Yet again, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the United Nations General Assembly with an uncompromising hardline message that doubles down on the Occupation and projects Israel to the world as an annexationist state.

Netanyahu will be returning to Israel following a bizarre US visit, which did not include a trip to Washington, and featured a high-profile meeting with billionaire Elon Musk at a California car factory. His brief meeting with the President of the United States, which President Biden depicted as “candid” – a diplomatic euphemism for a rough conversation – was held on the sidelines of UNGA, and did not provide any positive headlines.

At his UN speech, Netanyahu showed to the world his “map of peace,” which included the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of sovereign Israel. It was an annexationist map that exposed to the world Netanyahu’s vision of “peace” with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu again dismissed the Palestinians, this time by saying that they account for only “two percent of the Arab world,” cynically quantifying a bloody conflict that his government is working to perpetuate.

Netanyahu’s lofty words about his “yearning” for peace with the Palestinians are drowned by the settlement-building bulldozers and unchecked settler violence. While he condemns the Palestinian Authority for its payments to families of terrorists, he is silent as members of his own coalition are crowdsourcing for an Israeli terrorist who burned a Palestinian family to death. 

APN’s President and CEO Hadar Susskind said: “Netanyahu is returning to his government of fascists, felons, and fundamentalists, which in both action and words contradicts his bogus rhetoric of peace. His map of Greater Israel is perhaps the only honest part of his speech today.”