Tim Lawrence

Israelis support Netanyahu’s objectives, some of them just don’t think he’s doing a good enough job

Kudos to yesterday’s NYC protestors. Where was Zohran? Join us tomorrow in Liverpool (UK) if you can make it!

25 September 2026

Netanyahu the genocidal monster spewed his usual racist lies at the UN General Assembly yesterday, prompting delegates to swarm for the exits before he covered them in his putrid, rotting rhetoric. But while Israelis are also becoming more critical of Netanyahu, for them it’s because he hasn’t vanquished the country’s perceived enemies effectively enough.

As far as Netanyahu’s opponents are concerned, he failed to defend Israeli citizens on 7/10 and has gone on to fail to completely eradicate Hamas, bring about the final defeat of Hezbollah, succeed in effecting regime change in Iran, and maintain IDF sovereignty over the West Bank.

Netanyahu’s opponents also aren’t talking about a two state solution, never mind a single secular democratic state. None of them criticise the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the ongoing ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon, or the ongoing illegal and unprovoked war against Iran.

When Netanyahu’s opponents criticise his tactics, such as pushing through the E1 Settlement Plan, it’s not because it’s morally abhorrent but because, as Netanyahu’s main opponent Gadi Eisenkot says, it is ”costing the Jewish state dearly on the international stage.” Yair Golan argues that settler violence endangers Israeli soldiers and is oblivious to Palestinian welfare.

Opinion polls have repeatedly shown near unanimous support for the eradication of Palestinian autonomy in Gaza and the West Bank. As the liberal Zionist newspaper Haaretz recently commented: “The Israeli consensus largely maintains that there are no innocents in Gaza, and therefore no such thing as collateral damage.”

So when Netanyahu yesterday addressed the near-empty assembly hall and said, “If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t left this hall, please do so now”, he was really echoing Israeli public sentiment—Israelis basically agree that no wrong has been committed in Gaza.

When he said, “Devastating Iran’s nuclear facilities was hard, was very hard to do”, pro-Israel supporters just wish he’d finished the job—and don’t question whether Israel’s attack was illegal, or why Israel should be permitted to have nuclear weapons but Iran not even the right to develop nuclear power for domestic use, or if Israel as the number one rogue state on the planet should itself be subjected to inspections.

Netanyahu’s nakedly racist reference to Israel’s “battle against the barbarians” did not prompt any concern in Israeli media reports of his speech because almost everyone believes that Israel is a force for good confronted by evil.

At one point Netanyahu accused Qatar of spending billions to “brainwash young minds to hate Israel” through Al Jazeera and US universities. For Naftali Bennett, the leader of Together, the a new alliance formed with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Netanyahu should have gone further and declared Qatar an “enemy state”. Why? Because Qatar sent humanitarian aid to Gaza that he says went to Hamas—even though Israel controlled the financial pipeline.

Back in August Netanyahu published an election poster that placed Zohran Mamdani alongside Iran Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Turkish president Recep Erdoğan and Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem, under the slogan: “They want Netanyahu to lose; don’t let them win.” So Netanyahu was always going to have another go at the NYC mayor in his home town.

“To all those spreading lies about my country, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the anti-semitic mayor of New York, I say: shame on you,” Netanyahu pronounced. “Mr Mamdani, you tried to stop me from coming here. You tried to silence me. Well, you can’t silence me.”

If someone believes they’ve been wrongly accused of perpetrating a genocide by an international court that has only previously prosecuted Black and Brown leaders of southern hemisphere countries, they should be bristling to clear their name. But Netanyahu, a true psychopath, can only intensify the violence of his attack—especially when confronted by a Brown Muslim who is ethical, intelligent and charming.

Has Israeli society blanched at Netanyahu’s grotesquely embarrassing counterattack? No, it’s aligned with him all the way because it can only see critics of its genocide as enemies. After Zohran called for the enforcement of the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu, Eisenkot accused him of “pure antisemitism” and attempting to “rewrite history”—so the main opponent to Netanyahu couldn’t countenance the democratically-elected mayor of the city that has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Tel Aviv criticising the person he has described as a “disaster for Israel”, and someone who “lies about every step”, is “unfit to lead” and has “lost it”.

Zohran, a human being, anticipated Netanyahu’s clueless attack by inviting Palestinian families from Gaza to Gracie Mansion to plant an olive tree the evening before the Israeli pm’s appearance. After that they ate dinner together. Following Netanyahu’s speech he described his taunts as “baseless lies” meant to “sanitise his genocide of Palestinians”.

Then Netanyahu took a swipe at France and the UK because they’ve timidly announced they’ll introduce marginal sanctions on West Bank settlers. In the case of the UK, this will affect £38 million of the country’s annual £6 billion trade with Israel, if the sanctions are ever introduced, and if businesses don’t find ways to bypass them. The sanctions are targeting illegal settlers—not wider Israeli society, which continues to perpetrate its genocide.

“They accuse Israel, tiny Israel, of colonialism—some colonialism,” Netanyahu argued. “And who’s accusing us? Among them are people in Britain and in France. For God’s sake, they invented the term.”

Netanyahu is correct here: the UK invented colonialism. But he omitted to mention is that the UK also invented Israel as a colonial state. Over the course of history the UK has perpetrated more colonial harm than Israel, but Israel is currently causing more colonial harm than the UK, and the war it initiated on Iran could lead to a global depression and a world war—which in the treacherous terms of colonial reach would be impressive.

But the attack on the UK is mainly theatre. Delirious Israel treats every act of micro-opposition as an existential threat because it has no other script to read from. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t remain deeply allied to the UK. Or alter the fact that 40% of the UK cabinet is made up of Labour Friends of Israel. Or threaten to disrupt the reality that the UK is doing more arms trade with Israel under Labour than it did under the Conservatives. Or mean that the UK will drop its proscription of Palestine Action, or relinquish its clampdown on the solidarity movement, or prosecute the 2,000 IDF soldiers who hold UK passports and can walk freely on its streets.

It was heartening to see the Palestinian Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Democratic Socialists of America protest against Netanyahu’s appearance at the UN yesterday. Kudos to celebrities Susan Sarandon, Hannah Einbinder, Elliot Page, Cynthia Nixon, Tony Kushner, Nan Goldin and Eileen Myles, politicians Darializa Avila Chevalier, Chi Ossé, Alexa Avilés, Emily Gallagher, Brad Lander, Melat Kiros, Adam Hamawy, and Chris Rabb, and activists Hasan Piker, Linda Sarsour, Rabbi Abby Stein and Manijeh Moradian for taking a stand.

It’s just a shame Zohran didn’t show up, just as he’d attended earlier pro-Palestine demonstrations, including the epic sit-in at Grand Central Station in November 2023, when he attacked Biden for not calling for a ceasefire. True, Zohran wasn’t mayor at that point. But John Lindsay joined the protests against the US war on Vietnam when he was mayor. He also stood up to the unions that were supporting the war. What was to stop Zohran?

It’s not as though Zohran has refused to take part in activism since his election. He marched on Amazon’s corporate headquarters on Labour day and joined thousands of workers and activists at Washington Square Park, where he declared: “Together, we will show the world what solidarity means. That a people united, organized, cannot be defeated.” He’s been impressively bold, consistent and solid on Israel’s genocide. He could have joined yesterday’s protest without blocking traffic, if he didn’t want to “break the law”. Why didn’t he show Palestine what solidarity meant yesterday?

Here in the UK the one thing we know is that Andy Burnham, left to his own devices, would back Israel all the way. His historical record has been consistently pro-Iraq and pro-Israel. He only teamed up with foreign secretary Ed Miliband to introduce micro-sanctions because the pro-Palestine pressure on the Labour party since 2003 has been immense. With his poll ratings falling well short of the revival he promised, Burnham had to do something to try to win back the millions of people who deserted the Labour party during Starmer’s complicit tenure.

Because we can’t trust Burnham we have to maintain the pressure. On Sunday the Labour party conference begins in Liverpool. A solidarity protest is taking place on Saturday, assembling at St. George’s Plateau at 12:00 noon, to make it clear to Burnham that he has to speed through the sanctions measures and also respond to the genocide by naming it a genocide and ending the UK’s arms supply and trade with Israel. These are minimum demands.

I’ll be traveling to Liverpool to join the protest tomorrow, hope to see you there.