Hamas said a mass walkout of delegations before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations on Friday showed Israel’s “isolation” as a result of the Gaza war.
“Boycotting Netanyahu’s speech is one manifestation of Israel’s isolation and the consequences of the war of extermination,” Taher al-Nunu, the media adviser to the head of the terror group’s political bureau, said in a statement.
As Netanyahu walked up to the General Assembly rostrum, a number of delegations walked out — in a deliberate protest as the premier was the day’s first speaker.
But the room was filled with applause from the public gallery as Netanyahu had invited supporters to watch.
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the prime minister had been left with “nothing but a chorus of cheerleaders who entered the UN hall only to clap in support of genocide.”
In a statement, Hamas accused Netanyahu of repeating “lies and blatant denial of the genocide, forced displacement and systematic starvation committed by him” and the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.
Hamas said that the boycott of Netanyahu’s speech showed the “growing global solidarity with the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state.”
“If he truly cared for his captives, he would end the brutal bombing, massacres and destruction of Gaza, but instead, he lies and continues to endanger their lives,” Hamas said, referring to the hostages held by Palestinian terror organizations.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Among the bodies held by Hamas is an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian Authority foreign ministry official slammed Netanyahu’s speech , saying it was “saturated with lies and falsifications.”
“It was the speech of a defeated man, a desperate leader who once again tried to rally a West that has increasingly distanced itself from a genocidal state, using fear as his only argument,” the director of the ministry’s European affairs department, Adel Atieh, told AFP.
“This speech showed neither vision nor perspective: it only reflected growing isolation, a headlong rush forward, and the anxiety of a power that knows it stands on the wrong side of history,” he added.
During his defiant UN address, Netanyahu denied accusations of “genocide” in Gaza and using “starvation” as a tactic.
He also vowed to block a Palestinian state, accusing European leaders who recently recognized one of pushing his country into “national suicide” and rewarding Hamas for its October 7, 2023, onslaught on Israel.
The attack saw some 1,200 people killed when approximately 3,000 heavily armed Hamas-led fighters invaded communities near the border in an unparalleled outbreak of violence which included brutal atrocities such as torture and rape, which triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 65,000 people have been killed or are presumed dead so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.