Dozens of UN Delegations Walk Out on Netanyahu’s Speech, and He Calls Them ‘Moral Cowards’

Dozens of delegations walked out of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday as Benjamin Netanyahu reached the rostrum, and the Israeli prime minister opened by inviting any remaining “moral cowards” to follow them. It was a striking picture, and it was also a rerun: the same hall emptied for him last September, and the year between the two walkouts is the part of the story almost nobody is measuring.

Every report today treats the empty seats as a verdict on Israel. Put this year next to last year and they read as something else: a protest that has now been tried twice, at scale, and has changed nothing it set out to change.

What Happened in the Hall

The walkout was organized. The Palestinian mission to the UN had urged diplomats to leave in protest at what it called “genocide and war crimes and illegal occupation,” RTÉ reported. Some delegations left as he approached the podium. Others never took their seats.

The count of 77 comes from Israeli outlets, relayed by Middle East Monitor. No government has published a list, so treat the number as a solid estimate, not a roll call. Israel’s Channel 14 called the exodus “a spit in Israel’s face.”

Netanyahu did not soften anything for the people still listening. Attacking Iran, he said, was “one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make as prime minister,” a reference to the joint U.S.-Israeli operation launched in February. He also held up a pager, a nod to the 2024 Hezbollah pager attack, the Associated Press noted.

He called the genocide allegation against Israel “the biggest lie of the century,” TIME reported, and turned on New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, as “the antisemitic mayor of New York.” Mamdani answered that the speech repeated “baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide.”

Mahmoud Abbas addressed the same assembly by prerecorded video. The Palestinian president was denied a U.S. visa for the second year running.

One Year, Two Walkouts, Roughly 8,900 More Dead

Here is the comparison the day’s coverage skipped.

On September 26, 2025, delegates walked out as Netanyahu approached the podium and he promised that Israel would “finish the job” in Gaza. That week, the Gaza Health Ministry put the death toll at about 65,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023.

The ministry’s figure now stands at 73,922, per RTÉ’s account of the speech.

That is roughly 8,900 more deaths between one empty hall and the next. The 65,000 was a rounded estimate, so the gap carries a margin of a few hundred either way. It does not carry a margin that changes the story.

A ceasefire took hold in October 2025. More than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed since it began, according to the figures TIME cited. A ceasefire that still kills more than a hundred people a month is a slower war, not an ended one.

Then there is Iran. Last year Netanyahu told the hall that he and President Trump had “delivered” on a promise to stop Iran’s nuclear program. This year he spoke as the co-author of an open war with Iran, launched five months after the first walkout.

So line up what the first walkout was meant to signal against what followed it:

• Isolation. He came back to the same rostrum and drew cheers from the delegates who stayed.
• Pressure to stop in Gaza. The deaths slowed and did not stop.
• A cost for escalation. The region got a new war.

A Gesture That Costs Nothing Has Stopped Working

Our view is blunt. A walkout is the cheapest act in diplomacy. It costs a delegation a few minutes in a corridor, and after two years it has proven it buys about that much.

Netanyahu knows it. He spent one line of mockery on the empty seats and aimed the rest at the chairs that stayed filled, and at one capital above all.

Last year the U.S. delegation did not join the protest and stayed seated. The audience that decides whether this war continues is in Washington, not in the General Assembly.

That audience answered the same day. The Senate rejected the Iran war powers resolution 49 to 50, one vote short, after the House had passed it in July. A single senator mattered more to Netanyahu’s war than 77 delegations did.

The day before, Trump stood at the same rostrum and told the UN he could “annihilate” Iran. Between the two speeches, the message to the room was consistent. Leave if you like; the decisions happen elsewhere.

None of that makes the protesting governments wrong about Gaza. It makes their chosen instrument too small for their stated conviction.

The honest test for the 77 is not whether they stand up in New York. It is what they do at home: whether they enforce the International Criminal Court arrest warrant if he lands on their soil, and whether their export licences and trade terms match the protest their diplomats walked out to make.

Governments that have done neither should not expect a third empty hall to do what two could not.

Next September the seats will empty again if nothing else changes. The more useful thing to watch before then is the Senate roll, where one vote, not 77, sets the terms.