The empty hall: Why the world walked out on Netanyahu

Editor's note: Adriel Kasonta, a special commentator for CGTN, is a London-based foreign affairs analyst and commentator. He is the founder of AK Consultancy and former chairman of the International Affairs Committee at Bow Group, the oldest conservative think tank in the UK. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the United Nations General Assembly on September 26. Yet as he approached the microphone, the story was no longer what he would say but who remained to listen.

More than 100 diplomats from over 50 countries vacated their seats, leaving Netanyahu to declaim before rows of empty chairs. It was a quiet gesture, but one far louder than applause: An unambiguous message that Israel's military operations in Gaza is morally indefensible.

This mass walkout was not a stunt. It was the visible embodiment of an international community struggling to restore meaning to words like justice, dignity and the rule of law. Over nearly two years of bombardment, more than 65,000 Palestinians have been killed. At least 20,000 of them were children, according to Save the Children. Oxfam reported last year that more women and children had been killed in Gaza than in any conflict in the past two decades.

The statistics are so grotesque that they risk becoming abstract. The diplomats who walked out refused that abstraction. Their act was a reminder: The world sees, the world counts and the world will not sit quietly while a “war of extermination” is justified from a global pulpit.

The gesture also illuminated the shifting tectonics of global politics. Palestine is now recognized as a sovereign state by 157 UN members – four out of five of the world's countries. Each new recognition, from European capitals to Latin America, chips away at Israel's impunity and erodes the United States' monopoly over the narrative.

Recognition is not merely symbolic. In the eyes of international law, it elevates Palestine to the level of an equal party, entitled to the protections and rights of statehood. It makes the Israeli offensive not just a humanitarian catastrophe but a war between states – one in which aggression cannot be shrugged off as counterterrorism.

This explains Netanyahu's fury. He railed against the UK and France, calling their recognition of Palestine "insane." He equated a two-state solution with handing al-Qaeda the keys to Manhattan. Such rhetoric may still resonate with a dwindling core of supporters, but for much of the world, it reeks of desperation. The more Israel insists that Palestinian nationhood is madness, the more rational and necessary it appears.

The protests outside the UN underscored the same point. Thousands of demonstrators filled New York's streets, denouncing Netanyahu's presence and demanding an end to the siege of Gaza. These were not isolated activists on the margins. They were part of a groundswell of popular discontent, stretching from university campuses to congressional offices, that has made unconditional support for Israel politically toxic in ways unthinkable just a decade ago.

The moral logic driving this backlash is stark and inescapable. The international order rests on the premise that no state is above the law, that the bombs of another cannot obliterate the sovereignty of anyone.

If Palestine is not a state, then its people are unprotected, perpetually relegated to a gray zone where their deaths are tragedies but never crimes. If Palestine is a state, then the assault on Gaza is not only genocide but also an illegal war of aggression. The walkout at the UN was a collective insistence on the latter interpretation.

And yet, behind every diplomatic protest stands the shadow of Washington. Israel's campaign would collapse without American weapons, American vetoes and American indulgence. This is the uncomfortable truth that U.S. commentators have begun to voice: That U.S. leaders appear less the defenders of American interests than the guarantors of Netanyahu's survival.

The claim – reportedly boasted by Netanyahu himself – that he "controls Donald Trump" speaks to the humiliation many Americans now feel, forced into complicity with policies that corrode their country's credibility abroad and its moral fabric at home.

The diplomats who walked out of the UNGA hall did not end the war in Gaza. They did not save a single life that day. But they marked a turning point in perception. They refused to lend legitimacy to a speech that sought to normalize annihilation. They aligned themselves, however briefly, with the conscience of the majority of humanity.

Recognition of Palestine, diplomatic isolation of Israel and grassroots protests in global capitals may not immediately force an end to the siege. But they signal that Israel's impunity is not infinite. International law is only as strong as the will of nations to uphold it. On September 26, it will flicker back into life.

History will likely remember Netanyahu's UN address not for its props, nor for its tired invocations of October 7, but for the empty seats that stared back at him. In silence, the world answered his defiance with its own: Enough.

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