When Benjamin Netanyahu walks into the United Nations in New York on Thursday, the Israeli prime minister is in for a chilly reception.

World leaders at the U.N. General Assembly have been openly critical of Israel before he even landed. The mayor of New York previously threatened to arrest him.  And Netanyahu has fewer friends in either party in Washington.

Even his longtime pal President Donald Trump doesn’t have plans to meet him, according to two U.S. officials granted anonymity to describe the president’s schedule.

That’s a pointed slight even if both sides can blame it on scheduling issues connected to the Jewish high holidays and Trump’s hosting duties in Washington for his frenemy Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Netanyahu’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday comes as American views of Israel have fallen to historic or near historic lows across party lines and he faces a tough election back home.

Even if Netanyahu wants the visit to be business as usual, his mere presence at the gathering this year will underscore his diverse array of opponents in the country Israel counts on the most.

His global standing has cratered after Israel’s devastating and overwhelming military response in Gaza to the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, record settler violence in the West Bank and months of war with Lebanon.

In speeches before he arrived, leaders from France, the United Kingdom, Qatar, Jordan and more offered pointed criticism of Israel. Israeli leaders have long complained that the United Nations is hostile to their country and unfairly focuses too much attention on it.

“All those who claim that Israel’s security requires the violation of the sovereignty of all of its neighboring states are making a very fateful error,” French President Emmanuel Macron told the U.N. General Assembly.

Netanyahu’s address is expected to draw large protests outside of the U.N., and he will be on the ground for only about 24 hours. In years past he cut a flamboyant figure at the summit, brandishing props and posters in his speeches and attending a number of meetings and side events.

This year, there’s another reason he wanted to be sure to make the trip to New York.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, told MS NOW that Netanyahu wants to show he isn’t afraid to visit the city after Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was in discussions with local police about whether Netanyahu could be arrested after being charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

“It was important for the Prime Minister to arrive to New York, especially after Mayor Mamdani threatened to arrest him,” Danon told MS NOW. “It’s important that the prime minister will deliver his speech like every year.”

Mamdani, an outspoken opponent of Netanyahu’s government and Israel’s war in Gaza, has called the Israeli leader a war criminal and said he should face an ICC arrest warrant when he visits New York. He later conceded that the city lacks the authority to execute it and said he will not protest Netanyahu’s visit.

Trump has said Netanyahu will not be arrested in the United States and has taken a variety of moves to cripple the ICC, which the U.S. is not a party to.

Netanyahu, for his part, will also steer clear of the New York mayor, whose image he has used in election campaign posters. The ad shows Mamdani alongside Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem and says, “They want Netanyahu to lose … don’t let them win.”

“There is no relationship,” Danon said of Netanyahu and Mamdani. “He’s hostile, and he picked on Israel. You know, once he got elected many people who live near you expected him to focus on his responsibilities and not his personal ideology.”

In recent weeks, several reporters have asked Trump if he would endorse Netanyahu for
prime minister ahead of Oct. 27 elections, but he has demurred. His relationship with the Israeli prime minister has soured as the Iran war drags on and more Republicans turn away from Israel.

“Trump’s own policy interests — Gaza, the Abraham Accords, Israel-Saudi normalization — would benefit from another prime minister, one who has additional flexibility that Netanyahu does not,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to Republicans and Democrats who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Even while publicly ties have cooled, Trump is planning to deliver powerful 2,000-pound bombs to Israel as part of an upcoming $2.8 billion weapons package. The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., put a hold on the sale amid concerns about how Israel would use the weapons.

Democrats who had been reliably pro-Israel are increasingly joining with those in their party who have been more critical.

“Netanyahu needs to hear from America that we don’t like what he’s doing,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said on CNN last week. “We don’t like what’s happening in the West Bank where settler violence is killing Palestinians, sending them out of their homes, disrupting basic infrastructure.”

The post Netanyahu’s lonely and Trumpless trip to the United Nations appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.