Dozens of delegates walk out of UN hall as Israeli prime minister prepares to speak

New York Times - Defending his country’s military actions, Israel’s president rejected the idea of a Palestinian state and demanded the release of hostages still held by Hamas. 

He sought to speak to them directly through loudspeakers broadcasting his speech into Gaza.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel defended his country’s attacks on its enemies and vowed to continue its campaign to “finish the job” against Hamas in a defiant address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday morning.

Representatives from dozens of countries walked out of the hall just before Mr. Netanyahu began his address to the General Assembly, the latest public protest of Israel from an audience of world leaders who are demanding an end to the war in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu said Israelis “will not commit national suicide” by allowing the creation of a Palestinian state, and sharply criticized nations that have recognized such a prospect in recent days. “It will be a mark of shame on all of you,” he said.

Times reporters have reached out to a number of people across Gaza, and so far none of them have said they were able to hear Netanyahu’s speech, which he said was being broadcast over loudspeakers placed in the territory by Israel’s military and livestreamed to cellphones in Gaza thanks to the work of Israeli intelligence.

During his speech, Netanyahu told the U.N. that Israel could not be committing genocide in Gaza because it had ordered the evacuation of Gazan cities so many times, a practice that has led most of the territory’s 2.2 million people to flee their homes at least once. But some rights groups, including leading Israeli ones, have pointed to those displacements as part of the genocide in Gaza, not a refutation of it.

In July, B’Tselem, an Israeli group, said Israel’s practice of displacing people in Gaza, along with the razing of cities, the killing of tens of thousands of people, and restrictions on food and aid, were the pillars of “coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society” in Gaza. “In other words,” they wrote, “Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”