, where is the absolute victory he promised? And where is Israel's leadership of the Middle East and its partnership in leading the world?
Netanyahu's speech, which was granted time granted to no one else, contained not a single useful sentence suggesting he has realistic exits from Israel's domestic and external crises. He did, however, give his followers in Israel and the Jews of the world the tidings that they will remain under a supposed cosmic threat, with no choice but to stay under arms without end.
Netanyahu will find in Israel, and in many corners of America and Europe, those who will buy his wares. But what is the real extent of his speech's effect? That is what the ballot boxes in Israel will settle, where his fate swings between a new premiership or going home, or to prison, or at best to the opposition benches.
Netanyahu is possessed by a self-infatuation that has distinguished him from all his predecessors among Israel's leaders, the historic ones included. He was not content with his innovative tactics for reaching the summit, nor with the conduct that holding it requires, founded on his superior ability to marginalize others in his own party and among his opponents. He went beyond that, to the point of bending the state to serve his remaining at the summit. No sovereign institution in the state was left that he did not subject to his wishes and interests, until the state he used to describe as an oasis of democracy and model governance became closer to a personal possession. His greed for power reached the point of destroying the judiciary in order to escape accountability.
In his speech, the written parts and the improvised, in the language of tongue and body and with a good deal of theatrical gesture, Netanyahu showed little competence in understanding and handling the deep transformations surrounding the Hebrew state, especially in America, where Israel's popularity has sunk to rock bottom. This is not only because of what the human conscience cannot bear in scenes of mass killing, the total destruction of Gaza, and the free hand given to gangs of thieves and killers in the West Bank. It is also because of a strong accusation that has spread in American partisan and popular circles against Netanyahu personally: that he misled President Trump and dragged him into a war that could have been avoided with a little reflection and insight- to the point that, in effective and influential American circles, the war on Iran has been called Netanyahu's personal war. It is an accusation made for the first time in the history of American-Israeli relations.
After finishing his speech, Netanyahu returned to Israel as though what had happened had been a time-out from his election campaign, into whose service he has placed all his own credit and whatever of the state's credit his hands can reach.
Israel, on its way to general elections, finds itself before three possibilities. The first is the ousting of Netanyahu and his coalition. The second is a miracle granting him a victory at the polls. The third is a coalition that continues Netanyahu's policy but with a different face and a different language.
The ballot box will decide which of these possibilities comes true: either Netanyahu's speech will belong to the past, or it will be a manifesto for the future.
