Netanyahu lashed Mamdani in fiery U.N. speech, but real aim was his own political survival, analyst says

In a mass visual rebuke for the world to see, hundreds of delegates walked out of the United Nations General Assembly Thursday just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up to the podium. 

He delivered a fiery speech defending the seven-month war on Iran launched jointly by the U.S. and Israel, rejected allegations of genocide in Gaza and attacked New York City’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani. 

“If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall, please do so now,” exhorted Netanyahu, as diplomats from more than 70 nations were in the process of walking out. 

But one veteran Israeli political analyst told CBS News on Friday that Netanyahu’s primary goal in making the speech was shoring up his political position back home, with Israelis being his main intended audience.

Israel is set to hold legislative elections on Oct. 27. Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition government — the most far-right in modern Israeli history — are trailing in the polls.

Yaakov Katz, former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, said Netanyahu’s address was very deliberately planned to counter that trend.

“People look at the hostility and they say, ‘Oh, Netanyahu is not popular. People are walking out.’ Israelis, I think, look at this and they say to themselves: ‘The world is against us no matter what, but thank God we have a leader, in this case, Netanyahu, who can stand up to everyone and stick it to them,'” Katz told CBS News.

“That could bring him some votes, or at the very least consolidate the base,” he added. 

The Israeli leader also used Mamdani as a foil, labeling him antisemitic and claiming “many Jews no longer feel safe in New York.”

“This plays out well, because Israelis look at people like Mamdani and they don’t see much of a difference, whether it’s Mamdani or it’s President Erdogan of Turkey,” said Katz, referring to another regular target of Netanyahu’s ire, “or it’s some other tent encampment or protest on the streets of Sydney or Paris or London. It’s one and the same.”

Hundreds of people who strongly disagree joined a protest near U.N. headquarters in New York on Thursday. Police arrested dozens of people denouncing both Netanyahu and the U.S. government for continuing to sell weapons to Israel. 

Many of the protesters identified as American or Israeli Jews. Some held up signs calling Netanyahu a terrorist, while others repeated the accusation, made by a panel of U.N. experts last year, as well as Mamdani and numerous others, that Israeli actions in Gaza amount to genocide against the Palestinian people.

Since Hamas sparked the Gaza war with its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage, Israeli operations in Gaza have killed more than 73,000 people, according to the latest U.N. report, citing data compiled by Gaza’s health ministry. Israel has always rejected the death toll figures reported by Gazan authorities, but it has not offered its own estimation of the cost of its war in the Palestinian territory in human lives.

“What genocidal regime enables the distribution of 2 million tons of food into Gaza? That’s a ton for every person,” retorted Netanyahu on Thursday, calling the accusation of genocide by Israel “the greatest lie of the century.”

There have been periods since Oct. 7, 2023, however, when Israel did restrict supplies of food and other basic goods to Gaza, and in March 2025, Israel enacted a blockade of the densely packed Palestinian territory, freezing shipments of food, fuel, medicine and other goods, that lasted nearly three months. 

In August last year, a U.N.-backed global hunger monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, confirmed famine conditions in Gaza for the first time in the Middle East.

Israel’s near-total blockade was eventually eased, under international pressure, and Israel started allowing a trickle of supplies into Gaza, which it says has increased steadily.

Responding to Netanyahu’s denial that Israel had committed genocide, Mamdani doubled down on the allegation and said Netanyahu had used his U.N. speech to “repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians.” The mayor also said no lie could change the fact that Netanyahu remained the subject of an ICC arrest warrant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Katz told CBS News the Israeli leader’s speech may not have done much to move the political needle at home, and he added that Netanyahu’s biggest hope is for President Trump to endorse him, which he has not.

“Netanyahu is in the United States, is in New York, tried to get a meeting with President Trump. He would have gone down to D.C. for it, but was not able to get the White House to confirm any time or facetime between the prime minister and the president,” he said.

Mr. Trump has, however, recently posted a poll on social media that shows Netanyahu’s political fortunes improving slightly. 

“So, it still seems that there is that romance that might still remain between these two leaders,” said Katz. “Will that lead to a full endorsement? Don’t know, but there’s still a month left for the Israeli election, and Netanyahu is definitely praying and hoping that Trump comes out more vocally in his support.”

Netanyahu did name-check the president in his address, saying that in Israel’s “battle against the barbarians, we’ve had no greater partner than President Trump.”

The Israeli leader will now be hoping his greatest partner will help keep him in power.