When he takes the stage at the UN on Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu will deliver a familiar message of defiance even as protests and international condemnation leave the Israeli leader in growing isolation.
Netanyahu is facing his toughest re-election challenge in a political career spanning decades with three ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, and a growing campaign of violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Internationally, Israel is facing growing condemnation. The UK, France and Canada are planning to sanction Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the British foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has accused Israeli settlers of committing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities.
And the US is in the midst of a historic shift in public opinion against Israel, with 62% of respondents telling Pew in July they had a negative opinion of Netanyahu’s government, and 60% of American Jews in a poll released this week hoping he is voted out in October.
Protests are expected both in the UN’s general assembly hall and on the streets of New York City, where mayor Zohran Mamdani has tempered his earlier promises to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal to assure demonstrators this week that he would protect their “right to [protest] in this city”.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, defended Netanyahu’s government in a telephone interview before this week’s speech seeking to cast criticism of Israel’s actions as the product of misinformation and bias.
“We are aware of the fact that we had a very challenging three years since October 7,” said Danon. “We accomplished a lot, but we were criticised. We were under the spotlight, and for us, I think, we are proud of our achievements.”
“At the same time, we will work harder to improve the image of Israel, and we know there’s a campaign against us,” he added.
Anger at Netanyahu will be on full display in New York City on Thursday, where several protests have been scheduled, including one from Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan to the UN headquarters in Turtle Bay to “reject war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and the genocidal Zionist project”.
“Netanyahu is coming to New York amid a political environment that has made it crystal clear that he is not welcome here,” said Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action.
She described a “mainstreaming” of public opinion that “Americans do not want to be supporting Israel’s genocide. We do not want to be supporting Israel’s apartheid. We do not want to be arming Israel or supporting Israel.”
And Palestinian representatives are calling for diplomatic missions to bring staff for a planned walkout of Netanyahu’s speech to “send a clear message to Netanyahu and his government that no one is willing to aid, abet, or be complicit in its genocide and war crimes and illegal occupation, which all peace-loving states and peoples demand must come to an end”.
But in Danon’s telling, Israel’s problem was largely one of public relations rather than of policy, and he cited a “wave of misinformation” as the reason for the precipitous shift in polling. Netanyahu would use his speech to “highlight Israel’s achievements”, he said, and to lay out “what still should be done, and how should we verify that we actually achieve the goals of the war?”
He did not elaborate on those specific measures before the speech, but the White House and US policymakers will be listening as they calibrate their message to voters – as well as the backlash of public anger – ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
Netanyahu is expected to deliver a hardline message aimed not just at world leaders, but also to his own electorate in Israel ahead of the October elections. “I think that he is trying to demonstrate to the Israeli populace that he still maintains some level of control over the situation,” said Miller. “And I think that he is trying to speak to a rightwing audience and a Trump-Maga audience in this country to try to rile up the hatred and Islamophobia.”
Donald Trump and top US officials are not expected to meet with Netanyahu, however, during a visit expected to last less than 24 hours. Trump will be in Washington DC to host the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and Netanyahu has cited Israel’s electoral campaign and the holiday of Sukkot as his reason to head home quickly after the speech.
A Trump administration official said Netanyahu’s delegation had sought a high-level meeting during the visit but none was organised. There are also no plans to meet congressional leaders, Danon said.
With criticism from top Republicans, including the vice-president, JD Vance, and leading democratic presidential contenders, Israel could face a 2028 campaign with two candidates who no longer support arms sales to Israel or the broad diplomatic support that it has enjoyed in the past.
Even within the Maga base there are fractures, Miller noted, with “more and more people who don’t really want to be sending our tax dollars to support the Israeli government”.
Danon said of a potential shift in the US-Israeli security relationship: “I think that we are still sharing the same values, and that’s why I’m sure that we will continue to have the support from the US.”
But there are multiple flashpoints now for anger from both US political parties, as well as the international community, including dire humanitarian concerns and the lack of reconstruction in Gaza, the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and continued conflicts in Lebanon and Iran, where the US has found itself mired in a conflict that has driven up global energy prices.
Asked if a controversial $2.8bn (£2.1bn) arms sale indicated that Israel is preparing to resume its offensive in Gaza, Danon said Israel “hopes that we will see [Hamas’s] disarmament without our involvement”, nodding to efforts by the Trump-backed Board of Peace. But he said Israel “will do it ourselves” if that does not change, adding: “We can not leave it forever like that.”
He was equally resolute on the West Bank, saying that Israel would not be swayed by recent criticism led by the UK over plans to expand settlements including E1, the planned construction which would sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.
Senate Democrats are also introducing a bill on Wednesday to sanction facilitators of the new settlement, and Senator Chris Coons, a co-sponsor, said in a statement that “as Palestinian civilians face a campaign of devastation and fear from violent extremist settlers, the United States must send a strong message that this behaviour is unacceptable”.
The protests began even before Netanyahu arrived in New York.
Already on Wednesday, several members of the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter rallied at the city’s John F Kennedy international airport in protest at weapons and explosive materials destined for the Israeli military being flown out of the airport on commercial aircraft.
Aber Kawas, who in November is slated to become the first Palestinian-American elected official in New York state, spoke at the event and later told the Guardian she plans to join many other New Yorkers protesting Nethanyahu’s UN speech on Thursday.
“Thousands of people are against his presence in our city,” she said.
Even though some had hailed Netanyahu’s decision to cut his visit short as a victory, she added, “the fact that he is coming shows he continues to have a sense of entitlement to be centred on the world stage while being the head architect of a genocide”.
