Australia

Canberra, 25 September 2026. At the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the accusation of genocide in Gaza as the "biggest lie of the century", before a hall emptied by 77 delegations, according to SBS News' count. "If there are still any moral cowards in this hall, let them leave now," he said in his opening remarks, before assuring that by striking Iranian nuclear facilities on February 28, in coordination with Washington, Israel had made "one of the easiest decisions" of his term.

The Australian press first notes the electoral calculation. Five weeks before the October 27 election, where Netanyahu could lose power to his rival Gadi Eisenkot, former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, quoted by PerthNow, judges that he "is not really speaking to the UN, he is speaking to the Israeli public", in a speech thought of as an "election campaign". PerthNow recalls that he had promised to "tell the truth" about New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom he eventually described as "anti-Semitic" from the podium, after wrongly accusing him of supporting Hamas. Mamdani had described Netanyahu as the "architect of a horrific genocide".

ABC News Australia recalls that Netanyahu is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza, and notes the European sanctions against Israeli settlements after the increase in violence by settlers in the West Bank — criticisms that he brushed aside by accusing Western leaders of "giving in to anti-Semitic crowds".

The Palestinian mission to the UN had called on delegations to "collectively walk out", so as not to be "complicit" in the "genocide" and "illegal occupation", PerthNow reports. Netanyahu responded that many of the countries that left were privately thanking him for targeting Iran's nuclear program, recalling the operation against Hezbollah on September 17, 2024, where booby-trapped pagers injured over 3,000 people and killed 12, including two children.

The Guardian Australia notes that the speech, delivered before a largely empty hall, also served to defend the war against Iran, settlers, and Donald Trump, while President Mahmoud Abbas, who was denied an American visa, had spoken via video earlier in the week.